Robert M. La Follette

Robert Marion La Follette Sr. (June 14, 1855 – June 18, 1925), nicknamed "Fighting Bob", was an American lawyer and the leading progressive politician in Wisconsin from the 1890s until his death in 1925. He served as U.S. senator from Wisconsin for the last 20 years of his life; prior to that he served as the 20th governor of Wisconsin (1901–1906) and served three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives (1885–1891). A Republican for most of his life, he ran for president of the United States as the nominee of his own Progressive Party in the 1924 United States presidential election. Historian John D. Buenker describes La Follette as "the most celebrated figure in Wisconsin history". Born and raised in Wisconsin, La Follette won election as the Dane County district attorney in 1880. Four years later, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he was friendly with party leaders like William McKinley. After losing his seat in the Democratic wave election of 1890, La Follette regrouped. As a populist, he embraced progressivism and built up a coalition of disaffected Republicans. He unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for governor in [[1896]] and [[1898]] before winning the nomination and the office in the 1900 gubernatorial election. As governor of Wisconsin, La Follette enacted a bold progressive agenda, including progressive taxation, banking and railroad regulation, labor and sanitation protections, and campaign finance and civil service reforms. La Follette also pushed strongly for and achieved the passage of a law requiring state elected officials to be nominated by primary elections, replacing the old system in which small party conventions chose all nominees. La Follette won re-election in 1902 and 1904, and in 1905, the legislature elected him to the United States Senate. He took the unusual step of deferring his...