John Hubert Hall

John Hubert Hall (born February 7, 1899 in Portland , Oregon , †  November 14, 1970 in Newport , Oregon) was an American politician and from 1947 to 1949 the 24th  governor of the state of Oregon.

Early years and political advancement

John Hubert Hall was the son of the Oregon politician and lawyer John Hicklin Hall . He attended public schools in Portland and a military academy in Indiana . During the First World War he was in the medical service of the US Navy . After the war, he continued his education at Oregon State College and then with a law degree at Northwestern College of Law . In 1926 he was admitted to the bar. Then he started to work in his new profession.

In addition to his legal work, Hall was also politically active. As a member of the Republican Party , he sat between 1932 and 1946, with a few interruptions, as a member of the Oregon House of Representatives . In 1947 he was even speaker of the house. On October 28, 1947, a plane crash, with dire consequences for Oregon's history, killed Governor Earl Snell , Secretary of State Robert S. Farrell and Senate President Marshall E. Cornett . With that the three highest officials of the state were dead. According to the constitution of Oregon now the third representative of the governor, the president of the state parliament, had to take over his task. That was John Hall at the time.

Governor of Oregon

In his relatively short term in office, a conflict over alcohol legislation is particularly noteworthy. Hall wanted to liberalize the state's strict alcohol laws. For this reason, he also wanted to reorganize the state control committee on this subject. A member of the commission had publicly criticized the governor, to which Hall responded by dismissing him. That heated up the situation even further. His opponents accused Hall, among other things, of favoring the alcohol industry. This issue overlaid all of the governor's other political plans. In 1948 there was a constitutional special election about who was to end the governor's term of office, which ran until 1953. Hall ran for his party's nomination but was defeated over the alcohol issue. His loss to Douglas McKay was very close. So he had to give up his office on January 10, 1949.

Another résumé

After being voted out of office, Hall moved to Lincoln County . There he worked as a lawyer. In 1965 he became a district judge for a term. Then he got cancer of the larynx, from which he died in November 1970. John Hall was married twice and had three children in total.

Web links

• John Hubert Hall in the National Governors Association (English)
• Oregon State Library ( Memento November 25, 2004 on the Internet Archive )