Walter M. Chandler

Who was Walter M. Chandler?

Walter Marion Chandler was a Progressive and later a Republican U.S. Representative from New York.

Born near Yazoo City, Mississippi, Chandler attended public schools, the University of Virginia at Charlottesville, and the University of Mississippi at Oxford. He taught school for a time and then graduated from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 1897. He studied history and jurisprudence at the University of Berlin and the University of Heidelberg in Germany.

He established his law practice in Dallas, Texas, and three years later moved to New York City, where he continued the practice of law and engaged in writing and lecturing.

In 1912, Chandler was elected to Congress to the first of two terms as a Progressive. In 1916, he was elected to a third term to Congress as a Republican. He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in the heavily Republican year of 1918.

In 1920, Chandler was elected to a fourth nonconsecutive term as a Republican to the Sixty-seventh Congress. He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1922 and thereafter unsuccessfully contested the election of Sol Bloom to fill a congressional vacancy. He was again an unsuccessful candidate in 1924, even as U.S. President Calvin Coolidge won the electors of New York State.