Lester C. Hunt
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Lester Callaway Hunt (July 8, 1892–June 19, 1954) was a Democratic politician and dentist from the U.S. state of Wyoming. He served as governor of Wyoming from 1943 to 1949 and as United States Senator from January 3, 1949 until his suicide on June 19, 1954.
Hunt was born in Isabel, Illinois and worked as a switchman on a railroad to put himself through dental school at St. Louis University. Upon graduation in 1917, he moved to Lander, Wyoming, where he briefly established a dental practice before joining the United States Army Dental Corps when the United States entered World War I. Hunt served in the Dental Corps from 1917 to 1919 and rose to the rank of major. After postgraduate study at Northwestern University in 1920, Hunt resumed his practice in Lander and served as president of Wyoming State Board of Dental Examiners from 1924 to 1928.
Hunt was elected to the state legislature from Fremont County in 1933, and subsequently served two terms as Wyoming secretary of state from 1935 to 1943, and two terms as governor from 1943 to 1949. He is credited with the idea for the bucking bronco that has been featured on the Wyoming license plate since the 1930s.
Hunt was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1948, taking office on January 3, 1949. During his tenure in the Senate, Hunt became a bitter enemy of Wisconsin Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, and his criticism of McCarthy's anticommunist tactics marked him as a prime target in the 1954 election.
Leading up to the 1954 election, Republicans held a Senate majority of one vote, and pressured Hunt to resign from the Senate. Republican Senator Styles Bridges warned Hunt that unless he withdrew, Wyoming voters would find out about the arrest of Hunt's twenty-year-old son for soliciting prostitution from a male undercover police officer in Lafayette Square in July 1953. After some vacillation, Hunt announced that he would not seek reelection on June 8, 1954. Eleven days later, he shot himself in his Senate office.
Republican Edward D. Crippa was appointed to fill the remainder of Hunt's Senate term. Democrat Joseph C. O'Mahoney won the seat in the general election of November 1954, which also tipped the Senate to a one vote Democratic majority.
The events surrounding Hunt's suicide were fictionalized in journalist Allen Drury's bestselling Senate novel Advise and Consent.
[edit] References
- Tamara Linse, A senator's suicide, Caspar Star Tribune, November 1, 2004.
- Hunt's entry in the Congressional Biography Directory
| Preceded by Nels H. Smith |
Governor of Wyoming 1943 – 1949 |
Succeeded by Arthur Griswold Crane |
| Preceded by Edward V. Robertson |
U.S. Senators from Wyoming 1949 – 1954 |
Succeeded by Edward D. Crippa |
| Governors of Wyoming |
 |
|---|---|
| Warren • Barber • Osborne • W. Richards • D. Richards • Chatterton • Brooks • J. Carey • Kendrick • Houx • R. Carey • W. Ross • Lucas • N. Ross • Emerson • Clark • Miller • Smith • Hunt • Crane • Barrett • Rogers • Simpson • Hickey • Gage • Hansen • Hathaway • Herschler • Sullivan • Geringer • Freudenthal |
