Bronson M. Cutting

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This article is about the American politician Bronson Cutting. See also John Cutting or Francis Cutting

Bronson Murray Cutting (June 23, 1888May 6, 1935) was a United States Senator from New Mexico, publisher, and military attaché.

Bronson Cutting was born in Great River, Long Island, New York, on June 23, 1888 at his family's country seat of Westbrook. He attended the common schools and Groton School and graduated from Harvard University in 1910. Shortly after graduation, he became an invalid and moved to Santa Fe at the advice of his doctors to restore his health. He became a newspaper publisher in 1912 and published the Santa Fe New Mexican and El Nuevo Mexicano. From 1912 to 1918 he served as president of the New Mexican Printing Company, and of the Santa Fe New Mexican Publishing Corporation from 1920 until his death.

During World War I, Cutting was commissioned a captain and served as an assistant Military Attaché of the American Embassy in London, England 1917-1918. He was regent of the New Mexico Military Institute in 1920 and served as chairman of the board of commissioners of the New Mexican State Penitentiary in 1925.

On December 29, 1927, he was appointed as a Republican to the United States Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Andrieus A. Jones and served from December 29, 1927, until December 6, 1928, when a duly elected successor (Octaviano Ambrosio Larrazolo) qualified. He was not a candidate for election to this vacancy. However, his successor did not seek re-election, and Cutting was elected as a Republican on November 6, 1928, to the United States Senate, and won reelection in 1934, winning an extremely close race (Cutting had 76,226 votes to Democrat Dennis Chavez's 74,944) in a failed year for Republicans. He was a co-sponsor of the Hare-Hawes-Cutting Independence Act which aimed to grant the Philippine Islands a 10-year commonwealth status with virtually full autonomy, to be followed by the recognition of Filipino independence. The bill was enacted over President Hoover's veto. However, the law was rejected by the Philippine legislature, and the Tydings-McDuffie Act (authored by Millard Tydings, a Maryland Democrat), was instead passed by Congress and accepted by the Filipino legislature.

He died in a plane crash on his way from Albuquerque to Washington D.C., near Atlanta, Missouri, on May 6, 1935. Dennis Chavez, who had been Cutting's Democratic opponent in 1934, was appointed by the governor to fill Cutting's seat in the Senate.

Cutting is perhaps best known as a prominent Anglo who sought to bring Hispanic voters into the political mainstream prior to the New Deal, and for maintaining correspondence with the controversial poet Ezra Pound in the 1930s.

Cutting is interred in Green-Wood Cemetery in the borough of Brooklyn.

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Preceded by
Andrieus A. Jones
United States Senator (Class 1) from New Mexico
1927–1928
Served alongside: Sam G. Bratton
Succeeded by
Octaviano Ambrosio Larrazolo
Preceded by
Octaviano Ambrosio Larrazolo
United States Senator (Class 1) from New Mexico
1930–1935
Served alongside: Sam G. Bratton, Carl Hatch
Succeeded by
Dennis Chavez