American politician, one of California’s most durable liberal Democrats. With his poker-face and brisk style, he was still running for office and winning in his 70s. Colleagues said that he had a computer for a mind, with total memory of everyone’s past and present voting record.
Born into a prosperous family, Cranston was educated at Stanford University. He became a journalist and foreign correspondent. He served in the Army during WW II and after the war, was the author of “Killing of the Peace,” 1945. Cranston edited the first unexpurgated English translation of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” published in the United States and was later proud of having been sued for copyright violations by Adolf Hitler.
Post-war, he worked at his dad’s Palo Alto real estate firm and became president of United World Federalists, an organization advocating world government.
He first held public office as Comptroller of the State of California in 1958. In his long career, he was re-elected to the U.S. Senate November 1986.
Cranston made two marriage, and there were two sons with the first marriage. One of his sons was killed in an accident 5/16/1980. Cranston was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1990. Recovering, he continued to work until 1993, when he retired under the cloud of the savings and loan industry scandal. After a formal reprimand and sanction against him and four other senators, Cranston, who had received close to $1.2 million in political funds from Keating, said that he had been “politically stupid but ethically correct” in his actions.
He died on the last day of the millennium, December 31, 2000, age 86, at his home in Los Altos.
Link to Wikipedia biography