Lester C. Hunt

Infobox Governor
name = Lester Callaway Hunt


order = 19th
office = Governor of Wyoming
term_start = 1943
term_end = 1949
lieutenant =
predecessor = Frank E. Lucas
successor = Arthur G. Crane
birth_date = July 8, 1892
birth_place = Isabel, Illinois
death_date = June 19, 1954
death_place =
party = Democrat
spouse =
profession =
religion =

Lester Callaway Hunt (July 8, 1892–June 19, 1954) was a Democratic politician and dentist from the U.S. state of Wyoming. He served as governor of Wyoming from 1943 to 1949 and as United States Senator from January 3, 1949 until his suicide on June 19, 1954.

Hunt was born in Isabel, Illinois and worked as a switchman on a railroad to put himself through dental school at St. Louis University. Prior to dental school, Hunt attended and graduated from Wesleyan University. [http://www.nndb.com] Upon graduation from dental school in 1917, he moved to Lander, Wyoming, where he briefly established a dental practice before joining the United States Army Dental Corps when the United States entered World War I. Hunt served in the Dental Corps from 1917 to 1919 and rose to the rank of major. After postgraduate study at Northwestern University in 1920, Hunt resumed his practice in Lander and served as president of Wyoming State Board of Dental Examiners from 1924 to 1928.

Hunt was elected to the state legislature from Fremont County in 1933. He subsequently served two terms as Wyoming secretary of state from 1935 to 1943, and two terms as governor from 1943 to 1949. He is credited with the idea for the bucking bronco that has been featured on the Wyoming license plate since the 1930s.

Hunt was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1948, taking office on January 3, 1949. During his tenure in the Senate, Hunt became a bitter enemy of Wisconsin Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, and his criticism of McCarthy's anticommunist tactics marked him as a prime target in the 1954 election.

Blackmail and death

In July 1953, Hunt's twenty-year-old son was arrested for soliciting prostitution from a male undercover police officer in Lafayette Square. Republicans learned of this, and in early 1954, Senator Styles Bridges of New Hampshire delivered a blackmail demand. Hunt was to retire from the Senate, and not run for re-election. Furthermore, he was to resign from the Senate immediately, so the Republican governor could appoint a Republican to run as an incumbent. If Hunt refused, Wyoming voters would be informed of the arrest of Hunt's son. After some vacillation, Hunt announced on June 8, 1954, that he would not seek reelection. Eleven days later, he shot himself in his Senate office.

Republican Edward D. Crippa was appointed to fill the remainder of Hunt's Senate term. Democrat Joseph C. O'Mahoney won the seat in the general election of November 1954, which also tipped the Senate to a one vote Democratic majority.

This blackmail and eventual suicide in a Senator's office was fictionalized by Allen Drury in his best-selling and Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "Advise and Consent". Drury transferred the homosexual incident from a Senator's son to a Senator, with the blackmailing Senator, Fred Van Ackerman, in Wyoming, not the victim, who was Senator Brigham Anderson from Utah.

Hunt's anti-McCarthyism and his son's homosexuality are mentioned in Thomas Mallon's 2007 novel "Fellow Travelers." That novels examines the government's attitude towards homosexuality in the 1950s. Mallon uses Hunt's suicide to reflect the damage that could result from the persecutions.

References

* [http://www.casperstartribune.net/articles/2004/11/01/news/wyoming/8cf263f85d4be99387256f3e0020f92f.txt Tamara Linse, "A Senator's suicide", Caspar Star Tribune, November 1, 2004.]
* [http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=H000975 Hunt's entry in the Congressional Biography Directory]
* [http://home.earthlink.net/~dbratman/drury.html David Bratman, "The Fictional Senate of Allen Drury's Advice and Consent"]