Hiram Johnson: Graft Prosecutor Who Gave California the Recall

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Hiram Johnson was born in Sacramento in 1866, the son of Grove L. Johnson, a legislator and congressman dogged by accusations of graft and election fraud. Valedictorian at 16, he worked as a stenographer in his father's law office before studying law at UC Berkeley, and he later held license number two when the State Bar of California was organized in 1927. In 1908, while assisting in the San Francisco graft prosecution of Mayor Eugene Schmitz and boss Abe Ruef, he took over the case after lead prosecutor Francis Heney was shot in court, and won a conviction. In 1910 he ran for governor with the Lincoln-Roosevelt League, touring by open automobile rather than on the Southern Pacific Railroad he campaigned against.

As governor he created a railroad commission, cross-filing, and the initiative, referendum and recall, which he said were not a panacea. He also signed the 1913 Alien Land Law barring Asian immigrants from owning land and later helped pass the Immigration Act of 1924. He was Theodore Roosevelt's running mate on the 1912 Bull Moose ticket, entered the Senate in 1917, fought the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations, declined the 1920 vice presidential spot with Warren G. Harding, endorsed Franklin Roosevelt in 1932, and then broke with him over the 1937 court packing plan. He died at a naval hospital in Maryland on August 5, 1945, one day before the bombing of Hiroshima.

• A universal health insurance measure he backed lost 27 to 73 after insurers mailed pamphlets showing the German Kaiser.
• His 1918 Johnson-Nolan bill for a $3 daily federal minimum wage died in conference after a filibuster by Southern Democrats.
• A 1943 British intelligence analysis called his isolationism implacable and uncompromising.
• Nominated by both major parties in 1934, he won reelection with 94.5 percent of the vote.
• The recall he created removed Governor Gray Davis in 2003 and was attempted against Gavin Newsom in 2021.