Horace Jeremiah "Jerry" Voorhis (April 6, 1901 – September 11, 1984) was a Democratic politician and educator from California who served five terms in the United States House of Representatives from 1937 to 1947, representing the 12th congressional district in Los Angeles County. He was the first political opponent of Richard M. Nixon, who defeated Voorhis for re-election in 1946 in a campaign cited as an example of Nixon's use of red-baiting during his political rise. Voorhis was born in Kansas, but the family relocated frequently in his childhood. He earned a bachelor's degree from Yale University (where he was elected to the academic honor society Phi Beta Kappa) and a master's degree in education from Claremont Graduate School. In 1928, he founded the Voorhis School for Boys and became its headmaster. He retained the post into his congressional career. In the House of Representatives, Voorhis was a loyal supporter of the New Deal and compiled a liberal voting record. His major legislative achievement was the Voorhis Act of 1940 requiring registration of certain organizations controlled by foreign powers. After being re-elected by comfortable margins four times, he faced Nixon in 1946 in a bitter campaign in which Voorhis's supposed endorsement by groups linked to the Communist Party was made into a major issue. Nixon won the Republican-leaning district by over 15,000 votes and Voorhis refused to run against Nixon in 1948. During a writing career spanning a half-century, Voorhis penned several books. Following his defeat by Nixon, he retired from politics and worked for almost twenty years as an executive in the cooperative movement. He died in a California retirement home in 1984 at the age of 83. Early life and career Voorhis was born in Ottawa, Kansas, on April 6, 1901, to Charles Brown Voorhis, of Dutch descent, and Ella Ward (Smith) Voorhis. Jerry was the grandson (and future biographer) of Aurelius Lyman Voorhis, who had "ventured out to the frontier in western Kansas" as merchant, land agent, and self-taught lawyer, and had scraped to send his son to college until he was forced, halfway through, to give his son the only two dollars he could spare and advise him to get a job. Charles Voorhis took work in an investment company and as a semi-professional baseball player and rose to become an executive of the Kingman Plow Company. When that company dissolved, Charles Voorhis became an executive