Ralph Hunter Daughton (23 September 1885–22 December 1958), member of the House of Representatives, was born in Washington, D.C., and was the son of John B. Daughton and Martha Hunter Daughton. He received Bachelor of Laws and Master of Laws degrees from the National University Law School (which later merged with the George Washington University) in 1905 and 1906, respectively. While living in Berwyn, Prince George's County, Maryland, Daughton was admitted to the Washington bar and established a law practice. On 20 February 1912 he married Susan Margaret Taggart, daughter of a prominent Washington attorney. They had no children.
After several years in private practice Daughton became an agent with the United States Department of Justice as part of the organization that later became the Federal Bureau of Investigation. By 1915 he had been transferred to Norfolk, where, as special agent in charge, he established a regional office serving Virginia, North Carolina, West Virginia, and the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Facing a new assignment along the Mexican border, Daughton had resigned by 1920 and opened his own legal practice in the city. As an attorney for the New York Yankees he helped return minor league baseball to Norfolk when the franchise moved one of its farm teams to the city. He served as president of the Class B Piedmont League from April 1938 until resigning in November 1945.
General Assembly
In August 1933 Daughton won a special election to fill one of two vacancies in the House of Delegates representing the city of Norfolk. At the extra session that met that month, he was assigned to the Committees on Counties, Cities, and Towns; on Currency and Commerce; on Federal Relations and Resolutions; and on Roads and Internal Navigation. Elected on 7 November of that year to the first of two consecutive two-year terms in the House, he sat on the Committees on Currency and Commerce, on Federal Relations and Resolutions (which he chaired in 1936), on Insurance and Banking, and on Roads and Internal Navigation. In November 1939 Daughton was elected to a four-year term representing Norfolk in the Senate of Virginia, where he served on the Committees on Enrolled Bills (which he chaired in the 1942 extra session and in 1944), on Finance, on Insurance and Banking, and to Examine Bonds of Public Officers. He won reelection to a second term in 1943.
During the 1934 House session Daughton sponsored legislation that legalized professional boxing and wrestling, which he believed would produce revenue through admissions taxes and licensing fees. The bill also created the State Wrestling and Boxing Commission to regulate these sports. Daughton sat on the three-member commission from its inception until November 1944, serving as chairman twice (1934–1935 and 1941–1944). While serving in the General Assembly he cosponsored a bill to legalize pari-mutuel betting on horse races, advocated legalizing attendance at movies and baseball games on Sundays, and tried to expand the legal rights of beer and wine retailers. Working to increase salaries of state employees, especially those in lower-income brackets, Daughton proposed, and served on, a Senate subcommittee to study government wages. In 1942 he submitted a state constitutional amendment, later approved by the voters, that allowed money from the state's Literary Fund to be set aside for a retirement fund for public school teachers.
House of Representatives
Late in April 1944 Winder Russell Harris unexpectedly announced that he would not seek reelection to the United States House of Representatives. Scrambling to find a suitable candidate for the Second District seat representing the cities of Norfolk, South Norfolk, Portsmouth, and Suffolk, as well as Isle of Wight, Nansemond, Norfolk, Princess Anne, and Southampton Counties, the Democratic political organization led by Harry Flood Byrd (1887–1966) selected Daughton. Despite Byrd-machine support, in the August Democratic primary about 19,000 voters gave Daughton only a 35 percent plurality over Vivian Llewellyn Page, a former state senator, and Porter Hardy Jr., a large-scale farmer and political novice. Daughton scored his narrow victory with a substantial margin in Princess Anne County, while local newspapers viewed Hardy's strong showing as a rebuke to the Byrd organization.
That November, Daughton faced a Republican and an Independent for both Harris's unexpired term (in September he had decided to resign from Congress effective immediately) and the subsequent full term. Democratic Party strength enabled Daughton to win the special election with 19,634 votes of 36,049 cast and to win the concurrent regular election with 21,268 of 36,879 cast. Daughton resigned from the Senate of Virginia on 8 November and took his seat in the Seventy-eighth Congress six days later. He was assigned to the Committees on Immigration and Naturalization and on Merchant Marine and Fisheries.
When the Seventy-ninth Congress convened in January 1945, Daughton remained on those two committees and also gained seats on the Committees on Insular Affairs and on War Claims and on a subcommittee examining postwar immigration and naturalization. He was appointed to the board of visitors of the United States Coast Guard Academy. On 26 November 1945 Daughton presented a bill to mint ten-cent coins pressed with the likeness of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. That same day he submitted a bill to establish naval reserve training fleets for the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. In the summer of 1945 Daughton called for the military to consume its vast supply of food for six months, especially meat and poultry, in order to prevent spoilage, alleviate civilian food shortages, and curb the black market. Early the following year he opposed the president's plan to spend more than $1.6 million to renovate the White House.
In August 1946 Daughton again faced Hardy in the Democratic primary. This time, however, Byrd-organization allies supported both men, and Byrd himself did not openly back either candidate. Farming, labor, and African American voting blocs, as well as Princess Anne party leaders, who had provided Daughton's margin of victory two years earlier, shifted their allegiances away from Daughton and the Byrd machine and toward Hardy. On election day Hardy received more than twice as many votes as Daughton out of more than 31,500 ballots cast. Daughton returned to his private law practice in Norfolk. In 1950 he mounted an unsuccessful campaign for a seat on the Norfolk city council. Ralph Hunter Daughton died on 22 December 1958 at his Norfolk home and was buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery, in Washington, D.C.
Sources Consulted:
Birth date in World War I Selective Service System Draft Registration Cards (1917–1918), Record Group 163, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.; biographies in Robert C. Glass and Carter Glass Jr., Virginia Democracy (1937), 2:711–712 (with erroneous marriage year of 1911), and Rogers Dey Whichard, The History of Lower Tidewater Virginia (1959), 3:29; marriage notice in Washington Post, 21 Feb. 1912; Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, 29 (portrait), 30 Apr., 2, 3 Aug., 8 Nov. 1944, 7, 8 Aug. 1946; Washington Post, 1 Aug. 1946; Norfolk Ledger-Dispatch, 2 June 1950; Secretary of the Commonwealth, Election Records, nos. 235, 236, 238, 245, and Abstracts of Votes, 1944, Accession 26040, Record Group 13, Library of Virginia; Journal of the House of Representatives, 78th Cong., 2d sess., 595, 675, 79th Cong., 1st sess., 7, 70, 71, 75, 723, 2d sess., 509; obituaries in Norfolk Ledger-Dispatch and Portsmouth Star and Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, both 23 Dec. 1958 (portraits), and Washington Post, 25 Dec. 1958; editorial tributes in Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, 24 Dec. 1958, and Norfolk Ledger-Dispatch and Portsmouth Star, 26 Dec. 1958.
Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by John G. Deal.
How to cite this page:
John G. Deal,"Ralph Hunter Daughton (1885–1958)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2016 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Daughton_Ralph_Hunter, accessed [today's date]).
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