Senator Pat McCarran has largely faded from public memory, with the exception of the recent hooraw over the renaming of the Las Vegas Airport from McCarran International Airport to Harry Reid International Airport, ostensibly because McCarran was an antisemite but more likely because McCarran was a fierce anti-Communist on a par with Francisco Franco and Chiang Kai-shek, both of whom he admired for their anti-Communism. Still, it can be argued that he did more for Nevada than the recently deceased former Senate Minority Leader.
He was born in Reno in August 1876 to Irish immigrant parents and attended the University of Nevada for a couple of years before being forced to drop out and take care of the family sheep ranch after his father was injured. He studied law, served in the state House of Representatives in 1903, was admitted to the Nevada State Bar in 1905, and served as the Nye County district attorney from 1907-1909. He never received a bachelor's degree, but the University of Nevada awarded him an honorary master's degree in 1915, followed by an honorary LL.D in 1945. He went on to serve as Nevada's Chief Justice from 1917-18, chairman of the state Board of Parole from 1913-18, and chairman of the state board of Bar Examiners from 1919-1932.
He ran unsuccessfully for the Senate as a Democrat in 1916 and 1926, but the third time was the charm: he defeated Republican Tasker Oddie in 1932. Unusually for a Democrat in that era, he strongly objected to Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. Nonetheless, he did much for Nevada in his time in the Senate. He is credited with supporting the Hoover Dam project, which contributed greatly to the growth of Las Vegas; his backing of an independent Air Force (he was advocating for this practically as soon as he arrived in the Senate) was undoubtedly a factor in the reopening of Nellis AFB, and his concentration on national security likewise contributed to the creation of the Nevada Test Site, which produced unexpected dividends for Las Vegas tourism.
McCarran also sponsored the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938, the Silver Purchase Acts of 1939 & 1945, the Federal Airports Act of 1946, and the McCarran-Ferguson Act of 1945 that reserved insurance company regulation to the states. His anticommunist attitude led to the Internal Security Act of 1950 (a/k/a the McCarran Act), which required the Communist Party, USA and its affiliates to register with the Attorney General, as well as the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952, which imposed rigid restrictions on existing immigration quotas and stiffened existing laws pertaining to admission, exclusion, & deportation of "dangerous" aliens as defined by the 1950 Internal Security Act.
McCarran died in office in 1954, suffering a heart attack while campaigning in Hawthorne for onetime opponent and fellow democrat Vail Pittman.
https://lasvegassun.com/news/1954/sep/29/mccarran-dies/