Jesse William Dillon (15 July 1904–2 March 1972), judge of the State Corporation Commission, was born in Franklin County and was the son of Charles Lewis Dillon, a physician, and Janie Elizabeth Goggin Dillon. He attended Richmond College at the University of Richmond from 1923 to 1926, at which time he transferred to the university's T. C. Williams School of Law. Dillon graduated with an LL.B. in June 1932. On 30 May 1931, in Chesterfield County, he married Margaret Ernestine Knight. They had two daughters and one son.
While attending law school part-time Dillon worked at the Virginia Department of Taxation, and in 1933 he became the Richmond district counsel for Home Owners' Loan Corporation. The next year he returned to the state taxation department as superintendent of the Inheritance and Gift Tax Division. A rising leader in the Democratic Party and supporter of the political machine directed by Harry Flood Byrd (1887–1966), Dillon became secretary of the commonwealth and ex officio secretary to Governor Colgate Whitehead Darden Jr. on 1 September 1945. An immediate priority for Dillon was supervision of the Virginia War Voters' Commission, which oversaw soldiers' absentee voting during the autumn election. He was reappointed secretary in July 1946 and confirmed by the General Assembly in January 1947.
The following month, however, Governor William Munford Tuck named Dillon state treasurer. He was selected again in 1950 and 1954 by subsequent administrations and routinely confirmed by the legislature. Dillon also served during this period as secretary of the Democratic State Central Committee but resigned that post after his appointment as State Compensation Board chair in June 1955. While still treasurer he assumed his duties on the influential three-member board, which established the salaries of constitutional officers throughout Virginia and served as a key mechanism in the Byrd organization's control of state politics.
Dillon's ascent through the ranks of the Democratic Party, the Byrd machine, and state government culminated in his appointment, on 16 July 1957, as a judge of the State Corporation Commission, the powerful regulatory agency charged with granting corporate charters and establishing rates for such businesses as public utilities, telephone service, insurance companies, and railroads. Dillon filled the unexpired term of William Marshall King, and during the subsequent legislative session the following January the General Assembly confirmed his nomination and also elected him unanimously to a full six-year term. Without dissent the assembly elected him to another term in January 1964.
The three-member commission had proven a key element of the Byrd organization's control of the state. Protected from criticism by the organization's political dominance, the SCC promoted the limited government, anti-labor, and pro-business ideologies of the machine. The commission even sought to pressure the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1959 when it ordered the group to open its books for inspection, a practice the judges deemed appropriate when the NAACP solicited funds from the public. The commissioners rotated serving as chair, and each wrote case opinions. During his nearly fifteen-year tenure Dillon composed only seventeen SCC decisions, most concerning business disputes, insurance rates, and transportation issues.
As the Byrd organization's power declined late in the 1960s and the economic and social landscape changed, the commission came under increased scrutiny for not protecting the interests of consumers and for making arbitrary decisions. The frequency of appeals to the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals of telephone, electricity, and automobile insurance rate increases, and subsequent reversals of SCC decisions, also expanded dramatically late in the decade. In March 1969 Dillon led the judges as they defended their neutrality and argued against proposed revisions to the state constitution relating to consumer protection guarantees.
Criticism of the SCC followed Dillon as he sought reelection in 1970. In spite of an effort within the Democratic caucus to defeat Dillon's reappointment, only two of one hundred caucus members voted against his renomination. The following day he easily won another term with a 108–15 vote in the General Assembly. Declining health forced Dillon to resign from the State Corporation Commission effective 28 January 1972. By that time the two other long-serving commissioners had announced their pending retirements, and within a year one of the last vestiges of Byrd machine dominance was gone.
A former captain of the football team at the University of Richmond and a member of its athletic council, Dillon served on the school's board of trustees for almost two decades beginning in 1954 and became vice rector in February 1971. Jesse William Dillon died in a Richmond hospital on 2 March 1972 and was buried in Hollywood Cemetery.
Sources Consulted:
Biographies in Commonwealth 12 (Oct. 1945): 17, and 24 (Dec. 1957): 70; Marriage Register, 1931, Chesterfield Co., Bureau of Vital Statistics, Record Group 36, Library of Virginia; correspondence in Harry Flood Byrd (1887–1966) Papers, Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va., and in several collections, Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, Va.; Dillon speech, 13 Jan. 1957, at Richmond Memorial Hospital dedication, sound recording, WRVA Radio Collection, Accession 38210, Library of Virginia; Richmond Times-Dispatch, 19 Aug. 1945, 2 Feb. 1947, 2 July 1950, 29 June 1955, 3 July 1957, 29, 30 Jan. 1970; Washington Post, 19 Aug. 1945, 14 Mar. 1969, 14 Oct. 1970; Richmond News Leader, 29 June 1955, 2, 4, 16 July 1957, 24 Jan. 1972; State Corporation Commission Annual Reports, 1957–1972; Laurence J. O'Toole Jr. and Robert S. Montjoy, Regulatory Decision Making: The Virginia State Corporation Commission (1984); obituaries and editorial tributes in Richmond News Leader, 2, 7 Mar. 1972, Richmond Times-Dispatch, 3, 7 Mar. 1972, and Washington Post, 3 Mar. 1972; memorials in Journal of the Senate of Virginia (1972 sess.), 558–559, and Virginia State Bar Association Proceedings (1972), 302–304 (with portrait).
Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by John G. Deal.
How to cite this page:
John G. Deal,"Jesse William Dillon (1904–1972)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2015 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Dillon_Jesse_William, accessed [today's date]).
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