Walter F. Lineberger

Who was Walter F. Lineberger?

Walter Franklin Lineberger was a U.S. Representative from California.

Born near Whiteville, Tennessee, Lineberger attended the local public schools, the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, and the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York. He engaged in mining and agriculture in Mexico. In 1911, he moved to Long Beach, California, where he worked as a farmer and then as a banker. He served as president of the Guarantee Bond & Mortgage Co., Inc., and also served in the United States Army.

Lineberger was elected as a Republican to the Sixty-seventh Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the death of United States Representative-elect Charles F. Van de Water in California's Ninth Congressional District. He won a special election on February 15, 1921, by a vote of 32,442 to 21,056 for Prohibition candidate Charles H. Randall, whom Van de Water had defeated for re-election three months earlier. Lineberger had 58.5% of the vote to Randall's 38.0%.

Re-elected to the Sixty-eighth and Sixty-ninth Congresses, Lineberger served in the House of Representatives from April 11, 1921 to March 3, 1927. He won reelection with 59.1% of the vote in 1922 and with 63.9% in 1924. Lineberger did not seek renomination to the House in 1926, but was an unsuccessful candidate for the Republican nomination as United States Senator.