Key Pittman
Washington, D.C., is aflutter with rumors that Mitch McConnell, the senior senator from Kentucky and former Republican majority leader, is seriously ill or even worse. The 84-year-old, who has had a string of health problems in recent years, hasn’t been seen in public in weeks, amid news accounts suggesting he had a serious heart attack at his Washington home on June 14 and even unconscious for a time. Yesterday, the political trade pub The Hill accidentally published–and retracted–what seemed to be an obituary. McConnell’s aides haven’t had much to say other than he is receiving “excellent care.”
McConnell is leaving the Senate in early January, but his illness has occasioned a fair amount of political speculation and even intrigue. If he can’t serve out his remaining term, it’s possible under convoluted Kentucky law there would have to be an open all-comers race for a short-term seat, the results of which could pare the narrow GOP margin in the Senate or even flip the seat. Clearly, Republicans have every electoral motive to keep a lid on news about McConnell’s medical condition.
Sort of like Nevada Democrats did in 1940 for one of their own.
First elected to the Senate in 1912, Key Pittman, a lawyer in Tonopah, 200 miles north of the New to Las Vegas world headquarters, was running for his sixth term. He was 68 years old. According to a 1998 article by the late Nevada State Archivist Guy Rocha, Pittman was prone to big-time binge drinking, especially at the old Riverside Hotel in Reno. He was holed up there for the last couple weeks of the campaign, often missing appearances on the stump because he was stinking drunk.
On November 4, 1940, the day before Election Day, Pittman was having a “pre-election drinking spree” at the Riverside when he suffered a serious heart attack. A physician summoned by courier said there was no hope, a diagnosis confirmed by a specialist flown in from San Francisco. Pittman was secretly moved to nearby Washoe General Hospital.
Quoting Rocha’s article in Nevada magazine:
Upon hearing the news, Governor Edward P “Ted” Carville, a Democrat, and members of the State Democratic Central Committee, decided not to tell the press that Pittman had suffered a life-threatening heart attack so as not to jeopardize his re-election. After Pittman’s death, Governor Carville would then be able to appoint a Democrat to the vacant Senate seat. News reports on Election Day stated that Pittman had been hospitalized and would not be able to travel to Tonopah to cast his vote as was his custom. Reno’s Nevada State Journal quoted [his physician] as saying that “the Senator was suffering from sheer exhaustion and fatigue, and the strain of the campaign through the state has been too much for ‘an already overworked condition’ The Senator’s condition is not critical, but he will be kept in the hospital several days, principally for the rest.”
Pittman won handily on November 5. Terminally ill, he died five days later in the hospital. Governor Carville appointed his Democratic replacement, Assemblyman Berkeley Bunker.
Rocha’s article, largely based on an interview with Pittman’s physician, firmly rebutted a sensational account in a sensational best-selling book in 1963 about mob control of Las Vegas. The Green Felt Jungle, by Ed Reid and Ovid Demaris, claimed that Pittman actually had died before the election and was secretly kept on ice in a Tonopah hotel room bathtub until after Election Day. It was never clear where this story came from, although one later account said that a Pittman handler, asked by a reporter about the senator’s absence from the campaign trail during the last week, said “We’re keeping him on ice.”
Pittman’s handlers simply engaged in straight-out lying. The truthiness of McConnell’s handlers remains to be seen.