[1] A graduate of the Glasgow School of Art with a budding career as an artist, she changed focus after her marriage and worked diligently and effectively for her husband's campaigns.

[1] Moved by his role as attorney for the Chattanooga News, Kefauver became interested in local politics and sought election to the Tennessee Senate in 1938.

When Congressman Sam D. McReynolds of Tennessee's 3rd congressional district, which included Chattanooga, died in 1939, Kefauver was elected to succeed him in the House.

In a May 1948 article, which appeared in the American Economic Review, Kefauver also proposed that more staff and money be allocated to the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department, and to the Federal Trade Commission; that new legislation to make it easier to prosecute big corporations be enacted; and recommended the danger of monopolies should be publicized more.

During the primary, Crump and his allies accused Kefauver of being a "fellow traveler" and of working for the "pinkos and communists" with the stealth of a raccoon.

Kefauver was unique in Tennessee politics in his outspoken liberal views, a stand which established a permanent bloc of opposition to him in the state.

In May 1963, Kefauver's subcommittee concluded that within monopolized U.S. industries no real price competition existed anymore and also recommended that General Motors be broken up into competing firms.

Kefauver was accused of expanding the power of government excessively, interfering with the freedom of doctors and patients, and threatening the viability of the pharmaceutical industry.

However, at the end of 1961, European and Australian doctors reported that an epidemic of children born with deformities of their arms and legs was caused by their use of thalidomide, which was heavily marketed to pregnant women.

[10] In fact, these unpopular positions, combined with his reputation as a maverick with a penchant for sanctimony, earned him so much enmity even from other senators that one Democratic insider felt compelled to dub him "the most hated man in Congress".

Many of the witnesses were high-profile crime bosses, including such well-known names as Willie Moretti, Joe Adonis, and Frank Costello, the last making himself famous by refusing to allow his face to be filmed during his questioning and then staging a much-publicized walkout.

Although the hearings boosted Kefauver's political prospects, they helped to end the twelve-year Senate career of Democratic Majority Leader Scott Lucas.

Election-eve publication of stolen secret committee documents hurt the Democratic Party in Cook County, cost Lucas the election, and gave Dirksen national prominence as the man who defeated the Senate majority leader.

Campaigning in his coonskin cap, often by dogsled, Kefauver won in an electrifying victory in the New Hampshire primary, defeating Harry S. Truman, the sitting president of the United States.

Kefauver won 12 of the 15 primaries in 1952, losing two to "favorite son" candidates and Florida to leading Southern Democrat Richard Russell.

[8] Although he began the balloting far ahead of the other declared candidates, Kefauver eventually lost the nomination to Stevenson, the choice of the Democratic Party political bosses.

[8] But this time, Kefauver had active competition not only from Stevenson, but also from Governor W. Averell Harriman of New York, who was endorsed by former President Truman.

Although Stevenson preferred Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts as his running mate,[citation needed] he did not attempt to influence the balloting in any way, and Kefauver eventually received the nomination for vice president.

He timed hearings on the legislation to coincide with a series of lurid articles in the Saturday Evening Post and other periodicals of the day on the use of switchblades by juvenile delinquents and gangs.

While he largely faded from the public eye, he earned the respect of congressional colleagues from both parties for his independence and his sponsorship of a number of important foreign and domestic legislative measures.

When he ran for reelection to a third term in 1960, his first and, it would turn out, last attempt at running for office after refusing to sign the 1956 Southern Manifesto and voting in favor of the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960,[13][14] he faced staunch opposition for renomination from his party's still-thriving pro-segregation wing.

Nonetheless, he won the Democratic primary decisively, receiving nearly double the votes of his rival, judge Andrew T. Taylor of Jackson.

[17] In 1962, Kefauver, who had become known to the public at large as the chief enemy of crooked businessmen in the Senate, introduced legislation that would eventually pass into law as the Kefauver-Harris Drug Control Act.

In signing the Kefauver-Harris Drug Control Act, President John F. Kennedy stated, "As I say, we want to pay particular appreciation to Senator Kefauver for the long hearings which he held which permitted us to have very effective legislation on hand when this matter became of such strong public interest.

[21] There was some speculation that Nancy Kefauver might stand for election to her late husband's Senate seat in 1964, but she quashed such notions early on.