The Wicked Wine of Democracy: A Memoir of a Political Junkie, 1948-1995

9. A State That Time Forgot

107 lyndon b. johnson called me to his office to give me an assignment. “Go to North Dakota,” he said. “We can pick up a seat there.” If so, it would almost be a first. North Dakota once had elected a Democrat to the Senate, but he had died two months after assuming office. Although the state was at the epicenter of radical agrarian populism, its politics had remained respectably Republican, although sometimes of an unorthodox variety . Many years before, the Senate’s Republican leader, George Higgins Moses, had exasperatedly called fractious senators from the Great Plains “Sons of the Wild Jackass,” and the prairie’s radical solons had proudly adopted the label. Now the last of the “Sons” had died, which is why Johnson had called for me. William Langer, senator since 1940, had breathed his last on November 8, 1959, and, pursuant to state law, Governor John E. Davis had scheduled a special election for June 28, 1960, the day of the state’s regular primary. The winner would serve out the remainder of Langer’s term, to January 3, 1965. It was the first real chance in decades for the Democrats, and they were blessed with a bona fide challenger: Congressman Quentin N. Burdick, elected as a Democrat in 1958 to succeed his Republican father, Usher L. Burdick, who had occupied the seat for twenty years. “I understand the Burdick boy isn’t much of a campaigner, the kind his daddy was, and so he’s going to need help,” Johnson instructed. “Find out what the situation looks like and report back to me.” 9 A STATE THAT TIME FORGOT I was doubly surprised by Johnson—first, that he had an interest in North Dakota and, second, that he had sent for me. I deduced that he still respected my campaign skills, even though he resented my cocky attitude toward the senatorial barons, principally him. But why his interest in North Dakota? I discovered that Langer had been a Republican who Johnson had been able to count on in a close-vote situation. And Johnson thought of himself as a son of the Great Plains, which stretched from the Rio Grande north to Canada’s prairie provinces. “The only difference between Texas and Dakota is climate,” he said. “It’s the same land and produces the same things: wheat, cattle, and oil. The people are the same—tough, independent, and ornery— and they don’t like the money-boys and snobs in the East. Our politics are the same, only the Civil War made us Democrats and them Republicans.” LBJ knew his political history. The two Dakotas had been admitted to the Union in 1889 to counterbalance the admission of Montana and Washington , which the Senate Republican leadership suspected of having strong Democratic leanings. Four GOP senators from North Dakota and South Dakota would even it up. There weren’t enough people in Dakota Territory to make one state, let alone two, but politics is politics. Politics turned out to be a passionate game as practiced in the frigid northern climes. Since 1915, North Dakota had been aroused by the Non-Partisan League (NPL), a unique body that had come into being chanting the war cry of Arthur C. Townley, its Socialist Party organizer-founder—“the tools of production should belong to the producers.” What this was all about was wheat. Prior to 1915, the flour-mill magnates of Minneapolis and the railroads had combined to hold the German and Scandinavian farmers of the Great Plains in economic bondage. With grain prices rising because of the Great War that was ravaging Europe, Townley capitalized on the farmers’ desire to get their share. The Non-Partisan League emerged overnight to capture the governorship and the lower house of the North Dakota legislature. Townley and his allies could not handle instant success, and feuds and a plunge in wheat prices after the war crippled the League. Nevertheless, it survived to remain a potent force for forty years, achieving its principal goal of liberating the farmers from the domination of the Minneapolis flour barons. Its exemplar was Langer, a Columbia University-educated lawyer who had so much brass that he was universally known as “Wild Bill.” When the 108 a state that time forgot NPL’s support propelled him into the governorship in the terrible year of 1932, Langer forever endeared himself to farmers by decreeing a moratorium...