Robert M. La Follette

Wisconsin Fighting Bob whose Wisconsin Idea made him the Senate's great insurgent progressive.

Overview

After reforming Wisconsin's government as governor from 1901 to 1906 with direct primaries, railroad regulation, and expert commissions, La Follette brought insurgency to the Senate, serving from 1906 to 1925. He championed the Seventeenth Amendment's direct election of senators, conservation, and child labor laws, opposed the Payne-Aldrich tariff, and voted against entering World War I, then exposed the 1919 peace to Senate scrutiny. Denounced as disloyal in 1917, he ran for president in 1924 on an independent progressive ticket and won 17 percent of the national vote, a high-water mark for third parties in that century.