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Robert La Follette Sr. might not have seemed destined to become one of the nation’s most influential political reformers.
As a UW-Madison undergraduate, La Follette was famous for pranks like “putting a farm animal on the balcony of University Hall” (the administration building, now Bascom Hall), according to the Wisconsin Alumni Association. He wasn’t a great student and just barely graduated with his bachelor’s degree. “He excelled, however, at oratory,” and earned “a UW law degree in a matter of months,” the Alumni Association says.
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La Follette was elected Dane County district attorney at the age of 25. He was 29 when he won the first of his three terms in the U.S. House. Back then, “He was a successful, conservative Republican politician,” who voted with business interests and showed no public interest in reform, political scientist Robert Booth Fowler wrote in his book on Wisconsin elections.
But what made “Fighting Bob” fighting mad was a bribe offered by one of his party’s most powerful figures, U.S. Sen. Philetus Sawyer, when La Follette was a lawyer in private practice in 1891. La Follette said Sawyer wanted him to influence his brother-in-law, then a judge, to clear a former state treasurer accused of pocketing interest on state funds deposited in banks, The New York Times reported.
Outraged by his fellow Republican’s attempt to corrupt the justice system, La Follette angrily refused the bribe, publicly denounced Sawyer and went on to launch a lifelong crusade to clean up politics and government.
La Follette ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1896 and 1898, but he didn’t convince Republican leaders to nominate him until after Sawyer was dead. During the 1900 campaign, La Follette delivered 208 speeches in 61 counties, sweeping to victory with 60% of the vote.
Once in office, one of La Follette’s Progressive priorities was to wrest the power to nominate candidates out of the hands of party bosses. And he wasn’t above using his own brand of bare-knuckled politics to do it.
Ahead of a November 1904 referendum on creating the nation’s first primary elections, La Follette learned his rivals in the GOP’s conservative Stalwart wing were plotting to take control of the party by packing the state convention.
“To put a stop to this, he hired UW football players and wrestlers to work security at the event” at the university’s Red Gym, the Wisconsin Historical Society says. “Every delegate had to show legitimate credentials and run a gauntlet of tough guys to get into the convention.”
La Follette kept his hold on the party and voters approved the primaries. Then they taught him the meaning of a primary.
After the Progressive-dominated Legislature named La Follette to a U.S. Senate seat, voters rejected Irvine Lenroot, the legislative leader endorsed by La Follette, in Wisconsin’s first GOP gubernatorial primary in 1906. Once the 17th Amendment allowed elections for senators, the voters picked Lenroot for the state’s other Senate seat in 1918. But by then he had fallen out with La Follette, who again found himself backing the Republican primary loser.
A global conflict became a personal political battle when La Follette opposed U.S. involvement in World War I. He was one of only six senators to vote against the 1917 declaration of war.
And when one of his remarks was misquoted to suggest he sided with Germany, the Senate launched an effort to expel him.
In an epic defense of First Amendment rights in wartime, La Follette told his colleagues, “If every preparation for war can be made the excuse for destroying free speech and a free press, then we may well despair of ever again finding ourselves for a long period in a state of peace.” The Senate voted against expelling him in 1919.
La Follette’s battle against corruption was far from over in Washington. In 1922, when the first indications surfaced of questionable dealings to lease federal land to oil companies, La Follette introduced Senate resolutions calling for an investigation and recruited Montana Democratic Sen. Thomas Walsh to lead the investigative subcommittee.
As the probe got under way, La Follette’s offices were burglarized and Walsh said he suspected his phone had been tapped – tactics later repeated by President Richard Nixon’s allies in the Watergate scandal.
Walsh’s investigation uncovered the Teapot Dome scandal, which eventually resulted in a bribery conviction for the interior secretary, the firing of the attorney general, the resignation of the Navy secretary and the cancellation of the oil leases. It also led to strengthening the investigative powers of Congress, by upholding the right to subpoena witnesses and adding the right to view tax returns – powers later used to probe President Donald Trump.
La Follette’s wife, Belle Case La Follette, was a powerful voice for peace and equality in her own right. She was a co-founder of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and a leading suffragist who helped ensure Wisconsin would be the first state to ratify the 19th Amendment, allowing women to vote.
