Albert W. Hawkes

Albert Wahl Hawkes (November 20, 1878 – May 9, 1971) was an American businessman and Republican Party politician who represented New Jersey in the United States Senate from 1943 to 1949. During and after his term in office, he was a leading figure in the conservative wing of the New Jersey Republican Party. He dropped out of his race for re-election after facing a primary challenge from the moderate wing, led by Governor Alfred E. Driscoll, with whom he had a running dispute.

Early life and education Albert Wahl Hawkes was born in Chicago on November 20, 1878.

Hawkes left school at the age of 15 to work as an office boy for a chemical company and studied law at night classes at Chicago College of Law. He graduated at the age of 21 in 1900, gaining admission to the bar the same year.

Hawkes studied chemistry at Lewis Institute (now the Illinois Institute of Technology) for two years and engaged in the chemical business.

Business career During the First World War, Hawkes served as director of the Chemical Alliance in Washington, D.C. (1917–1918).

In 1926, Hawkes was serving as executive vice president of General Chemical Company when he was elected president of Congoleum-Nairn, Inc. in Kearny, New Jersey. Hawkes supported the wartime measures taken by the Roosevelt administration but was a consistent advocate for a return to "free enterprise" policies once the war ended. In particular, critics pointed to a recent fundraising dinner speech in which Hawkes said, "I have never hated anyone in my life longer than overnight. There is one exceptionand he [Franklin D. Roosevelt] lies buried in Hyde Park" as a fatal political blunder.

Hawkes responded sharply to the calls for his withdrawal,"This choice has been made by whipping recalcitrant supporters into line and by utilizing other pressures of power politicsin short, by substituting one-man control for the right of the people to choose their own candidate. We are being treated to the emergence of a Republican oligarchy in New Jersey in which the titular head of the party becomes the state, not the representative of the people in the state." Jane White remarried to Alistair Cooke, the host of Masterpiece Theatre. Morgan Hawkes Paddelford lived in Pasadena, California.

Hawkes was a trustee of the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, where the Hawkes Library was named after him.

Hawkes died on May 9, 1971, in Palm Desert, California. He was interred in Mount Hebron Cemetery, in Montclair, New Jersey.