Frederick Van Nuys
Frederick Van Nuys was a United States Senator from Indiana. Born in Falmouth, he attended the public schools and graduated from Earlham College in 1898 and from Indiana Law School in 1900. He was admitted to the bar in 1900 and commenced practice in Shelbyville moving shortly afterward to Anderson. From 1906 to 1910 he was prosecuting attorney of Madison County and was a member of the Indiana Senate from 1913 to 1916, serving as president pro tempore in 1915. He moved to Indianapolis in 1916 and continued the practice of law; he was United States attorney for the district of Indiana from 1920 to 1922.
According to an interview in the Literary Digest, he pronounced his last name "van-NIECE".
He was elected as a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in 1932, soundly defeating longtime incumbent and Majority Leader James Eli Watson. He was an opponent of the Eighteenth Amendment and called for changes to the Volstead Act. In 1937, he joined with Senator Robert F. Wagner in introducing an anti-lynching bill in the Senate. The House of Representatives passed a similar bill by a wide 277-120 margin but was successfully filibustered in the Senate in 1938.
While in the Senate he was chairman of the Committee on Expenditures in Executive Departments and a member of the Committee on the Judiciary.
Although he was a Democrat who was elected as part of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s sweeping victory, Van Nuys was not always a reliable supporter of New Deal policies and opposed the president’s plan to enlarge the United States Supreme Court. He also stayed outside of the Indiana Democratic Party political machine opposing the party in patronage matters. His positions led some forces in the Democratic Party, including the AFL–CIO to oppose his renomination in 1938. Loyalists to Governors Paul McNutt and M. Clifford Townsend sought to "eliminate" him from the Senate, which was welcomed by the Roosevelt administration.
After initially threatening to run as an independent, he secured support for the Democratic nomination and faced Republican Raymond E. Willis in the general election. Van Nuys won the election by a mere 5,100 votes, which led Willis to appeal to the Senate for a recount, alleging election irregularities. The Senate denied the recount on the grounds that the affected votes would not have changed the results.
In 1943 a confidential analysis by Isaiah Berlin of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for the British Foreign Office stated of Van Nuys:
He died on January 25, 1944 at his home in Vienna, Virginia after a short illness and was buried in East Maplewood Cemetery, Anderson, Indiana. Governor Henry Schricker appointed Samuel D. Jackson to succeed him in the Senate.
