Culbert Levy Olson (November 7, 1876 – April 13, 1962) was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 29th governor of California from 1939 to 1943. A member of the Democratic Party, Olson was previously elected to both the Utah State Senate and California State Senate, serving one term in each. During his term as governor, Olson struggled to pass New Deal legislation due to hostility from the California legislature. He also supported the internment and removal of Japanese Americans from California after the United States entered World War II. He was the first atheist governor of an American state.
Olson was born in Fillmore, Utah, the son of Delilah Cornelia (née King) and George Daniel Olson, on November 7, 1876. Olson's mother was a suffragette and became the first female elected official in Utah. His first cousin was U.S. Senator William H. King, and both were descendants of Edmund Rice, an early immigrant to Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Olson's mother and father belonged to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. However, Culbert was unconvinced of the existence of God, and became an atheist at the age of ten.
Leaving school at the age of 14, Olson worked briefly as a telegraph operator. In 1890, he enrolled at Brigham Young University in Provo, where he studied law and journalism.
Upon graduating at the age of 19 in 1895, Olson embarked on a career as a journalist with the Daily Ogden Standard. During the 1896 presidential election, Olson campaigned for Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan. After the election, Olson moved briefly to Michigan, studying law at the University of Michigan, and then later to Washington, D.C., where he worked as a newspaper correspondent and secretary for the U.S. Congress. During his time in the capital, Olson attended law school at George Washington University, and he was admitted to the Utah Bar in 1901.
Utah and California Legislatures
Olson moved back to Utah in 1901, settling in Salt Lake City to join a law practice. Building a reputation of defending trade unionists and political progressives, Olson was elected to the Utah State Senate in 1916. During his four years in the State Senate, Olson wrote and endorsed legislation to end child labor in the state, guarantee old age pensions, and expand government control of public utilities.
Olson declined to run again for the State Senate in the 1920 general election. Instead, Olson relocated to Los Angeles, California, beginning another law practice, where he again gained a reputation of investigating corporate fraud. Politics never remained far. Olson campaigned openly for Progressive Party candidate Robert La Follette in 1924, and for Democrat Franklin Roosevelt in 1932.
In 1934, in the middle of the Great Depression, Olson ran as a Democrat for the California State Senate, representing Los Angeles. During the 1934 state general elections, Olson campaigned for former Socialist Party member and Democratic nominee for governor, Upton Sinclair, participating in Sinclair's End Poverty in California campaign. While Sinclair lost the gubernatorial election to Republican Frank Merriam, Olson was elected to the California State Senate that year.
While in the state senate, the second state legislative seat to which he was elected, Olson openly supported Roosevelt's New Deal policies towards the unemployed. Seeing large business interests as a barrier to change, Olson wrote the Olson Oil Bill to cut down oil company monopolies in the state.
With the open support of President Roosevelt, Olson ran for governor of California in the 1938 election against conservative Republican and anti-labor incumbent Governor Frank Merriam. Merriam, known for suppressing the 1934 Longshore Strike and his conservative fiscal policies, was a highly unpopular candidate among progressives and unionists, with even conservative Republicans angered by his 1935 tax reforms. Merriam lost soundly to Olson. He was the first Democrat to win the governorship since James Budd's election in 1894, breaking the 40-year Democrat isolation from the governorship.
Governor of California, 1939–1943
Olson was inaugurated as California's twenty-ninth executive on January 2, 1939, the first Democrat to serve as governor of California in 40 years. He refused to say "so help me God" during his oath of office to state Supreme Court chief justice William H. Waste. Olson remarked earlier to justice Waste that "God couldn't help me at all, and that there isn't any such person." Instead, Olson said, "I will affirm."
In his inaugural address, Olson pointed at progressives and the Left for his inspiration, citing that "[t]hey point the way forward - toward the achievement of the aspiration of the people for an economy that will afford general employment, abundant production, equitable distribution, social security and old age retirement, which our country, with its ample resources, great facilities and the genius of its people, is capable of providing."
Olson's tenure in the governorship got off to a rocky start. He collapsed four days after his inauguration, and doctors discovered that he was suffering from an ailing heart. On top of personal health matters, Kate Jeremy Olson, the Governor's wife of nearly thirty-four years, died shortly after he assumed the office.
Among those Olson appointed to his cabinet were businessman George Killion as director of Finance, labor leader George G. Kidwell as director of Industrial Relations, and social worker Martha Chickering as director of Social Welfare. During his tenure, he appointed four associate justices to the state Supreme Court: Jesse W. Carter, Phil S. Gibson, Roger J. Traynor, and B. Rey Schauer. After the death of chief justice Waste in 1940, Olson elevated Gibson to the position.
Contrasting with the conservative policies of Governor Frank Merriam, Olson promoted friendly relations with the state's labor unions. In September 1939, he officially pardoned Tom Mooney, a labor activist and political prisoner accused of plotting the 1916 Preparedness Day Bombing in San Francisco. Olson cited scant evidence against Mooney as the reason for his pardon. The next month, Olson pardoned Mooney's alleged accomplice, Warren Billings.
Although a number of progressive reforms were carried out during Olson's time as governor, his relationship with the California State Legislature was often bitter. With a conservative coalition of Republicans and ten “economy bloc” Democrats controlling the Assembly, and business-friendly Republicans in the Senate, Olson had little room to promote his New Deal politics, while the Legislature remained wary of Olson's leftist agenda. In the first year of his governorship, Olson's proposed budget was cut by nearly 100 million dollars, while the Legislature also defeated legislation to raise income, bank and corporate taxes, as well as Olson's bills to regulate lobbyists and reform the state penal system. State-subsidized relief for farmers was cut nearly in half. In addition, Olson's proposal of compulsory universal health insurance for every Californian was defeated by the Assembly, with 48 votes against and only 20 votes in favor of the proposal.