California governor was 80 years ahead of his time
Culbert Olson was the only Democrat to serve as governor of California between 1896 and 1958, and he lasted just one term — elected in 1938, ousted in 1942.
He was that rarest of birds among American politicians elected to high office, an atheist and free thinker. He refused to say the words “so help me God” substituting “I will affirm,” as he took the oath of office.
He also was a progressive who was perhaps too far ahead of his time for his own good. Now would be a very good time to reappraise him. I say that not merely because Culbert was my grandfather. He proved prescient about the threats to American society — economic inequality, war, racism and the dangers of religious tribalism — that are all too much with us today.
“No deity will save us,” he liked to say. “We must save ourselves.”
Olson was born and raised in Utah in the Mormon faith but left the church as a young man after deciding Joseph Smith was an impostor and that his revelations didn’t make any rational sense. Olson, before and during his political career, would urge people to become “humanitarians,” which meant avoiding the bigotry and tribalism associated with organized religions.
Olson won a seat in the state Senate in 1934. In that era, Democrats had little chance at winning statewide office. But when Olson was nominated by his party for governor in 1938, he had the good fortune to oppose an unpopular and corrupt incumbent, Frank Merriam, and won.
No governor has faced so many obstacles to his agenda. The California Legislature and the political establishment were dominated by Republicans who opposed almost all of his progressive initiatives, including public ownership of utilities, universal health insurance, higher taxes on upper-income people, and new regulations on lobbyists. He handled defeats with humor: “If you want to know where hell is, just be the governor of California,” he quipped.
During World War II, Olson opposed internment of Japanese-Americans, which had been supported and defended by the state attorney general, Earl Warren. In public statements and in a letter to his friend and political confidant, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, he pointed out many of the Japanese were American citizens and that Japanese students and farmers were just as American as everyone else in America.
Eventually, Olson had to accept the internment after a military order from Gen. John DeWitt, a fervent advocate of incarcerating Japanese-Americans. In 1943 he lost his re-election to Warren, re-establishing Republican rule in California.
In an irony, Warren proved more effective than Olson had been at pushing through some progressive aspects of Olson’s program, including corporate regulation, political reform and investment in infrastructure.
After he left office, my grandfather became president of the United Secularists of America, a body of secularists, atheists and freethinkers. This work included defending separation of church and state, eliminating superstition, promoting taxation of church property and opposing religion in public schools.
I still hear Grandfather’s humanitarian views in the conversation about income inequality, which is as bad now as it was when he served as governor during America’s Great Depression. About inequality, he warned: “Social problems are created by economic maladjustments, poverty in the midst of plenty … continued concentration of wealth control of the national economy in the hands of a small percentage of the population opposing every effort of the government to interpose controls for the economic stabilization and for the general welfare.”
Gov. Culbert Olson represented an American tradition of politics that originates from basic human needs and not from personal or financial privilege. His message deserves more thought and attention today.
Debra Olson, a longtime peace and environmental activist, is the founder of Peace Solutions (peacesolutions.org) and coauthor of “The Honorable Culbert Levy Olson: Governor of California 1939 to 1943.” She wrote this for Zócalo Public Square.