Smith W. Brookhart

Smith W. Brookhart

Smith Wildman Brookhart (born February 2, 1869 in Scotland County , Missouri , † November 15, 1944 in Prescott , Yavapai County , Arizona ) was an American politician . Between 1922 and 1926 and again from 1927 to 1933 he represented the state of Iowa in the US Senate .

Career

Smith Brookhart attended public schools in his home country and in Bloomfield . In 1889 he graduated from the Southern Iowa Normal and Scientific Institute there . He then worked as a teacher in Keosauqua for five years. After a subsequent law degree and his admission as a lawyer in 1892, he began to work in Washington , Iowa in his new profession. Between 1895 and 1901 he was a district attorney in Washington County there . During the Spanish-American War of 1898 he was a lieutenant in the American armed forces. Then he practiced again as a lawyer. He also worked in agriculture. Politically, he joined the Republican Party . In 1912 he was chairman of the Republican State Convention for Iowa. During the First World War he was active again in the United States Army . He rose from major to lieutenant colonel. Between 1921 and 1925, Brookhart was president of the National Rifle Association .

In 1920 he failed in his party's primary election on his first attempt to be elected to the US Senate. After the resignation of US Senator William Squire Kenyon , Charles A. Rawson was appointed his successor on February 24, 1922. He took on this task provisionally and did not run in the official by-election. Brookhart could now win this by-election. He asserted himself against the later governor Clyde L. Herring . Brookhart then ended his term in office in the US Senate between November 8, 1922 and March 3, 1925. In 1924 he was re-elected. Therefore he could remain in the Senate after March 3, 1925. His term of office would actually have run until March 3, 1931. However, there was a contestation of the 1924 elections by Daniel Frederick Steck , his opponent from the Democratic Party at the time . After this objection was granted, Smith Brookhart had to cede his mandate as a Class 2 category Senator on April 12, 1926 to Steck and leave the Senate.

In the elections of 1926 Brookhart was then re-elected to the US Senate for the other Senate seat of the state of Iowa (Class 3), where he took up a six-year term on March 3, 1927. In 1932 he was no longer nominated for re-election by his party. He then ran unsuccessfully as an Independent Candidate. Therefore, he left the US Senate on March 4, 1933. He was a proponent of prohibition and opposed (unsuccessfully) the repeal of the 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution . After leaving the Congress, he was an advisor to the Federal Government for foreign trade with the then Soviet Union until 1935 . He campaigned for the political recognition of this state. He then returned to Iowa, where he ran unsuccessfully in his party's primary election for his return to the US Senate in 1936. He then practiced as a lawyer again until 1943. Then he moved to Arizona for health reasons, where he died on November 15, 1944.

Web links

Commons : Smith W. Brookhart  - Collection of images, videos, and audio files

• Smith W. Brookhart in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)