Joseph Christopher O'Mahoney (November 5, 1884December 1, 1962) was an American journalist, lawyer, and politician. A Democrat, he served four complete terms as a U.S. senator from Wyoming on two occasions, first from 1933 to 1953 and then again from 1954 to 1961.
Early life and career
One of eleven children, Joseph O'Mahoney was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, to Dennis and Elizabeth (née Sheehan) O'Mahoney. His parents were both Irish immigrants; his father, who came to the United States in 1861, worked as a furrier. He received his early education at the Cambridge Latin School. He attended Columbia University in New York City from 1905 until 1907, when he began a career in journalism. He was a reporter on the Cambridge Democrat before moving west to Boulder, Colorado, where he worked for the Herald (1908–1916). While working in Washington, he studied at Georgetown University Law School and received his Bachelor of Laws degree in 1920. O'Mahoney was appointed by Farley to be the First Assistant Postmaster General, serving from March to December 1933. He was re-elected to a second term over Milward L. Simpson in 1940, and defeated Harry B. Henderson for a third term in 1946. In 1952, as Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower won the presidential election in a landslide, O'Mahoney was narrowly defeated for re-election by Governor Frank A. Barrett by a margin of 52% to 48%. He subsequently returned to the private practice of law in Wyoming.
Upon his return to the Senate, O'Mahoney became a strong opponent of the Dixon-Yates contract, which provided for a private company to build a plant to provide power to the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to replace the power that the TVA sold to the Atomic Energy Commission.