Raymond E. Baldwin

Who was Raymond E. Baldwin?

Raymond Earl Baldwin was a United States Senator, the 72nd and 74th Governor of Connecticut. Baldwin, a conservative Republican, was elected governor of Connecticut in 1938 during a Republican landslide. He promised a balanced budget, government aid to private business, and lower taxes. He sharply cut the state budget, producing a million dollars surplus. He was defeated for reelection in 1940, but was elected governor again in 1942 and 1944. He supervised a complex system of civil defense and statewide services on the homefront during the war. He planned an elaborate program to deal with the postwar reconversion of Connecticut's many warplane and munitions plants. He was elected to the Senate in the Republican landslide of 1946. As a spokesman for the small businesses of America, he compiled a conservative record in favor of less regulation, except for more regulation of labor unions through the Taft-Harley Act. As chairman of a subcommittee of the Armed Services committee, Baldwin engaged in a long-running dispute with Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy, McCarthy alleged that Baldwin was whitewashing a shameful episode in which Army prosecutors in 1944 gained the death penalty for German soldiers who had massacred Americans at the Malmedy Massacre. Exhausted by the highly publicized controversy, Baldwin resigned from the Senate in December 1949 to become a state judge.