The most public political act ever committed by a Frautschi dates to April 1951 when Lowell was to be honored at the annual banquet of the state furniture dealers' association. When he learned that U.S. Sen. Joe McCarthy would be the featured speaker, he quietly sent his regrets.
"Tailgunner Joe" was still riding high; CBS would not broadcast Edward R. Murrow's historic takedown until March, 1954. But when The Capital Times asked Frautschi about his decision, he didn't plead scheduling conflict or a sudden headache.
McCarthy had "harmed the country during a most difficult period by his attacks on many persons in public service and in so doing he has violated well-established principles of decency and justice," Frautschi said. "He has made innumerable charges which evidently cannot be proved, but which are equally difficult to disprove."
McCarthy, Frautschi declared, "cannot possibly justify the methods he has used or compensate for the damage done to the morale of employees in government service."
Frautschi said he "meant no discourtesy" to the furniture dealers' association, but "merely chose this way of expressing my regret that Sen. McCarthy was selected to be the chief speaker" at the banquet. "Going to hear a man speak is somewhat of a compliment to him, and I did not wish to pay that compliment to Sen. McCarthy."
Angry letters to the paper and Lowell himself followed. Even "the family didn't particularly support me in this," Frautschi recalled in a 1988 oral history with Historic Madison, Inc. It was "an unwelcome incident in my life but one which I've had no regrets about."
Frautschi's stand stood his eldest son in good stead the next year, when Steven was interviewing for a Harvard fellowship. The poet/playwright Archibald MacLeish was on the interview panel, and he asked the 21-year-old what Wisconsinites thought of their junior Senator. "I managed to take up probably half the interview with that story and answering further questions about it," Steven reflected in his own oral history at Cal Tech 50 years later. "So that gave me some distinction," he said and one which resulted in a year's subsidized travel through Europe and the Middle East.