Mervyn Dymally
Mervyn Malcolm Dymally was an American politician from California. A Democrat, he served in the California State Assembly and the California State Senate, as the 41st lieutenant governor of California, and in the U.S. House of Representatives. Dymally returned to politics a decade later to again serve in the California State Assembly.
Dymally was the second African-American to hold statewide office in California, following Wilson Riles, who served as California Superintendent of Public Instruction starting in 1971.
Early life and education
Born in Cedros, Trinidad and Tobago, Dymally first received his secondary education at Naparima College before transferring to Saint Benedict's College, both in San Fernando. He is of Dougla descent.He moved to the United States to study journalism at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri. After a semester there, he moved to the greater Los Angeles area to attend Chapman University, and completed a Bachelor of Arts in education at California State University, Los Angeles in 1954. Dymally became a member of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity in 1949. Dymally became a U.S. citizen in 1957.
In 1969, while serving in the California State Legislature, he earned a master's degree in government from California State University, Sacramento. Dymally earned his doctorate in human behavior from United States International University in San Diego.
Career
Dymally was first elected to the California State Assembly, the lower house of the state Legislature, in 1962, from District 53; he was re-elected in 1964.He was elected to the California State Senate, the Legislature's upper house, in 1966; initially for a two-year term. The U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that state legislatures must reapportion their upper houses on the basis of population; in the process in California, the even-numbered districts elected their senators for full four-year terms in 1966. As Dymally was in District 29, he had to run again in 1968; he won and was re-elected in 1972.
Lt. Governor
In 1974, Dymally was elected lieutenant governor over Republican incumbent John L. Harmer, who had just been appointed to fill a vacancy in the office a month earlier and until then had been Dymally's colleague in the state Senate.Dymally was the first Trinidadian to serve California as a state senator and as lieutenant governor.
He and George L. Brown of Colorado became the first two African Americans elected to the office of lieutenant governor since Oscar Dunn did so in Louisiana during Reconstruction.
In the tightly contested race for lieutenant governor in 1978, Dymally's bid for re-election was derailed when Michael Franchetti, an aide to State Senator George Deukmejian, floated a false rumor that Dymally was about to be indicted. The story, coming days before the election, harmed the Dymally campaign, and Dymally lost to Republican Mike Curb.
Franchetti later said that the source of the rumor was a Los Angeles Times reporter, who called the Justice Department trying to confirm its authenticity. Franchetti could not substantiate the rumor but included it in a report. The report was passed to Curb's office with the rumor part erased, after which it moved to broadcaster Bill Stout, who announced it as fact on Los Angeles radio station KNX and its CBS affiliates. Then-Attorney General Evelle J. Younger filed a letter of reprimand in Franchetti's personnel records, accusing him of a breach of responsibility.
Dymally was an old friend of Peoples Temple founder Jim Jones. When Jones decided to move his congregation to Jonestown, Guyana, Dymally "wrote the Guyanese prime minister to reassure him that Jones was an upstanding citizen." The Jonestown compound would be the site of the mass suicide of over 900 people on November 18, 1978.
Congress
In 1980, two years after losing the lieutenant governorship, Dymally ran for Congress in District 31, against former U.S. representative Mark W. Hannaford and 18-year incumbent Charles H. Wilson, who had been reprimanded by his U.S. House colleagues for financial misconduct in the Koreagate scandal. Dymally won the primary with 49% of the vote, to 24% for Hannaford and just 15% for Wilson; he went on to defeat Republican Don Grimshaw in the general election, 64%-36%. He was one of the first persons of Dougla origin to serve in Congress.In 1983 Dymally joined with seven other U.S. representatives to sponsor a resolution to impeach Ronald Reagan over his sudden and unexpected invasion of Grenada. He retired in 1992, after six terms in Congress.
In the 1990s, Dymally served as a paid lobbyist for the country of Mauritania, attempting to present the country as engaged in abolishing every remnant of slavery.