Don A. Allen Sr.
Democratic
| Date | Party | Office | Votes | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11-08-1938 | Democratic | AD-63 | 17587 | Win |
| 11-05-1940 | Democratic | AD-63 | 27438 | Win |
| 11-03-1942 | Democratic | AD-63 | 20591 | Win |
| 11-07-1944 | Democratic | AD-63 | 32288 | Win |
| 11-05-1946 | Democratic | AD-63 | 25105 | Win |
| 06-05-1956 | Democratic | AD-63 | 11614 | Win |
| 11-06-1956 | Democratic | AD-63 | 31508 | Win |
| 11-04-1958 | Democratic | AD-63 | 34562 | Win |
| 11-08-1960 | Democratic | AD-63 | 39092 | Win |
| 11-06-1962 | Democratic | AD-63 | 44038 | Win |
| 11-03-1964 | Democratic | AD-63 | 59235 | Win |
Candidate Biography:
Born: May 13, 1907 in Atlantic, Iowa
Married: Margaret Sachs
Children: Don A. Jr.
Family: Second-cousin of Henry Justin Allen (Governor of Kansas; 1919-1923)
Military Service: USMC (Haitian Campaign, 1927 Sandino Rebellion in Nicaragua)
Died: August 1983 in Sacramento, CA
1920s: Investigator, Office of Los Angeles County District Attorney Tom Woolwine
1947: Resigned from the State Assembly on June 20.
1947-1956: Member, Los Angeles City Council
1956: Declined to serve the Assembly term to which he had been elected.
1968: Founder, Association of California Legislators
- DECLINED TO ASSUME OFFICE: Following his reelection to the State Assembly in the June 1956 Special Election, Allen declined to assume the office (and remained a member of the Los Angeles City Council) until after the November election. The legislature did not meet for the rest of 1958, meaning that there were eight months between when Allen was elected and when he assumed office at the start of the following session.
- LEGISLATIVE HISTORIAN: Allen was the author of "The Source Book on the California Legislature", published in 1965, which was one of the most complete resources on the history of the California Legislature. In 1966, his work was recognized when the Senate and Assembly awarded him the title "California Legislative Historian for Life".
- Allen (as Chair of the Assembly Elections and Reapportionment Committee) and Stephen P. Teale (Chair of the Senate Reapportionment Committee) were the two legislators responsible for the 1966 Senate reapportionment following the Reynolds v. Sims court decision.
- QUOTABLE: In a 1980 interview with James H. Rowland for the Regional Oral History Project, Allen made a comment about the Warren Commission that was so humorous that it had to be included in this otherwise short biography; "Later I wrote a letter I don't know whether I have it around here any more or whatever I did to President Lyndon B. Johnson and told him that I anticipated that Earl Warren was going to be head of the committee investigating the Kennedy assassination, I told him that Earl Warren couldn't find a giraffe in a flock of sheep, and he'd screw any kind of a report like that up so bad that it'd be a controversy from now on out. But Johnson didn't pay any attention to it." [Source]
- Another quote from the same interview; "If Pat Brown had been a woman, he would have been pregnant every 15 minutes."
- QUOTABLE: In the book "A Disorderly House", Allen describes Assemblyman Charles Edward Chapel (with whom he had served in Marines) on the night of the Jess Unruh legislative lock-in; "I haven't seen Charlie look so damned happy since he was hunting rebels in Nicaragua thirty years ago."
Source: California Blue Book (1946), (1961)
Source: California Legislative Sourcebook (1965)
Source: Social Security Death Index (website)
Source: A Disorderly House: The Brown-Unruh Years in Sacramento by James R. Mills (Heyday Books; 1987)