William Lemke

He was born in Albany, Minnesota, and raised in Towner County, North Dakota, the son of Fred Lemke and Julia Anna Kleir, pioneer farmers who had accumulated some 2,700 acres (11 km²) of land. Lemke lost an eye in a boyhood accident.^[1] As a boy, Lemke worked long hours on the family farm, attending a common school for only three months in the summers. However, the family did reserve enough money to send him to the University of North Dakota, where he was not only a superior student, but also well known for his ability to impersonate the professors. Graduating in 1902, he stayed at the state university for the first year of law school but moved to Georgetown University, then to Yale Law School, where he finished work on his law degree and won the praise of the dean. He returned to his home state in 1905 to set up practice at Fargo. Lemke was a Freemason.

During the 1910s, the Nonpartisan League (NPL) was formed and quickly gained significant traction in North Dakota.^[2] Lemke was heavily involved and quickly became one of its top leaders.^[1] He is considered by many to be the brains of the operation, often being called the "bishop" or "political bishop" of the NPL.^[3]

Lemke was elected attorney general of North Dakota in 1920,^[1] although this violated the rule set by NPL leader A. C. Townley about its leaders running for office.^[3] By this time the NPL was plagued with infighting and controversies and public support was declining.^[2][4][5] In 1921, a special recall election, initiated by opponents of the NPL (the Independent Voters Association or IVA) successfully removed all three members of the Industrial Commission, all of which were NPL members: John N. Hagan (Commissioner of Agriculture and Labor), Lynn Frazier (Governor), and Lemke (Attorney General). They were replaced with IVA-supported candidates.^[2][4][5][6]

However, Lemke remained popular. In 1922, he received the NPL's nomination for governor, but he was defeated by incumbent Ragnvald Nestos. Later, in 1932, he was elected to the United States House of Representatives, as a member of the Non-Partisan League (NPL).^[1] Also in 1932, William Lemke campaigned for Franklin D Roosevelt for President in North Dakota and other states in the Midwest.

While in Congress, Lemke earned a reputation as a progressive populist and supporter of the New Deal, championing the causes of family farmers and co-sponsoring legislation to protect farmers against foreclosures during the Great Depression.

In 1934, Lemke co-sponsored the Frazier–Lemke Farm Bankruptcy Act, restricting the ability of banks to repossess farms. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the act into law on June 28, 1934. The Act was later struck down by the Supreme Court in Louisville Joint Stock Land Bank v. Radford. Lemke tried to get the Act re-passed by Congress, but was stymied by the Roosevelt administration which privately told Congressmen that they would exercise a Presidential veto against the bill. The Act was eventually re-passed and later held constitutional by the Supreme Court. Lemke was a political friend and ally of Louisiana populist Huey Long prior to his assassination in 1935.

In June 1936, Lemke accepted the nomination of the Union Party, a short-lived third party, as its candidate for President of the United States.^[7] He received 892,378 votes, or just under two percent nationwide, and no electoral votes in the 1936 election. Lemke did outpoll Alf Landon in six North Dakota counties^[8][a] and remained the last third-party presidential candidate to outpoll a major-party nominee in any non-Southern county^[b] until George Wallace outpolled Hubert Humphrey in Utah's arch-Republican Kane County in 1968 and his successor John G. Schmitz outpolled George McGovern in four Idaho counties in 1972.^[9] Simultaneously, he was reelected to the House of Representatives as a Republican. Many believe Lemke's acceptance of the Union Party nomination in 1936 was out of bitterness toward Roosevelt over the farm mortgage issue. Through the Union Party, Lemke befriended other populists such as Fr. Charles Coughlin.

In 1940, having already received the Republican nomination for a fifth House term, he withdrew from that race to launch an unsuccessful run as an independent for the U.S. Senate. He ran again for the House in 1942 as a Republican and served four more terms, until his death in 1950.

From 1943 to 1948, Lemke was the champion for establishment of the Theodore Roosevelt National Memorial Park (now Theodore Roosevelt National Park). The National Park Service did not support this proposal, and oddly enough Lemke was no admirer of Theodore Roosevelt, but he seems to have pursued the establishment of a park in anticipation of the economic benefits it might bring to the region. His efforts were ultimately successful, with the park established by act of Congress in June, 1948.^[10]

Lemke died of a heart attack in Fargo, North Dakota and is buried in Riverside Cemetery.^[11][12] Former Atlanta Braves baseball player Mark Lemke is Lemke's second cousin twice removed.

• Edward C. Blackorby. "William Lemke: Agrarian Radical and Union Party Presidential Candidate," The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 49, No. 1. (Jun., 1962), pp. 67–84. in JSTOR
• William Lemke Papers at The University of North Dakota University of North Dakota.
• "Lemke, William" in American National Biography. American Council of Learned Societies, 2000.

• List of United States Congress members who died in office (1950–99)

• United States Congress. "William Lemke (id: L000238)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
• Dakota Datebook -- August 13, 2004 from North Dakota Public Radio (via PrairiePublic.org) -- article on Lemke
• "Memorial services held in the House of Representatives of the United States, together with remarks presented in eulogy of William Lemke, late a representative from North Dakota frontispiece 1951"