McCarthy, Kathryn Ellen O'Loughlin, 1894-1952
<p>Kathryn Ellen O'Loughlin (April 24, 1894 – January 16, 1952) was a U.S. Representative from Kansas. After her election, she was married to Daniel M. McCarthy, who served in the Kansas State Senate, and thereupon served under the name of Kathryn O'Loughlin McCarthy. She was the first woman elected to Congress from Kansas.</p>
<p>Born near Hays, Kansas, O'Loughlin attended rural schools. She graduated from the Hays (Kansas) High School in 1913, from the Kansas State Teachers College in 1917, and from the law school of the University of Chicago in 1920. She was admitted to the bar in 1921 and commenced practice in Chicago, but she returned to Kansas in 1928 and continued the practice of law in Hays. She served as a delegate to the State Democratic conventions in 1930, 1931, 1932, 1934, and 1936, and she served the Democratic National Conventions in 1940 and 1944. She also served as a member of the Kansas House of Representatives in 1931 and 1932.</p>
<p>O'Loughlin was elected as a Democrat to the Seventy-third Congress (March 4, 1933 – January 3, 1935), defeating Clyde Short in the primary and Charles I. Sparks in the general election. She was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection to the Seventy-fourth Congress. Her support for the New Deal angered Kansas Republicans, including Governor Alf Landon, who promised to have her defeated. Public opinion in Kansas had shifted against the New Deal, especially the Agricultural Adjustment Act, which McCarthy strongly supported. The GOP nominated Frank Carlson, the chair of the Kansas Republican Party and close ally of Governor Landon. McCarthy was narrowly defeated by Carlson by a margin of 51%-49%, or just under 2,800 votes. Carlson would go on to become one of the most powerful politicians in Kansas history, serving as Governor and later representing the state in the US Senate.</p>
<p>After this, she resumed the practice of law. She also owned and operated a large ranch and was part owner of an automobile agency at Hays and Ellis, Kansas. O'Loughlin died in Hays, Kansas, and she was interred in St. Joseph's Cemetery.</p>
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<p>In Republican-controlled, predominantly Protestant, and traditionally conservative northwestern Kansas, Kathryn O’Loughlin McCarthy was an unusual politician: a Democrat, a Catholic, and a single woman. But her political roots, connection with farmers and cattlemen devastated by the Great Depression, and a strong Democratic tide in the 1932 elections helped her win election to the U.S. House of Representatives.</p>
<p>The daughter of John O’Loughlin, a Kansas state representative and cattleman, and Mary E. O’Loughlin, Kathryn Ellen O’Loughlin was born on April 24, 1894, in Hays, Kansas. She grew up on the family ranch and remembered a childhood shaped by farm chores—feeding livestock, milking cows, and familiarizing herself with the latest farm equipment. She graduated from Hays High School in 1913 and, four years later, received a BS in education from the State Teacher’s College in Hays. After she received a University of Chicago LLD in 1920, she passed the Kansas and Illinois bar exams. O’Loughlin began positioning herself for a career in elective office. She returned briefly to Kansas and served as a clerk for the Kansas house of representatives’ judiciary committee while John O’Loughlin was a member of the legislature. “Sometimes I could hardly sit still at the debates,” she recalled. “I wanted to get in there and argue, too.” O’Loughlin returned to Chicago, where she participated in legal aid and social welfare work. In 1929 she resettled in Kansas and, a year later, was elected to the state legislature.</p>
<p>In 1932 O’Loughlin defeated eight men for the Democratic nomination in the race for a sprawling 26-county House district that covered the northwestern quarter of Kansas—compelled largely by her desire to seek progressive reform at the national level. Only one Democrat had ever represented the district since its creation in 1885. Republicans, and briefly Populists in the 1890s, dominated the elections. O’Loughlin challenged two-term incumbent Republican Charles Isaac Sparks, a former state judge. She focused on the devastated agricultural economy of western Kansas and proposed federal relief for farmers and ranchers. She logged more than 30,000 miles and delivered a dozen speeches daily. She stanched a “whisper campaign” against her religion, “wet” position on Prohibition, and status as a single woman. “A large part of the population of Kansas consists of German farmers who are terribly opposed to women in public life,” O’Loughlin recalled after the election. “In fact the slogan of my county [Ellis County] in regard to women invading politics is ‘Kinder und cookin’—meaning ‘children and cooking.’ . . . But I soon discovered that when I proved to the people that I knew what I was talking about, and was better informed than the average man, they gradually dropped their prejudices.”</p>
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Name Entry: McCarthy, Kathryn Ellen O'Loughlin, 1894-1952
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