Joseph Kirtley Carson Jr. (December 19, 1891 – December 20, 1956) was a mayor of Portland, Oregon from 1933 to 1941 as well as an attorney and unsuccessful candidate for governor. Early life Joseph Kirtley Carson Jr. was born on December 19, 1891, in the village of McKinney, Kentucky, the son of Joseph Kelly Carson and Sallie Elizabeth Adeline (Johnson). His family moved several times before arriving in Hood River, Oregon in 1903. Joseph graduated from high school in Hood River, and then moved to Portland in 1914. He graduated from the University of Oregon School of Law on May 4, 1917. On the same day he was admitted to the Oregon State Bar he also joined the 12th Company of the Oregon regiment of coast artillery. He served as a private at Fort Stevens at the mouth of the Columbia River. He made sergeant in August 1917. He served at Fort Stevens and Fort Canby until February 1918. His next service was at Fort Monroe in Virginia. In April 1918 he traveled to Florida to serve as an instructor at Camp Joseph E. Johnston where he was promoted to second lieutenant. In World War I he was sent on the U.S.S. Kroonland to France where he landed in October 1918. He served with the 301st railhead detachment, and was discharged in October 1919 with the rank of first lieutenant. Early political career In 1922, Carson was elected a Democratic precinct committeeman. He was an unsuccessful candidate for the Oregon state legislature in 1922, 1924, and 1926. In 1928 he was a candidate to represent a congressional district at the Democratic National Convention. Arriving back in Oregon he began a correspondence with Franklin Delano Roosevelt that would last four years. Mayor of Portland When George Luis Baker chose not to try for re-election as mayor, Joseph decided to run. He was elected November 8, 1932, to take office July 1, 1933. One of his first acts was to appoint his former coastal artillery colonel Berton K. Lawson as police chief of Portland. Carson was mayor of Portland during the depression. He became a vocal critic of the Works Progress Administration. A conservative Democrat who believed in rugged individualism, he stopped several New Deal initiatives. Government deficit spending was anathema to him. He set the tone at a Rotary Club meeting in 1932: "We must quit asking the government to be