In 1950, national politics caught the eye of most Maderans, especially the race between Congressman Richard Nixon and Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas for the U.S. Senate seat left vacant by Sheridan Downey. While the record shows that Douglas campaigned in Madera once, Nixon upstaged her by doing it twice.
On April 11, 1950, Nixon came to Madera to campaign from the back of a station wagon. He parked the vehicle on Yosemite Avenue, between C and D streets, and gave a rip-roaring stump speech in which he assailed both President Harry Truman’s policies and his opponent’s patriotism.
Nixon’s tactics that year put him in the United States Senate, and in 1952, he found himself running for Vice President on the Republican ticket with Dwight D. Eisenhower. That’s when he made his second campaign trip to Madera, but this one was just a bit more stressful.