Robert M. La Follette
American progressive politician from Wisconsin (1855–1925)
Robert Marion La Follette Sr. (June 14, 1855 – June 18, 1925), nicknamed "Fighting Bob", was an American lawyer and the leading progressive politician in Wisconsin from the 1890s until his death in 1925. He served as U.S. senator from Wisconsin for the last 20 years of his life; prior to that he served as the 20th governor of Wisconsin (1901–1906) and served three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives (1885–1891). A Republican for most of his life, he ran for president of the United States as the nominee of his own Progressive Party in the 1924 United States presidential election. Historian John D. Buenker describes La Follette as "the most celebrated figure in Wisconsin history".
Born and raised in Wisconsin, La Follette won election as the Dane County district attorney in 1880. Four years later, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he was friendly with party leaders like William McKinley. After losing his seat in the Democratic wave election of 1890, La Follette regrouped. As a populist, he embraced progressivism and built up a coalition of disaffected Republicans. He unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for governor in [[1896]] and [[1898]] before winning the nomination and the office in the 1900 gubernatorial election.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Robert M. La Follette” is american progressive politician from Wisconsin (1855–1925). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Robert, Follette and American, not as a finished interpretation.
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This entry incorporates text from “Robert M. La Follette” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.