A previous article of mine discussed the Truman-era reforms to IRS.
One Mr. Andy Brunelle reached out. His grandfather Calvin Wright was nearly the last Senate-confirmed appointee at IRS, being confirmed as the director of their Idaho office in 1951. Following the 1952 reorganization, he had to take a civil service exam to keep his job. After coming second only to a retired customs bureau official, he was able to keep his position at the agency, where he then led a long and illustrious career.
He apparently approved of the 1952 reorganization and travelled throughout the Pacific Northwest to help other field offices successfully navigate it. His work on IRS reorganization continued throughout the 1950s and 1960s, where his speeches and training helped IRS transition to the early computer age.
An episode from 1969 illustrates how long politicization lasted at IRS – Wright’s superiors at Treasury directed him to open his office on a weekend so that a politician could catch up on several years of unpaid income taxes.

Calvin Wright was a sort that you rarely see today: the political civil servant. He spent many years as the auditor of the state of Idaho, where (for the first time in Idaho’s history) he installed modern accounting systems to enable meaningful oversight of their bureaucracy. He unsuccessfully ran for governor; following this electoral defeat, Truman appointed him as director of IRS’s Idaho office.
My prior post discussed the patronage at IRS and said that the Senate intent was “to bolster support [for the income tax] by appointing men of regional renown.” With his extensive experience as an auditor and his statewide reputation, Wright was just the sort of man the Senate wanted (or at least claimed to want).
Unfortunately, there were few others of this caliber, and even fewer who might be nominated via the Senate patronage system. On the other hand, there were plenty of officials who were covetous of expensive fur coats. And so IRS was reorganized, and political appointments there were consigned to history.
He was a man from an era that has doubtless long since passed. The US was better for his service.
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