Samuel Platt, distinguished lawyer and public servant in early twentieth-century Nevada, was born
in Carson City in 1874 of Jewish Prussian-Polish parents. He attended the local public schools,
winning honors in oratory and art. Platt taught school in Carson City and Gardnerville before
matriculating to Stanford University in 1893 for two years. He passed the Nevada bar exam in 1896
and then proceeded to Columbian (later George Washington University) Law School in Washington,
D.C., where he earned a bachelor of letters degree.

Platt's ascent in Nevada Republican Party politics was swift. He established a law practice in
Carson City in 1897. County voters elected him to the state assembly in 1901 and again in 1905,
where he served as Speaker. President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him U.S. Attorney for the Nevada
District in 1906, and he was reappointed by President William Howard Taft. As a law student, and
during his early political campaigns, Platt was silent on the issue of women's suffrage, leading
his protégé and legal assistant, Felice Cohn, to openly oppose him in his 1914 U.S. senatorial
election campaign against incumbent Senator Francis G. Newlands. Platt lost by forty votes. He
later supported the suffrage amendment, which had become law.

It was widely believed, at the time, that in order to win a senatorial election, one needed to own
a newspaper. Platt and his law partner, George Sanford, became owners of the Reno Evening Gazette
from 1915 to 1922, and Platt owned controlling interest in the Carson City News from 1922 to 1930.
Nevertheless, he subsequently was unsuccessful in unseating Senator Key Pittman in 1916, 1928, and
1940. Platt's avocation was politics, but he was unable to be a team player and win support of the
bipartisan power bloc controlled by George Wingfield. Platt depended on his powerful oratory and
high ideals, which did not pay off politically.

Platt was, however, a very successful lawyer and representative for major corporations doing
business in Nevada. He and his Reno law partner, John Sinai, included among their clients: Standard
Oil Company of California, Bell Telephone, American Railway Express, and the Reconstruction Finance
Corporation. Platt had a reputation for discretion and an ability to keep details out of the press.
Consequently, he was asked to handle some of the highest profile divorce cases in the country, such
as those of Cornelius Vanderbilt and two of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's children, Elliott and Anna.

Platt married twice to non-Jewish women and had one adopted daughter. Committed to civic causes, he
was a cofounder and first president of the Reno Community Concert Association, active in the Reno
Chamber of Commerce, president of the Reno Rotary Club, and member of several Masonic and fraternal
lodges. Though not a regular religious observer, he took part in special Temple Emanu-El events and
never relinquished his B'nai B'rith lodge membership. When called upon to serve as keynote speaker
at religious and civic functions, he did not flaunt his Jewish ethnicity. However, during World War
II, in widely publicized speeches, Platt vehemently denounced Nazi atrocities, characterizing their
consequences as a holocaust. He directed his fiercest rhetoric against communism at home and
abroad. He died at his Reno home in 1964 at the age of ninety.


From:
http://www.onlinenevada.org/articles/samuel-platt