Mitchell, Hugh B. (Hugh Burnton), 1907-1996

Senator and Representative of Washington state, business executive.

Born 1907, died 1996. Hugh Mitchell's congressional career began in 1933 when he became executive assistant to Senator Monrad C. Wallgren, for whom he worked until 1944 when Wallgren became governor of Washington state. When Wallgren resigned from the Senate in 1945, Mitchell was appointed his successor. In the Senate (and later when he served in the House) Mitchell was involved in the movement for public ownership of electric power, public housing, federal aid to education, loyalty investigations, price controls, fisheries, the lumber trade, the economic problems of Alaska, and other issues. He wasn't elected to keep his Senate seat in 1946, but he remained active in the fight for public power by founding and directing the League for Columbia Valley Authority. He was elected as a Washington state representative in 1948, and in the House served on the Rules, Banking and Currency, and Labor and Education committees, and also campaigned for a Marshall Plan for Asia. Smear attacks against Mitchell during the McCarthy era began in 1950 when a Seattle City Council member suggested he was a communist. He ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1952, and his opponent leveled the same charge against him. He lost his congressional seat in 1954 in the midst of more smear tactics, and sued his opponent for conspiracy to libel. They settled out of court in what Mitchell called a "moral victory". Thereafter he served as director of two Seattle manufacturing companies, and directed the Hell's Canyon Association. He died in 1966.