Editing Earl Warren (section)

==City and district attorney==
[[File:Rene C. Davidson Courthouse.jpg|thumb|The [[René C. Davidson Courthouse]], the main courthouse of the [[Alameda County Superior Court]], completed in 1934]]

In late 1918, Warren returned to Oakland, where he accepted a position as the legislative assistant to Leon E. Gray, a newly elected member of the [[California State Assembly]]. Shortly after arriving in the state capital of [[Sacramento]], Warren was appointed as the clerk of the Assembly Judiciary Committee.{{Sfn|Cray|1997|pp=35–36}} After a brief stint as a deputy city attorney for Oakland, in 1920 Warren was hired as a deputy district attorney for [[Alameda County, California|Alameda County]].{{Sfn|Cray|1997|pp=37–38}} By the end of 1924, Warren had become the most senior person in the department outside of the district attorney, Ezra Decoto. Though many of his professional colleagues supported [[Calvin Coolidge]], Warren cast his vote for [[Progressive Party (United States, 1924–34)|Progressive Party]] candidate Robert La Follette in the [[1924 United States presidential election|1924 presidential election]]. That same year, Warren made his first foray into electoral politics, serving as the campaign manager for his friend, Republican Assemblyman Frank Anderson.{{Sfn|Cray|1997|pp=41–42}}

[[File:Oakland Tribune 12 January 1925 Front Page.jpg|thumb|left|Warren on the front page of the ''[[Oakland Tribune]]'', January 12, 1925]]

With the support of Governor [[Friend Richardson]] and publisher [[Joseph R. Knowland]], a leader of the conservative faction of [[San Francisco Bay Area]] Republicans, Warren was appointed as the Alameda County district attorney in 1925.{{Sfn|Cray|1997|pp=45–47}} Warren faced a tough re-election campaign in 1926, as local Republican [[political boss|boss]] Michael Joseph Kelly sought to unseat him. Warren rejected political contributions and largely self-funded his campaign, leaving him at a financial disadvantage to Kelly's preferred candidate, Preston Higgins. Nonetheless, Warren won a landslide victory over Higgins, taking over two-thirds of the vote.{{Sfn|Cray|1997|pp=44, 50–53}} When he ran for re-election again in 1930, he faced only token opposition.{{Sfn|Cray|1997|p=57}}

[[File:Earl Warren Primary Ad 1926 Edit.jpg|thumb|right|Political advertisement for Warren's re-election campaign published in the ''[[Alameda Times Star]]'', August 26, 1926]]

Warren gained a statewide reputation as a tough, no-nonsense district attorney who fought corruption in government and ran his office in a nonpartisan manner. Warren strongly supported the autonomy of law enforcement agencies, but also believed that police and prosecutors had to act fairly.{{sfn|White|1982|loc=Ch. 2}} Unlike many other local law enforcement officials in the 1920s, Warren vigorously enforced [[Prohibition in the United States|Prohibition]].{{Sfn|Cray|1997|p=55}} In 1927, he launched a corruption investigation against Sheriff [[Burton Becker]]. After a trial that some in the press described as "the most sweeping exposé of graft in the history of the country," Warren won a conviction against Becker in 1930.{{Sfn|Cray|1997|pp=54–57}} When one of his own undercover agents admitted that he had perjured himself in order to win convictions in bootleg cases, Warren personally took charge of prosecuting the agent.{{Sfn|Cray|1997|p=58}} Warren's efforts gained him national attention; a 1931 nationwide poll of law enforcement officials found that Warren was "the most intelligent and politically independent district attorney in the United States".{{Sfn|Cray|1997|pp=60–61}}

In 1932, he argued his first Supreme Court case, Central Pacific Railway Co. v. Alameda County. That happened to be the last oral argument that Justice [[Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.|Oliver Wendell Holmes]] heard, as he announced his retirement later that afternoon, and stepped down from the court just five days later. Warren would be teased by his friends, who would say "He was 30 years on the State Court, he was 20 years on the Supreme Court, he listened to you just once and he said, "I've had it."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Schwartz |first=Bernard |date=Winter 1997 |title=Chief Justice Warren: Super Chief in Action |url=https://digitalcommons.law.utulsa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2131&context=tlr |journal=Tulsa Law Review |volume=33 |issue=2 |pages=481}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=SCOTUS Scoops: When Warren Met Holmes {{!}} SCHS |url=https://supremecourthistory.org/scotus-scoops/when-warren-met-holmes/ |access-date=October 11, 2024 |website=Supreme Court Historical Society |language=en-US}}</ref>

The [[Great Depression in the United States|Great Depression]] hit the San Francisco Bay area hard in the 1930s, leading to high levels of unemployment and a destabilization of the political order.{{Sfn|Cray|1997|pp=65–66}} Warren took a hard stance against labor in the buildup to the [[1934 West Coast waterfront strike|San Francisco General Strike]]. In ''[[Whitney v. California]]'' (1927) Warren prosecuted a woman under the [[California Criminal Syndicalism Act]] for attending a communist meeting in Oakland.<ref>[http://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/faculty/583 David Skover and Ronald Collins, ''A Curious Concurrence: Justice Brandeis' Vote in'' Whitney v. California], 2005 Supreme Court Review 333 (2005).</ref> In 1936, Warren faced one of the most controversial cases of his career after George W. Alberts, the chief engineer of a freighter, was found dead. Warren believed that Alberts was murdered in a conspiracy orchestrated by radical left-wing union members, and he won the conviction of union officials George Wallace, [[Earl King, Ernest Ramsay, and Frank Conner]]. Many union members argued that the defendants had been framed by Warren's office, and they organized protests of the trial.{{Sfn|Cray|1997|pp=82–89}}

===State party leader===

While continuing to serve as the district attorney of Alameda County, Warren emerged as leader of the state Republican Party. He served as the county chairman for [[Herbert Hoover]]'s [[1932 United States presidential election|1932 campaign]] and, after [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] won that election, he attacked Roosevelt's [[New Deal]] policies.{{Sfn|Cray|1997|pp=69–71}} In 1934, Warren became chairman of the state Republican Party and he took a leading public role in opposing the gubernatorial candidacy of Democrat [[Upton Sinclair]].{{Sfn|Cray|1997|pp=74–76}} Warren earned national notoriety in 1936 for leading a successful campaign to elect a slate of unpledged delegates to the [[1936 Republican National Convention]]; he was motivated largely by his opposition to the influence of Governor [[Frank Merriam]] and publisher [[William Randolph Hearst]]. In the [[1936 United States presidential election|1936 presidential election]], Warren campaigned on behalf of the unsuccessful Republican nominee, [[Alf Landon]].{{Sfn|Cray|1997|pp=79–81}}