Kenneth William HECHLER, Congress, WV (1914)

1914

HECHLER, Kenneth William, a Representative from West Virginia; born near Roslyn, Long Island, N.Y., September 20, 1914; graduated from Roslyn High School, Roslyn, N.Y., 1931; A.B., Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pa., 1935; A.M., Columbia University, New York, N.Y., 1936; Ph.D., Columbia University, New York, N.Y., 1940; faculty, Columbia, Barnard, Princeton and Marshall Universities; research assistant, Judge Samuel I. Rosenman and President Franklin D. Roosevelt on Roosevelt’s public papers; section chief, Bureau of the Census, 1940; personnel officer, Office for Emergency Management, 1941; administrative analyst, United States Bureau of the Budget, in 1942 and 1946; United States Army, European Theater of Operations as combat historian, 1942-1946; special assistant to President Truman, 1949-1953; associate director of American Political Science Association at Washington, D.C., 1953-1956; research director, presidential campaign of Adlai Stevenson, 1956; administrative aide to Senator John A. Carroll of Colorado in 1957; delegate Democratic National Conventions, 1964, 1968, 1972, 1980 and 1984; elected as a Democrat to the Eighty-sixth and to the eight succeeding Congresses (January 3, 1959-January 3, 1977); was not a candidate for reelection to the Ninety-fifth Congress in 1976, but was an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic nomination for Governor of West Virginia; subsequently was an unsuccessful write-in candidate for reelection to the United States House of Representatives; television and newspaper journalist; unsuccessful Democratic candidate for nomination to the Ninety-sixth Congress in 1978; science consultant, House Committee on Science and Technology, 1980-1982; taught at the University of Charleston and Marshall University, 1981-1984; elected secretary of state of West Virginia in 1984; unsuccessful candidate for nomination to the One Hundred Second Congress in 1990; is a resident of Huntington, W.Va.

Bibliography

Moffat, Charles Hill. Ken Hechler: Maverick Public Servant. Charleston, W.Va.: Mountain State Press, 1987.

Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present