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| Affiliation | Democratic |
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| Name | Howard Morgan |
| Address |
, Oregon , United States |
| Email | None |
| Website | None |
| Born |
January 22, 1914
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| Died | April 14, 2012
(98 years)
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| Contributor | RBH |
| Last Modifed | David
Jan 22, 2021 07:10pm |
| Tags |
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| Info | Elected to the Oregon House of Representatives in 1948.
Morgan, Howard V. 98 Jan. 22, 1914 April 14, 2012 Howard V. Morgan, former Oregon Public Utility Commissioner, died peacefully in McMinnville Saturday, April 14, surrounded by family. Born in Tilamook, Jan. 22, 1914, he attended Jefferson High School and Reed College graduating with a degree in economics. He served in the US Navy during WWII and one term in the Oregon legislature. He was chairman of the Democratic Party (1955), Oregon Public Utility Commissioner (1957-1959), and Federal Power Commissioner (1961). He also ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate (1966) on an anti-Vietnam platform. After retirement, Mr. Morgan and his wife sailed throughout the Caribbean and Mediterranean. They lived in Spain and Washington State before settling in McMinnville. He is survived by his wife, Rosina; and children, Peter, Kate and Sarah. A son, Thomas, died in 1967. He is survived by seven grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren. The family suggests donations to Reed College.
Morgan was a colorful and important player in Oregon politics for many years, particularly the 1950's and 1960's. He was born in Tillamook in 1914 but moved to Portland with his father after his parents divorced; he lived in the Albina neighborhood and went to Jefferson High School. A graduate of Reed College, where he was president of the student body, Morgan served in the Navy in World War II. Returning home, he was active in young Democrats' organizations when he was in his early 30's, and he served for a short time in the state legislature. His politics were far to the left for his era.
Early in his career, he and his wife, the former Rosina Corbett, moved to Monmouth and started sheep ranching. Ms. Morgan was the daughter of Harry Corbett, twice acting governor of Oregon and president of the Oregon Senate; thus, she was a member of the storied Corbett family that goes back to the founding of Portland.
Howard ran unsuccessfully for state labor commissioner in 1950. But he became the chair of the state Democratic Party in 1952, winning by a one-vote margin over ex-state treasurer Walter Pearson. Morgan held the chair position for four years. He pulled few political punches, to say the least, and was frequently found asserting his party's views, and his own, most bluntly and forcefully in the newspapers. In 1954, he filed charges that the state's Republicans had engaged in crimes by failing to report campaign expenses, and he was not kind to Tom McCall when the latter was running for Congress that year. McCall later recalled Morgan as "the most brutally caustic man I've ever known." Morgan had mud slung back at him as well, as evidenced by this article dredging up his arrest as a Reed student.
Morgan was there to welcome Sen. Wayne Morse into the Democratic Party fold when Morse switched allegiances in 1955. In 1956, Morgan stepped down from the party chair, possibly because he had made too many foes, and he worked on the Adlai Stevenson presidential campaign. That year, the sitting Republican governor of Oregon, Paul Patterson, died, and a Democrat, Robert Holmes, was elected to fill out his unexpired term. It was the first Democrat in the governor's chair in 22 years. Holmes appointed Morgan as the state's public utility commissioner, a job he had long coveted, and he served as PUC from 1957 to 1959.
In his PUC days, Morgan jumped right in and went after Portland Traction Company, which operated a trolley service from the Portland suburbs. Morgan ordered Portland Traction to provide buses from the east side to downtown after the Hawthorne Bridge was closed to the trolleys. Portland Traction wanted to discontinue the connection over the bridge, which it had maintained for a short while through an agreement with another private bus company, Rose City Transit. Morgan alleged that Portland Traction simply wanted to get out of the passenger business to convert entirely to a freight operation.
At one point Morgan reportedly became convinced that public ownership of the Portland transit system was the best course, but the Port of Portland wasn't interested and Tri-Met didn't exist. The legal hassles between the PUC and Portland Traction made it all the way to the state supreme court, which held in favor of Morgan.
As soon as Mark Hatfield became governor, Morgan was out like a light at the utility commission. The two men were nemeses; Morgan appears to have assembled more than a few. Later, John F. Kennedy appointed Morgan to the Federal Power Commission, on which he sat beginning in 1961, including a stint as vice chair. He quit in 1963, saying his colleagues on the board were too soft on the power industry.
Overall, he appears to have taken a far more pro-consumer stand than his Republican PUC predecessors -- particularly as it related to the railroads. He also tried to throw up various roadblocks to the construction of private dams on the Snake River, but it seems he was in favor of federal government dams there. Morgan made headlines during that same era by telling a U.S. Senate committee that the Teamsters had offered a $10,000 bribe to the Holmes campaign in exchange for having a union flunky put on the Oregon Liquor Control Commission.
Often mentioned as a potential gubernatorial candidate, Morgan ran for the United States Senate in 1966, losing badly in the primary to Congressman Robert Duncan, who went on to lose to Mark Hatfield. (Duncan would go down to defeat in two more Senate races before giving up.) Morgan was the first candidate to run on a statewide basis in opposition to the Vietnam War. Indeed, his was a single-issue campaign. One of his backers was Robert Vaughn, who played Napoleon Solo on the smash TV spy series The Man from UNCLE.
Opponent Duncan was a hawk, which is probably why his candidacies went nowhere in the general elections of the late '60s and early '70s. But he was supported in '66 by the Johnson White House, which wanted no part of the anti-war message coming from Morgan.
Here is a fascinating piece of Oregon political lore -- an election night profile of the defeated Morgan by a young Oregonian reporter by the name of Les AuCoin.
After his years in government, Morgan ran a gravel and construction business in Portland. He and his wife also continued to operate their sheep ranch in Monmouth, and in the late '50s they switched it out for Black Butte Ranch in central Oregon, which they operated as a ranch for many years. Morgan worked on the Eugene McCarthy campaign in 1968, and in 1969, the couple sold Black Butte Ranch to the folks who turned it into the resort that it is today.
After that, the Morgans retired and traveled the world, showing a Sauvie Island address at one point and eventually settling back down in McMinnville in the early 1990's. Morgan was still publicly commenting on politics when he was nearly 90 years old. In a 2001 op-ed piece in the Oregonian, he blasted deregulation of private electric utilities in Oregon, warning that corporate greed would push rates for consumers through the roof.
Among the newspaper clippings bearing Morgan's name is this one, reporting the death of his 14-year-old son, a Catlin Gabel student, in a gun accident at Ms. Morgan's brother's home in Central Oregon in 1967. The elder Morgan is survived by his other three children, as well as by his wife, seven grandchildren, and 12 great-grandchildren.
[Link] [Link]
[Link] (See p. 94)
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