Elected as the youngest member of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's first "New Deal" Congress, his political career stalled in 1938 when he gave up his seat in the United States House of Representatives at Roosevelt's urging[citation needed] to run for a U.S. Senate seat held by another Democrat, Guy Gillette, but primary voters rallied behind Gillette.

By age 25, a newspaper reported that he had already "gained prominence as a farm bureau speaker and writer in the past few years.

[7] After the end of his active political career, Wearin raised purebred Angus cattle on the 1,000-acre (4.0 km2) family estate, "Nishna Vale," near Hastings.

[8] As a writer of westerns, his books include Before the Colors Fade, (1971), Along Our Country Road, (1985), I Remember Yesteryear (1974), Heinhold's First and Last Chance Saloon: Jack London's Rendezvous (1974) and Grass Grown Trails (1981).

[2] Outside of that genre, he wrote many other books, including Century on an Iowa Farm (1959), I Remember Hastings (1965), Political Americana (1967), Clarence Arthur Ellsworth,: Artist of the Old West, 1885-1964, (1967) Country Roads to Washington (1976), and Rhymes of a Plain Countryman (1980).