Attorney Earl Adams, Architect of GOP Campaigns, Dies

Earl C. Adams, a founding partner of one of Los Angeles’s better known law firms and an architect of the political campaigns of Richard M. Nixon, Thomas Kuchel, William Knowland and George Murphy, died Monday in Pasadena. He was 83.

Adams, who practiced law in Los Angeles for more than 60 years, was a member of the group of Southern California businessmen who first encouraged Nixon, then a recently discharged World War II Navy officer, to run for Congress.

He remained close to the future President and after Nixon’s loss to John F. Kennedy in the 1960 Presidential campaign, Nixon became one of 100 attorneys at the law firm of Adams, Duque & Hazeltine.

A graduate of Stanford University, Adams interrupted his studies at Harvard Law School to fight in Europe during World War I, completing his law degree at Stanford in 1920.

He worked for the State Corporation Department before entering private practice in 1926. In 1935 he and Henry Duque and Irving Walker formed their own firm and 11 years later Duque and Adams joined with Herbert Hazeltine.

In 1967 then-Gov. Ronald Reagan named Adams as chairman of a committee to rewrite the California Corporate Securities Law. Their recommendations became the California Corporate Securities Act of 1968.

Earlier, Adams had served as campaign chairman and adviser to the senatorial campaigns of Kuchel, Knowland and Murphy.

A well-known collector of western art, Adams is survived by his wife, Ilse, a son, Robert, daughter Nancy Holliday and three grandchildren.