Background
He was born on October 30, 1916 in Lapeer, Michigan, United States, one of three children of farmers Fred Potter and Sarah Elizabeth Converse.
He was born on October 30, 1916 in Lapeer, Michigan, United States, one of three children of farmers Fred Potter and Sarah Elizabeth Converse.
Potter attended public schools in Lapeer, where he was active in football and track. He entered Michigan State Normal College (now Eastern Michigan University) at Ypsilanti in 1934, where he studied social science and supported himself by working in a sawmill, a cannery, and an automobile plant. He received his B. A. degree in 1938.
During senior year at College he also worked part-time as a social worker in Ypsilanti. Potter was administrator of the Cheboygan County Bureau of Social Aid from 1938 to 1942.
Potter enlisted in the United States Army in May 1942, completed the officers training course, and was commissioned a second lieutenant the following December. He served with the Twenty-eighth Infantry Division in France, Luxembourg, and Germany, and was wounded three times. A land mine in Colmar, France, damaged both of Potter's legs during the Battle of the Bulge in 1945; and one was amputated at the knee and the other at the hip. He recuperated at the Walter Reed Hospital and received an honorable discharge as a major in July 1946.
Potter began work in 1946 as a vocational rehabilitation adviser for the United States Department of Labor Retraining and Reemployment Administration in Washington, District of Columbia. He resigned that position in June 1947 to return to Michigan and to campaign as the Republican candidate for the House of Representatives seat of the late Frederick V. Bradley in the Eleventh District. He won the August 26, 1947, special election by a two-to-one vote, and was reelected in 1948 and 1950.
Potter became a member of the Education and Labor Committee and the House Committee on Un-American Activities. In the latter post he was instrumental in reopening a congressional investigation of Communist influence in the Hollywood film industry. Vandenberg's death in 1952 resulted in a four-way Republican primary contest for his vacated Senate seat. Potter won the nomination and faced the Democratic candidate, Blair Moody, in the general election. Potter accused Moody of being a "captive of the little band of overlords who rule the CIO" (Congress of Industrial Organizations) and a minion of "Moscow-trained" CIO president Walter Reuther. Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin went to Michigan to campaign for Potter, who won the election by a wide majority.
Potter entered the United States Senate along with the first Republican majority in two decades. He was also appointed a member of the Senate Subcommittee on Permanent Investigations, which held hearings during spring 1954 on charges brought by the United States Army against Senator McCarthy. During the course of the hearings Potter became convinced that Senator McCarthy's aide, Roy Cohn, had attempted to exercise improper influence on army officials. Potter signed the majority committee report, which criticized McCarthy and his aides but also issued his own independent report, which also criticized army officials. In the later Senate vote to censure McCarthy, Potter voted in favor of censure. Because Potter had an indisputably anti-Communist record his opposition to McCarthy marked the end of the latter's influence.
Because Potter had been a strong supporter of the Eisenhower administration while in the Senate, the president offered him the post of under secretary of commerce after his electoral defeat. Potter declined the offer and retired to a farm in suburban Queenstown, Maryland. He later became active in real estate ventures and lobbying. Potter registered as a lobbyist for the Committee of American Tanker Owners, Inc. In 1965 he founded the real estate and securities brokerage firm Charles E. Potter Company. That same year he published Days of Shame, which discussed his role in the Army-McCarthy Hearings.
During his post-Senate years Potter also acted as a fund-raiser for the Republican party. In 1972, during President Richard M. Nixon's administration, he joined the Finance Committee of the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP), which later attained notoriety during the unfolding of the Watergate scandal. Although John Mitchell, Maurice Stans, and many CREEP members were indicted, tried, and received prison terms, Potter was not touched by the scandal. In possible deference to his Senate experience and physical condition, Potter was not even called to testify at any of the numerous congressional hearings. Before the full scandal came to light, Potter accepted an appointment as one of three trustees in charge of President Nixon's leftover campaign funds, the Campaign Liquidation Trust, which totaled approximately $3. 5 million. Potter disagreed with fellow trustee Stans over the use of the campaign funds for payment of the rapidly mounting legal bills of indicted Watergate defendants. Potter refused to use the trust funds to pay the legal expenses of anyone who did not hold an official position in the campaign organization, such as White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman, presidential counselor John Ehrlichman, and Nixon himself. Potter was also a director of the National Capitol Life Insurance Company and associated with several other business firms involved in business consulting and sales of securities and real estate, including Swesnick, Blum and Potter Securities Corporation, the International Development and Engineering Company, and Potter and Kornmeier International.
Potter died in Washington, District of Columbia.
While a member of the House of Representatives, Potter took a conservative stand on domestic issues but a liberal internationalist position on foreign policy. He regularly supported the Eisenhower administration's foreign policy programs, including its proposed development of the St. Lawrence Seaway.
He married Lorraine Esther Eddy on November 25, 1939. The couple had no children. On May 11, 1960, Potter married his second wife, Mary Elizabeth Bryant Wismer, a widow with two children.