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Wyoming in the 1940s. Wonderful Wyoming, state of promise, land of far horizons. Horizons, promise, also pigeons, lots and lots of pigeons. There was a serious infestation of pigeons. That's Roger McDaniel, a Wyoming historian and author. He also served in both houses of the Wyoming State Legislature.
And the pigeon infestation he's talking about was at his old workplace at the Wyoming State Capitol. We're speaking to you from the house chamber of the Wyoming State Capitol building in Cheyenne, Wyoming. But it was well before his time. It was back in the winter of 1943. They would line the windowsills outside and people who were having lunch outside on the Capitol grounds would be attacked by the pigeons trying to get their food.
The pigeon problem at the Wyoming State Capitol. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but it was kind of a problem. It was not a small thing for the people who worked there every day. We're just about ready to bring you the joint session of the 28th legislature. It was a bad enough problem that the people who worked in offices at the state capitol, they were no longer able to open windows in those offices to get fresh air.
For one, the pigeons were not shy when it came to open windows, but also they just pooped all over the windowsills, which is very gross. I know, I'm sorry. But this weird, funny problem they had, it was an increasingly intrusive problem for the state capitol as a workplace. It was getting worse over time. Frankly, the pigeons were winning until a man named Lester Hunt came to town.
Early in the morning, one morning before the sun came out, he tiptoed along the window ledges of the Capitol building and dropped poison for the pigeons and solved the pigeon problem.
Lester Hunt is the man who climbed out on the window ledges at the state capitol to drop poison to kill the pigeons. It then started raining dead pigeons at the Wyoming state capitol building. Pigeons started dropping off the roof. They were all over the lawn. I know this is terrible. But the longstanding pigeon problem at the Wyoming state capitol was thereby solved.
And yes, there was undoubtedly a less conspicuous, a more humane, a more ecologically sensitive way to go about solving this problem, I'm sure, even in 1943. But in his defense, Lester Hunt was not an expert at these things. He was not a trained exterminator.
Lester Hunt, when he did this, was the newly elected governor of the state of Wyoming. It gives me pleasure to introduce to you at this time, the Honorable Lester Hunt, governor of Wyoming. He was a problem solver, and that pigeon story is a great metaphor for really for his whole career.
Lester Hunt was elected governor of Wyoming in November 1942. He started his new job at the state capitol in January 43. Hello, Wyoming. This is Governor Lester C. Hunt. This pigeon issue, people had apparently brought it up repeatedly with the old governor, but the old governor hadn't done anything about it.
When Lester Hunt started asking who might be able to deal with it, when he asked members of the Capitol Building Commission to please do something about it, they reportedly responded by laughing in his face. Well, if nobody else was going to deal with it, then the newly elected governor, Lester Hunt, he just decided he would take care of it himself.
If he saw a problem, he solved it or worked to solve it, took it head on, sometimes in a rather unconventional way. He was that kind of guy. You know, there's no place like Wyoming, and I'd be mighty happy to get back there before very long. By training, Lester Hunt was a dentist. He had spent some time as a bartender. He'd played minor league baseball.
But ultimately, he put himself through dentistry school, and he served in the dental corps of the U.S. Army in World War I. After the war, he and his wife and their two kids settled in the beautiful, rugged small town in Wyoming, where he had been the starting pitcher for the local minor league team. He hung out his shingle as the town's new dentist. ♪
In order to serve his patients who couldn't come to him, he had a covered wagon and went out to them. Took his dental equipment and would go out into these remote areas, across mountain passes and through these beautiful valleys, and he would go to their home, their ranches, their farms, and take care of their dental work. ♪
Lester Hunt built a successful practice in Lander. A local newspaper called his dental office second to none in the whole state. But that successful career would be cut short because of his love and care for his son. Taking seats right next to Mrs. Hunt, Buddy Hunt, son of His Excellency Governor Lester C. Hunt of Wyoming. Lester Hunt's son was also named Lester. To the family, Lester Jr. went by the name Buddy.
And when Buddy was just a little kid, when he was about four years old, he fell and badly broke his leg. He broke it so badly that doctors thought he might have to have the leg amputated. His dad, Lester Hunt Sr., was absolutely determined that that would not happen to his son. And so he decided that he would donate bone from his own leg to Buddy. And it eventually worked. His son's leg was saved.
But for Lester Hunt Sr., for Dr. Hunt, there was a steep price to pay. The painful bone grafts that he endured for his son basically ended this good career that he'd made for himself in Wyoming. The doctors, the fix at the Mayo Clinic were grafts, bone grafts, that would be taken from his father and grafted into Buddy's leg. And there were four of them. The fourth one finally succeeded and
But it left Lester Hunt unable to stand and do his work as a dentist. And so he began to become more interested in politics and decided to run for the legislature. Lester Hunt ran for public office for the first time in 1932. He was a Democrat. He ran for a seat in the state legislature, and he won. And he quickly attracted notice from the Democratic leadership in the state.
After he'd served just one term in the legislature, they asked if he would consider running for a statewide office. And he did. He ran for Secretary of State in Wyoming, and he won. Dr. Lester Seahunt, Secretary of State. Then he ran for a second term as Secretary of State, and he won re-election as well.
And then, flush with that success, he decided to run for the top job in the state. He ran for governor in 1942. That governor's race was a real long shot for Lester Hunt. To win that job, Lester Hunt would have to oust the incumbent Republican governor. But Hunt was able to do it. He won the race. It is a pleasure to return again to the realm of my first experience in state government, the halls of the state legislatures.
And he did very well in the job, so much so that he became the first person ever to serve two consecutive terms as the state's governor. And he did it as a Democrat in what even then was Republican, Republican Wyoming. Somebody said when he got elected to the legislature in this small, rural Republican county, said, you know, if a Democrat gets elected in this county, it's because people really like him.
And that was what kept him in public office throughout many, many years in a very Republican state. People genuinely liked him, and for good reason. And Governor, if you'll sort of promise just to call me Bill from now on, I'll promise just to call you Governor. Bill, just call me Doc. Just call you Doc? That's what everybody else calls me around home. All right, Doc. The people of Wyoming really did like him.
He was a Democrat, which meant he was in the minority party in the state. But he'd never lost an election, even the ones that seemed improbable on their face. He'd had just resounding success in all of his time in public office, including his unprecedented two consecutive terms as governor. With that track record, Lester Hunt ultimately decided that he would keep going, keep running for higher office. He set his sights on the U.S. Senate, and he won that race too.
Our distinguished guest for this evening is the Honorable Lester C. Hunt, United States Senator from Wyoming. Lester Hunt goes from bartender and minor league baseball pitcher to small town dentist to novice local politician to roof-crawling, pigeon-exterminating governor all the way to United States Senator, never losing an election along the way.
He was very good at not just running for office, but serving as an elected official. People just really liked him for it. He was really just an honest, straightforward fellow who believed in democracy, believed in the integrity of the institutions. And it's what made him the most popular politician in the state. The most popular politician in his state. Lester Hunt, newly elected a U.S. senator.
He heads to Washington to do what he has always done, to advocate for his constituents, for the people of Wyoming, also now to try to do some good for the whole rest of the country through service in the United States Senate. He is as poised as anyone could be for success in that job. But things are about to change for him radically. What he is about to encounter in Washington will cost him his life.
he will not live to see the end of even one term as U.S. Senator. The environment he is about to step into in Washington, just a few years after World War II, is an environment that is still electrified by some of the most dangerous currents that had run through that previous era. Political figures willing to align themselves with violent and extreme forces, no matter the consequences.
Elements so extreme they're working to do away with American democracy, while at the same time, they and their allies are ascending to the height of American political power. That is what solid, popular, problem-solving, devoted dad Lester Hunt would be walking into when he arrived in Washington. It would be a buzzsaw coming right for him. It was unlike anything he had encountered back home in Wyoming. It would take his life.
And it would signal deeply troubling things for the country. Not just then, but for decades to come. This is Season 2 of Rachel Maddow Presents Ultra.
He is Senator Lester C. Hunt, the Democrat from Wyoming who has served his state and his people very faithfully for the past 22 years. Well, for the good of the country, Bob, I hope it will last quite a while. He becomes kind of a loner in the Senate. His face is familiar to many millions of televiewers. Somebody breaks into their apartment in Washington and ransacks it.
I'll be back in a minute with an exclusive story. He wrote a column about the blackmail and the pressure that had been applied. They have a conversation about this and around the room they all knew what had happened.
MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell. When I was working in the Senate, I didn't realize that it's the perfect training for the job that I have now. Covering government, covering politics, the complexity of it all. Mastering the detail is crucial to being able to present anything.
that happens in Senate buildings or any of the other news centers that we have to focus on every day. The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, weeknights at 10 p.m. Eastern on MSNBC.
On the MSNBC podcast, How to Win 2024, former Senator Claire McCaskill is joined by fellow political experts and insiders to examine the campaign strategies unfolding in this all-important election. We have emerged with the teacher, the coach, the veteran, the governor, Tim Walz. I always think it's better to have somebody on the ticket that has actually won in a state that's hard. Search for How to Win 2024 wherever you get your podcasts and follow. New episodes every Thursday.
Hi, everyone. It's Chris Hayes. This week on my podcast, Why Is This Happening? Author and philosopher Daniel Chandler on the roots of a just society. I think that those genuinely big fundamental questions about whether liberal democracy will survive, what the shape of our society should be, feel like they're genuinely back on the agenda. I think it feels like we're at a real, you know, an inflection point or a turning point in the history of liberal democracy. That's this week on Why Is This Happening? Search for Why Is This Happening wherever you're listening right now and follow. Episode one.
Dr. Hunt. It's the day before Father's Day in 1954. Things are mostly quiet across the nation's capital. Congress is technically in session, but not only is it a weekend, it's Father's Day weekend. It's also the start of the summer. The weather is great in D.C.
Across town, though, there's one member of Congress who's stirring that morning, preparing to go into the office, even though it's a weekend. He is Senator Lester C. Hunt, the Democrat from Wyoming. This is the final year of a first term in the Senate for Lester Hunt. He's well regarded in the Senate. He's well liked. He's also still the most popular politician in the whole state with the folks back home.
That Saturday morning, June 19, 1954, Senator Hunt is awake early.
He's restless. His mood that morning is grim. He got up early, around 6 o'clock. That's Wyoming author Roger McDaniel again. I suspect it was a sleepless night, Friday night into Saturday. He got up and he kissed Nathal on the cheek and left.
Senator Lester Hunt gives his wife Nathel a goodbye kiss on the cheek, and then he heads out the door. He heads off toward the U.S. Capitol. Drove to the Senate, parked his car. One of the officers came out to help him. The officer who comes out to help Senator Hunt when he arrives at the Capitol, he notices that the senator has brought something with him that morning. He took his hunting rifle with him, and he handed him the gun to carry into the Senate office building.
He has a gun with him. Now, the fact that Senator Hunt has come to the Capitol with this hunting rifle, it actually doesn't strike the officer as all that strange.
The officer later said, you know, he's from Wyoming. I knew he hunted and had guns, and it didn't raise any concern in my mind. So Senator Hunt, before he gets into the elevator, he takes his things back. He takes his rifle back from the officer who's helping him. Then he rides the elevator up to his office. Had a conversation with the elevator operator, who was a friend of his, with whom he often talked about baseball.
Senator Hunt steps off the elevator as it reaches his floor, then he walks the short distance to his Senate office. And again, there aren't many people around. This is a Saturday morning. It's only about 8:30 a.m. Went into his office, wrote four notes, one to each of his children, one to his wife, and one to his chief of staff, and then went into his office and shot himself. This freshman senator, 61 years old, first term in Congress,
He sits down at his desk in his Senate office and he fires his gun. Two of his staffers arrive at the Capitol about a half hour after the senator has fired that shot. They find their boss slumped at his desk. Gunshot wound. The hunting rifle is at his side. Incredibly, he is alive, but only barely. He's not conscious. They rush him to the hospital. Doctors rush him into emergency brain surgery. But it's hopeless. He's gone.
He dies that day at the hospital with his wife at his bedside. The official cause of death is ruled a suicide. And there's no doubt at all that Senator Lester Hunt himself did this. There's no sign of a struggle or foul play or anyone else involved. But still, almost immediately, there are things that don't seem to add up. Senator Hunt had announced just two weeks earlier that he would be leaving Washington and going back home to Wyoming, that he wouldn't be running for reelection.
Senator Hunt announces that he's decided not to run for re-election, and he says it's because of health problems. Although he cited health problems in explaining why he wasn't running for another term, there are indications that that may not have been the reason. Later, we learned from his staff and from others that, to their knowledge, he had no significant health problem. And so...
That was clearly not the reason, but that's the reason he gave publicly. That was the line to explain him not running for re-election. And that became the line to try and explain his death. Senator Hunt was having significant physical health issues. He was in distress over those health issues. That distress must have contributed to him taking this tragic and extreme action.
That's what they said. That's what was in the newspapers. Those who knew Lester Hunt, though, they had a sense that something else was off with him in the weeks and months leading up to his death. Something that really didn't seem to have anything to do with any physical health problem.
When Senator Lester Hunt first came to Washington, he quickly became known around the Capitol as really friendly, really likable. The New York Times called him one of the most popular members of the U.S. Senate. But it wasn't just his colleagues, and it wasn't just in Washington. He was beloved at home as well. I'm speaking again of my folks at home. They're individualists, rugged individualists.
The consensus view was that Senator Hunt would have no trouble getting re-elected in Wyoming if that is what he wanted. Even though Wyoming as a state leaned strongly Republican and Senator Hunt was a Democrat, he was nevertheless so popular, so well regarded both in his home state and in Washington as a senator. He had such broad cross-party appeal.
that some people thought he might go even further than the U.S. Senate. At least one of his Senate colleagues, who had considered a run for the presidency himself a couple of years earlier, Senator Estes Kefauver, had said that had he made that run for president in 1952, he probably would have tapped Lester Hunt to be his vice presidential running mate.
He is Senator Lester C. Hunt, the Democrat from Wyoming. His face is familiar to many millions of televiewers. Senator, as a Democrat and a good one, how long is this honeymoon between you and the Republican administration going to last? Well, for the good of the country, Bob, I hope it'll last quite a while.
Senator Hunt was outgoing and easygoing. He was the kind of successful big wheel politician who would nevertheless easily talk baseball with the elevator operator who he had made friends with. He would share stories from his time as a dentist back home in Wyoming. At some point, though, in those last few months of his life, he had seemed to change. Things had seemed to shift. ♪
He becomes kind of a loner in the Senate. He stops sharing lunch with his colleagues and takes lunch alone. In December, while he and his wife are back in Wyoming for Christmas, somebody breaks into their apartment in Washington and ransacks it. Nothing of significance is stolen. It's clear they're looking for something. And that was incredibly unnerving. There's a break-in at his home.
He withdraws from his friends and his colleagues in the Senate. He starts spending most of his time alone. He hastily announces that he won't seek reelection, and there's clearly no political reason behind that. And then suddenly, this. He made the decision. This would be the last day of his life. Senator Lester Hunt's suicide, the day before Father's Day, lands as a shock all across Washington.
It was, of course, devastating to his wife and his kids and to all his friends back home in Wyoming. It would soon also be something else. It would be instructive for the country. Because the mystery of Lester Hunt's death and what was really going on in his life in the lead up to that day, it would soon start to spool out in ways that were revealing about something that was going quite wrong in the United States.
In many ways, the die was cast for Lester Hunt the minute he got to Washington from the very first assignment that he took as a sitting senator. Tell me, as a member of the Armed Services Committee, Senator Hunt... By the end of it, Lester Hunt's rifle would not be the only gun at the U.S. Capitol.
And an extreme political faction would be maneuvering to get someone absolutely unthinkable into the White House, into the presidency. One of the most controversial figures ever to appear on this nation's political stage. That's all ahead. Stay with us.
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When Senator Lester Hunt was found mortally wounded that Saturday morning in 1954, slumped at his desk inside his Senate office, when he died in the hospital just hours later, it set off a cascade of events. Sympathies, of course, poured into the Hunt family. But it wasn't only his family that had lost him. The people of the state of Wyoming had just lost one of their two U.S. senators as well.
And in practical terms, that created an urgent political imperative. Somebody would need to be appointed right away to take Lester Hunt's place in the Senate. Hunt was a Democrat, and he'd been part of a one-vote Democratic majority in the Senate at the time. If Wyoming's Republican governor appointed a Republican replacement for him, that would mean that partisan control of the Senate would flip from one party to the other. But even before any of that could be dealt with,
There were the even more urgent imperatives of a sudden, unexpected death. There was the cleanup. There was just the practicality of all of it, the things you never imagine you might have to arrange. The suicide notes that he left behind had to be given to the people to whom he had addressed them. The senator's personal effects, the things from his office, had to be secured and organized and packed up.
The senator's body, of course, had to be transported back to Wyoming. Arrangements had to be made for his funeral. It was a lot, and it was all at once. And in the midst of all that activity, within just days of Senator Hunt's death, there was a bombshell newspaper article about him. It was an article about Senator Hunt written by someone who knew him well. It was about what had been going on in the senator's life in the lead up to his suicide.
And it had nothing to do with supposed physical health concerns that the initial news reports had blamed for the senator's despair.
The article was written by a well-known Washington columnist named Drew Pearson. This is Drew Pearson. I'll be back in a minute with an exclusive story of the danger... Drew Pearson had a national radio show. He had a column that was syndicated in hundreds of newspapers. He was very controversial, very influential. He was also very, very well-connected in Washington. And in the wake of Senator Lester Hunt's suicide...
Drew Pearson broke just a shocking story about it. Drew Pearson knew most of the story, and he wrote a column talking about the blackmail and the pressure that had been applied to him. The blackmail and the pressure. Drew Pearson reported in his column that in the months leading up to his death, Senator Lester Hunt had been living under the fear of, quote, political blackmail.
Pearson described it as one of the lowest types of political pressure this writer has seen. Drew Pearson was a great admirer of Lester Hunt and followed him through this period, and in his diaries expressed a great deal of concern about Hunt's well-being during that year. Drew Pearson's article about Senator Lester Hunt's suicide was detailed. It was filled with specific accusations. It named names.
Pearson said the blackmailers were two of Lester Hunt's fellow U.S. senators, acting in cahoots with a third, all three of them Republicans. Those three Republican senators trying to force this Democrat, Lester Hunt, out of the Senate, whereupon Senator Hunt, in despair and under incredible pressure, instead took his own life. Drew Pearson was known to be so well-sourced, so plugged in,
that his reporting on this could not be ignored. When several members of the Senate gather in Cheyenne for Senator Hunt's funeral, as they're waiting, as pallbearers, they're waiting for the arrival of the casket, they have a conversation about this. And around the room, they all knew what had happened and they all understood it.
The senators who drew Pearson named as the blackmailers, they demanded that Pearson retract this article, that he withdraw it, correct it, apologize for it. They threatened his advertisers. They threatened lawsuits. But Pearson refused to back down. The column stood. And the column stands today as a sign of things having gone very wrong when they didn't have to.
When Senator Lester Hunt stepped foot in Washington for the first time in January 1949, it hadn't been long since something called the Great Sedition Trial had fallen apart. In the Great Sedition Trial, more than two dozen alleged seditionists were charged effectively with plotting to overthrow the U.S. government in order to institute an American form of fascism here.
The FBI Dragnet brings in a strange assortment of people, 30 in all, charged with scheming to establish a Nazi government in the United States.
The Great Sedition Trial fell apart about seven months into it, when the judge who'd been overseeing the trial died, suddenly and unexpectedly. When Judge Edward Eicher died unexpectedly in his sleep...
The great sedition trial that he had been overseeing died too. Eicher put up with all sorts of antics during the seven months that 27 defendants have been on trial accused of conspiring to set up a Nazi form of government in this country.
The trial had been such a circus. The defendants and their lawyers had succeeded in turning it into such a chaotic mess that the prospect of trying the case again, starting all over again, it was something for which the Justice Department had no appetite. Just after the end of the war in 1946, DOJ decided that they would just let the case drop. They decided to not retry the defendants. They just let everyone go.
The mass prosecution for sedition in Washington has been pronounced a mistrial. That decision had consequences. Because all those defendants who had been charged with working to undermine American democracy, spreading pro-fascist propaganda, in some cases arming themselves to take part in the overthrow of the U.S. government, those defendants basically just melted back into the sauce. They all went back to doing what they had been doing.
By the time the Justice Department decided to abandon that case in 1946, of course, World War II was over. The Allies had won. Global fascism had had its answer from the United States. It was from the United States military on the battlefield, and global fascism had been crushed. America's homegrown proponents of fascism, though, they were just let go and then quickly forgotten.
But what prosecutors had turned up in the Sedition case was evidence that native-born American fascists in this country, many of them arming themselves and training for violence, were connected to Hitler's government in Germany. They were taking money, in some cases taking direction, from Berlin while working here to weaken democracy for what they hoped would be a coming fascist takeover.
The most worrying aspect of all of it was how close they were able to get to real power, to sitting members of Congress, to some of the most powerful people in U.S. government. Just how many elected officials had been wrapped up in it. It was senators like Ernest Lundin, who had a literal Nazi agent writing speeches for him in the Senate.
Congressmen like Hamilton Fish, whose congressional office was used as a high-volume clearinghouse for German propaganda, and whose staff was paid by a Nazi agent. Burton Wheeler and Bill Langer, two senators who'd rushed to the defense of the alleged seditionists when they were put on trial, showing up at the courthouse in D.C. to support them, visiting them at the D.C. jail.
On the floor of Congress, they hailed these defendants as political prisoners. They railed against the Justice Department for prosecuting them. They railed against specific prosecutors by name who were leading those cases. All of these members of Congress who helped, who allowed these actors on the ultra-right to get a foothold in normal American politics, in some ways, they all got away too.
The scandal was big enough news in its time that many of the implicated elected officials got voted out of office, and that is something. But then, once they were political losers, they too were fairly quickly forgotten, as was the story of what they did.
Allying themselves with those who would end American democracy, including by force. Letting those forces into the halls of power. Even letting them write congressional speeches for them, filled with pro-fascist propaganda. There never was an actual reckoning for that. And so, of course, it happened again. These people don't disappear, they just go underground.
This is a story about what happens when forces on the ultra-right get themselves intertwined with real political power. And the alarm gets sounded and the danger is understood, but they remain just out of reach of the authorities. He's really turning into a sort of underground fascist James Bond in this way, traveling not only from country to country, but continent to continent. What do they call it in the spy shows? He goes to ground.
This is also a story about what happens to American politics, what happens to the American system of government when violent anti-democratic forces are let in the door.
They were laying the groundwork for a political party that in the best of all worlds would win an election and then destroy democracy after they had won that election. Or if they had to, they would pick up arms. When elected officials have no qualms about flirting with fascists for their own political gain. He wasn't going to stop any group that supported him, even if they were hiling Hitler. Pushing American democracy to the brink.
He was not bound by the truth or by facts. He would say anything at any time. Lies and misinformation and conspiracy theories. If you tell a lie that's big enough and you tell it often enough, people will believe it.
There are and there have been forces in American life who are opposed to democracy, who are drawn instead to strongmen, who want to somehow purify American culture and society to bring some form of American fascism to power. At the fringe, that's one thing. But when that is at the highest level of mainstream electoral politics, it's something else, and it poses a different level of danger.
Who welcomes them in to the heart of American power? And what happens when they do? We don't want to feel that we can just assume or trust that democracy and the quote-unquote right side of history will always prevail. He was very concerned with the bloodstream of Americans. He spoke their language. He believes that every human instinct is to conquer and control. And that can only be accomplished through strong leadership relationships.
Democracy is a sham. Democracy is only going to be sustained if people are willing to fight for it. Had people, including members of his own party, been willing to put a stop to it early, a lot of it could have been avoided. That's all ahead on Season 2 of Rachel Maddow Presents Ultra.
Thank you.
Our head of audio production is Bryson Barnes. Our senior executive producers are Corey Nazo and Laura Conaway. Our web producer is Will Femia. Aisha Turner is the executive producer for MSNBC Audio. Rebecca Cutler is the senior vice president for content strategy at MSNBC.
Archival radio material is from NBC News via the Library of Congress. And a special thanks to the scrappy, smart, indispensable folks at the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming. You can find much more about this series at our website, msnbc.com slash ultra. Hello, everybody. I'm
My mother has been getting pretty restless with me on this program, and I talked to her a little while ago, and she said, do you realize that you've had five straight Republicans on in as many weeks? My mother is a lifelong Democrat, incidentally. So I apologized profusely, and I promised to do better. And she said, well, you must, because people are beginning to wonder whether this is really a one-party nation situation.
Well, Mom, I got a good Democrat on tonight, and you'll see him, as will all the other folks, pretty soon. He is Senator Lester C. Hunt, the Democrat from Wyoming.
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