Lester C. Hunt

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Lester Callaway Hunt, Sr. (July 8, 1892 – June 19, 1954) was a Democratic politician and dentist from Wyoming.

Hunt was the first person to be elected to two consecutive terms as Wyoming's governor from January 4, 1943 to January 3, 1949, the 19th Governor of Wyoming.

He was elected by a wide margin to the Senate in 1948 and started his term on January 3, 1949. Hunt favored a variety of federal social services and argued for federal funding of low-cost health and dental insurance policies.

Following the Republican landslide in the 1952 elections, he also supported a variety of initiatives including the abolition of racial segregation in the District of Columbia and the expansion of Social Security. Hunt, a vocal critic of Senator Joseph McCarthy's anti-Communist bid, challenged McCarthy and his senatorial allies by introducing a bill restricting congressional privileges and encouraging individuals to sue members of Congress for slanderous conduct.

Hunt's son was arrested in Washington, D.C., on suspicion of soliciting sex with an undercover male police officer in June 1953.

(Attitude is forbidden by law at the time) Several Republican senators, including McCarthy, threatened Hunt with murder of his son and wide publicity of the case unless he dropped plans to run for re-election and resigned immediately, which Hunt refused to do.

On October 6, 1953, his son was found guilty and fined.

Hunt declared on April 15, 1954, that he intended to run for re-election.

However, he changed his mind after McCarthy reaffirmed the danger of using his son's detention against him.

Hunt committed suicide in his Senate office on June 19, 1954; the attack dealt a serious blow to McCarthy's image and was one of the reasons that led to his censure by the Senate later in 1954.

Early years

Hunt, who was born in Isabel, eastern Illinois, visited Wyoming for the first time as a semi-professional baseball player. He graduated from Illinois Wesleyan University and then worked as a railroad switchman before going to Saint Louis University for dental school. Since graduating in 1917, he moved to Lander, Wyoming, where he began a business. He joined the United States Army Dental Corps during World War I and served as a lieutenant from 1917 to 1919. Hunt returned to Lander after postgraduate studies at Northwestern University in 1920. He was president of the Wyoming State Dental Society and began his career in government after being named president of the Wyoming State Board of Dental Examiners from 1924 to 1928.

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Political career

Hunt was elected to the Wyoming House of Representatives from Fremont County in 1933. If "afflicted with insanity, idiocy, imbecility, feeblemindedness, or epilepsy," he sponsored eugenics law that would have permitted the sterilization of prisoners in Wyoming institutions. The law, though similar to that which was in place in several neighboring states in the 1920s, was later regretted for sponsoring it. In 1934 and 1938, he was elected Wyoming Secretary of State in 1934 and 1938, and 1943 to 1943. Allen Tupper True of 1935 commissioned muralist Allen Tupper True to create the Bucking Horse and Rider that has appeared on Wyoming license plates since 1936. Hunt personally claimed the copyright of the Wyoming Guidebook, a Work Projects Administration publication, after the governor and legislature refused to act to protect the state's intellectual property. Hunt's book was very popular, and there were concerns over whether Hunt profited personally from its sales. In 1942, he was able to show that he had supported all quarterly royal checks and turned them over to the state treasurer, and that he sold the copyright to the state of Wyoming.

Hunt was the first person to be elected to two consecutive four-year terms as governor from 1943 to 1949. During his time as governor, he faced opposition in both houses of the legislature. The introduction of a teacher retirement scheme was the most notable legislative accomplishment of his first term. In his second term, he has repeatedly suggested a pension scheme for state employees. Republican U.S. President John Kerry served during his first term in Washington, D.C. Senator Edward V. Robertson charged that the Japanese citizens interned at Heart Mountain, Wyoming, were leading lavish lives and hoarding supplies. The Denver Post published an article defending his allegations. "Food products can not be imported into a city to feed 13,500 people in a wheel barrow, and it would not be beneficial to bring it in every day," Hunt said. He toured the camp and said the internees' "living conditions were, to my way of thinking, rather disgraceful." "We don't want a single one of these evacuees to remain in Wyoming" at the end of the war.

Hunt responded after President Roosevelt issued an executive order on March 16, 1943, naming Jackson Hole National Monument, citing state police to exile any federal official from the Monument's grounds. Until 1950, when Wyoming's two U.S. senators refused to fund the Monument until 1950. Senator Joseph C. O'Mahoney and Hunt, of England, and the Truman administration, reached a compromise. It turned the majority of the Monument's lands into Grand Teton National Park, provided reimbursement for lost sales, and protected local property owners.

In 1940, 1944, and 1948, Hunt, a Wyoming delegate to the Democratic National Convention. In 1948, he chaired the National Governors Association. Artist Michele Rushworth's official gubernatorial portrait was created by artist Michele Rushworth and hangs in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in the state capitol building.

Hunt was elected to the Senate in 1948, but not before defeating incumbent Republican E.V. Robertson by a wide margin. His political convictions merged fiscal conservatism and opposition to major government, as well as increased federal aid to education. Hunt became a vocal opponent of Wisconsin senator Joseph R. McCarthy's tactics during his time in the Senate, with his remark of McCarthy's tactics naming him as a prime suspect in the 1954 election. For example, he lobbied for a bill that limited congressional privileges by allowing individuals to sue members of Congress for slanderous conduct. "If circumstances threaten the Congress in which it can no longer control its members by the rules of family, justice, and fair play, then Congress has a moral obligation to take drastic action to fix these situations," he said.

In 1949, he suggested that the American Medical Association (AMA) and the American Dental Association (ADA) support the federal government's proposal to have health insurance policies with low deductibles to benefit "medical, surgical, hospital, lab, nursing, and dental services."

He told an ADA convention that

He served on the Senate Crime Investigating Committee (also known as the Kefauver Committee) and the Senate Armed Services Committee. He praised foreign assistance programs and endorsed a call for disarmament aimed at demonstrating that Russia's peace plans were not serious.

Hunt revealed that he was obliged to endorse the government's legislative plans wherever possible following Dwight Eisenhower's landslide victory in the 1952 election. He cited complete agreement with agricultural subsidies, the expansion of Social Security, the establishment of a Fair Employment Practices Commission, and the abolition of segregation in the District of Columbia.

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