This all sounds so familiar.
An incumbent politician is running for election and facing a storm of criticism that he is too old to continue to serve in office.
After he wins the primary election, his opponents launch not one, but two investigations into the financing of his campaigns. Both exonerated him.
And then when the state Legislature had to confirm his election, the lieutenant governor refused to sign the official document.
No, this is not about Joe Biden. This is about a Wisconsin U.S. senator named Isaac Stephenson. This was not in the 2020s. It was in 1909. And it is a reminder that as contentious as politics seems to be in 2023, there are a lot of echoes from times gone by.
I came across this story because Stephenson was from my hometown of Marinette in the northeast corner of Wisconsin. He was a wealthy lumberman who supported Robert M. La Follette and his allies as they took power from the corporate interests that controlled the Republican Party at the end of the 19th century.
Stephenson was a major financial contributor to La Follette’s successful 1900 run for governor. In 1901, he bankrolled the purchase of the Milwaukee Free Press to create a progressive alternative to the conservative Milwaukee Sentinel.
The relationship between Stephenson and La Follette was complicated, as these things often are. His original backing of La Follette was in part because La Follette was fighting the power of the railroads — an issue of deep concern to lumbermen like Stephenson — and in part because the power brokers of the Republican Party at the time had denied Stephenson a seat in the U.S. Senate and he vowed revenge no matter the cost. And he could afford the cost.
The 1904 gubernatorial election solidified La Follette’s power in Wisconsin, but the relationship between Stephenson and La Follette was already deteriorating.
The state was looking for a new senator to replace Joseph V. Quarles, whose term was ending in 1905. Stephenson thought his time had come. He had taken La Follette at his word that he would not go to Washington and that Stephenson should be the state’s next U.S. senator. But then La Follette wavered in his support of Stephenson.
The new power brokers — the ones aligned with La Follette — decided that La Follette himself should get the Senate seat, and so it was that the governor went to the Senate in 1905. “I had learned still another lesson in the uncertainties of politics,” Stephenson wrote in his autobiography.
But then two years later, in 1907, John Spooner resigned as the other U.S. senator from Wisconsin and the maneuvering started all over, with multiple candidates vying for the spot. This time, though, Stephenson got his wish and was chosen by the Legislature — but with the understanding that he would only finish out the term and not run for election in 1909.
Stephenson said that promise not to run in 1909 was only if he was unopposed in 1907, and in fact there was a scramble among candidates that year. So he set in motion plans to run in 1909. And the battle between the La Follette forces and Stephenson was underway.
During the primary election, Stephenson wrote, “The report was assiduously spread that I was seventy-nine years old and that I could not remember my name without serious reflection.” He acknowledged that he was 79 but said there was nothing wrong with his memory. He noted that in the counties where he campaigned, where people could see him, he got more votes than in other counties. Overall, he won 39 out of 71 counties.
In January of 1910, the Legislature met to routinely approve his election. Here’s how Stephenson described what happened then:
“The next day the two houses held a joint session, and all that was necessary under the law was the reading of the journals and the formal announcement of my election. This was prevented by the Lieutenant-Governor, John Strange, a La Follette supporter, who refused to put the question.” But finally, the Legislature signed off on Stepheson’s victory.
Nevertheless, the battle was not over. One of La Follette’s followers convinced the Legislature to launch an investigation into the “exorbitant” amount of money — $107,000 — that Stephenson had spent in the senatorial primary. The investigating committee ultimately ended the case as “an excuse to defeat the will of the people.”
The La Follette forces were not done yet. A group of progressive Republicans took the fight to the U.S. Senate, where there was another investigation. At the end of it all, Stephenson was vindicated again.
“At last the fight was over,” he wrote, “and I was secure in my position. But the bitter experience had cost me many an illusion — perhaps the greatest loss I had sustained — and shook my faith in human kind.”
Stephenson represented Wisconsin in the U.S. Senate until 1915. He would recognize the echoes of those years in the politics of 2023.
