Club History
The JVCDC is one of a group of Democratic clubs throughout California, which give people a chance to discuss issues, talk to candidates and office-holders, and work to elect Democrats to state and national offices. Even if you don't have the time or the inclination to run for office yourself, you can play a role in politics through a club like this one. We have meetings about every second month, typically on its last or next-to-last Monday, and we encourage Democrats to join us. This is a time when Democrats have been quite successful in California but remain embattled at the national level and frustrated at our local level; there is obviously much to do.
The Honnold Library of the Claremont Colleges includes, in a special collection, Leisa Bronson's detailed history of our club as of 1989, which stands in the background of many comments here. The club, as the Claremont Democratic Club, was founded on January 14, 1953 at Griswold's Inn. Helen Myers, then organization chair at the L.A. County Democratic Central Committee, assisted at this meeting. Stephen Zetterberg, who had run against Richard Nixon in the 33rd Congressional District in 1948, was temporary chair. The California Democratic Council was also founded in 1953, as a progressive organization committed to the formation and nurturing of clubs like ours.
In the 1950s, as now, there were campaign finance needs, and the club launched a successful "Dialing for Dollars" program, raising more money than some Congressional districts. In 1958, when Pat Brown was elected governor, the Democrat George Kasen won in our 33rd Congressional district. During the 1960s, however, the Vietnam War caused deep divisions in the country, affecting the state's Democratic clubs. The CDC was opposed to the war; and some clubs, but not this one, quit the CDC.
The club emerged from these battles and gave useful support to a variety of candidates during the 1970s, including Jim Lloyd, who won the 33rd Congressional seat in 1974. But in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the club fell into stagnation and demoralization. This was aggravated by Republican emergence at the national level, with presidency of Ronald Reagan. His coattails caused Lloyd to lose his seat in 1980 to the then youthful person who would win yet again in 2000. To make matters worse, Claremont Democrats suffered from a redrawing of district lines that favored the rival party.
The club was revived in the mid-1980s, largely through the efforts of Sandy Baldonado, Mary Poplin, and Sandy Hester. In 1985, a few months after the death of Jerry Voorhis, the club took its present name in his honor. There were well-attended awards dinners in the mid-1980s, and the club supported a variety of candidates. Later it was active in the 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns, working from headquarters on Arrow Highway. The club has engaged in many successful fund-raising events, with Helen Myers playing a central role. In the early 1990s it supported the efforts of Al Wachtel to win our Congressional seat, and in 1996 it supported the candidacy of David Levering, a long-time professor of history at Cal Poly, Pomona and a long-time club member. Neither he in 1996 nor Janice Nelson in 1998 could outmatch the well-funded incumbent.
Parkes Riley was president from 2000 to 2005. During all these years, the club maintained booths at the Fourth of July celebrations and the Village Venture; and during election years, Liz Davis led a voter registration project on weekends at the Montclair Plaza. During the last days of the 2000 campaign, with much involvement by Dwain Kaiser, Pat Sullivan, and others, the club maintained a headquarters in the Old School House. There was great enthusiasm for Al Gore and local candidates, once more including Janice Nelson for Congress.
The club again maintained a headquarters in the Old School House for the elections of 2002. It put much energy behind the candidacies of Patrick Smith for state Assembly and Marjorie Musser Mikels for Congress. Regrettably, though, the 2002 election results reflected an adverse gerrymandering of our districts after the 2000 census.
The 2004 elections saw the club sustaining its most ambitious headquarters project—renting space for five months at 879 East Arrow Highway, on the border between Claremont and Pomona. Dwain and Joann Kaiser managed; Mike Davis coordinated volunteers; Merrill Ring, as club treasurer, dealt with the complexities of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. The club became a beehive of activity for candidates including John Kerry; Barbara Boxer; Cynthia Matthews, running for Congress, and Dan Harden, running for state Assembly. During much of this period, the headquarters provided office space for Matthews, Harden, and Norma Torres, running for Pomona City Council. The Matthews campaign generated unusual excitement, with an LA drivetime talk show praising her for raising questions about immigration; and she was able to get 42.8% of the vote, compared the long-term incumbent's 53.6%. For her and, even more, for Kerry and especially Boxer, Claremont voted solidly Democratic, continuing a trend of recent years.
(909)-626-8100
P.O. Box 1201, Claremont, CA, 91711
Jerry Voorhis, 1901-84
The man for whom our club was named represented our Congressional district for five terms, beginning in 1937. He is best known for losing to Richard M. Nixon in 1946, in the first of Nixon's vicious and mendacious campaigns, but he had a distinguished career before and after.
From a wealthy family, a graduate of Yale, he began to work with schools for underprivileged children. From 1928 to 1938 he ran the Voorhis School for Boys in San Dimas, California. In 1938 this school was reconstituted as the Southern California branch of California Polytechnic
College, San Luis Obispo, and the family donated the 150-acre site to the state of California. The history of the California State Polytechnic University, Pomona begins with its "Voorhis Unit." After leaving Congress, Jerry Voorhis became the president, and later executive director, of the Cooperative League of America.
In Congress, he made a record as a hard-working Democrat, friendly to labor and committed to major banking reform. As Stephen E. Ambrose said in Nixon, "To the small-businessman of the 12th District, Voorhis was the essence of the New Deal." These small businessmen were suspicious of him, but he was "widely popular" in his district. "As [Nixon] later told Stewart Alsop, 'Voorhis was a Don Quixote, an idealist ... who never accomplished anything very much.' Actually he had accomplished a great deal."
In 1946, as Ambrose reports, "Nixon's campaign came to center on a charge that Voorhis was a Communist sympathizer who had Communist support. This was absolutely untrue, as Nixon knew perfectly well, but it no more deterred him than it did Joe McCarthy, who made similar charges about La Follette. In point of fact, both Voorhis and La Follette had become anathema to the Communist Party, because both had denounced Russian aggressiveness in Eastern Europe. But the truth mattered not one bit to either McCarthy or Nixon, or indeed to other Republican candidates across the country."
Nixon benefited from the pro-Republican climate of 1946, which brought the Republicans into control of Congress for one of only two two-year periods between 1932 and 1994. Nixon also campaigned aggressively, catching Voorhis off guard with the breathtaking falsity of his charges. An ad late in the campaign read, "REMEMBER, Voorhis is a former registered Socialist and his voting record is more Socialistic and Communistic than Democratic." Nixon's subsequent career is well known and was observed by Jerry Voorhis from Claremont, as an active member of this club.
You can find more details about his life in a biographical sketch of him on the Internet. There are also photographs, there is a library archive at the Claremont Colleges, and there are books by him and about him.