William Langer

William "Wild Bill" Langer (September 30, 1886 – November 8, 1959) was an American lawyer and politician from North Dakota, where he was an infamous character, bouncing back from a scandal that forced him out of the governor's office and into multiple trials. He was the 17th and 21st governor of North Dakota from 1932 to 1934 and from 1937 to 1939.

Langer was elected to the United States Senate in 1940, remaining until he died in office in 1959. There he strongly opposed any American military involvement in world affairs, and his opponents derided him as an isolationist.

Early life, education and early career

Langer was born on September 30, 1886, near

Langer married Lydia Cady, the daughter of New York architect J. Cleaveland Cady, in 1918,^[2] and had four daughters, Emma, Lydia, Mary, and Cornelia (who became a wife of abstract painter Kenneth Noland).

Career

In 1914, Langer was appointed state's attorney of Morton County and was one of a few non-farmers on the Nonpartisan League (NPL) Republican 1916 state ticket. He was elected state attorney general as the newly formed NPL party swept to victory in the 1916 election, but soon clashed with the party's founder and mercurial leader Arthur C. Townley. By 1920, Langer was publicly accusing Townley of Bolshevism, and failed in a primary campaign to replace the incumbent NPL governor Lynn Frazier as the party's gubernatorial candidate. Langer's break with the NPL leadership was a reflection of the infighting that limited the party's eventual influence on North Dakota politics.

Governor

Langer eventually mended his rift with the NPL and was elected governor of North Dakota in 1932. As governor, Langer in 1933 required all state employees to donate part of their annual salaries to the NPL and to the Leader, a weekly newspaper owned by high-ranking officials in his administration. Collecting this money was not prohibited by state law and was a common, traditional practice. But when donations were made by highway department employees, who were paid through federal relief programs, the U.S. Attorney for North Dakota, P. W. Lanier, charged that the donations constituted a conspiracy to defraud the federal government. Brought to trial in 1934, Langer and five co-conspirators were convicted. The trial was presided over by Judge Andrew Miller and prosecuted by Lanier, two of Langer's strongest political opponents in the state.^[3]

The first trial was littered with procedural errors that made it invalid on appeal, including improper and rigged jury selection (the jurors were alleged to have had personal bias against Langer and been hand-picked by Lanier) and heavily biased jury instructions.^[3]

Because of the felony conviction, the North Dakota Supreme Court ordered Langer removed from office, and on July 17, 1934, the Court declared Lieutenant Governor Ole H. Olson the legitimate governor. Langer signed a Declaration of Independence of North Dakota, declared martial law in Bismarck, and barricaded himself in the governor's mansion.^[4] He eventually relented when his own officers refused to recognize his authority, and Olson served the remainder of Langer's term as governor.^[5]

In 1935 the convictions were overturned on appeal. The case against Langer was retried twice in 1935. Miller, following a recusal motion by Langer, refused to step down as judge in the first retrial, which resulted in a hung jury. Between the second and third trials, Lanier filed charges against Langer for committing perjury in his recusal motion against Miller. This trial, unprecedented in its nature on perjury in an affidavit requesting a recusal, resulted in a

Throughout the trials, Langer maintained that he was innocent and the victim of a political vendetta by Miller and Lanier. He was reelected governor in 1936. Historian Lawrence Larsen has called Langer "a master of political theater".[6]

Langer's wife, Lydia, ran for governor in 1934 but lost to Democratic candidate Thomas H. Moodie.^[7][8]

Senate career

In 1938 Langer ran for the Senate as an independent, and received 42% of the vote, losing to Republican Gerald Nye.

The 1940 Senate election was another very dramatic one. Langer defeated incumbent Lynn Frazier in the Republican primary, and then faced both the Democratic candidate, Charles Joseph Vogel, and Republican/NPL Congressman William Lemke, who declined to run for reelection to Congress in order to run for the Senate as an independent. Langer won the election with 38% of the vote.

Because of the trials mentioned above, Langer's qualifications were questioned under Article 1, Section 5 of the Constitution, which declares the U.S. Senate the ultimate judge of its members' elections, qualifications, and returns. The Senate seated Langer conditionally and began an investigation into his trials. The Committee on Privileges and Elections found Langer guilty of "moral turpitude" and unqualified to be a U.S. senator. The full Senate reversed the committee and voted to seat Langer.^[3]

Biographer Glenn H. Smith calls Langer's Senate career "A Study in Isolationism, 1940–1959" and emphasizes his close ties with German American and Scandinavian American voters who bitterly remembered the First World War in the Dakotas and deeply distrusted Britain and the United Nations.

After African-American organizations asked Langer to propose a bill for the federal government to pay for the repatriation of African-Americans to the African continent, he did so.[12] The bill, S. 1800, failed to pass.^[12]

In September 1950, Langer filibustered to prevent the override of President Harry S. Truman's veto of the McCarran Internal Security Act for five hours before collapsing.^[13]

In 1951, Langer lobbied

• 1914–1916:
  State's Attorney for Morton County
• 1916–1920:
  Attorney General
  of North Dakota
• 1933–1934: Governor of North Dakota (removed from office)
• 1937–1939: Governor of North Dakota
• 1941–1959: United States Senate

Works

• The Famine in Germany. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1946.
• The Nonpartisan League; Its Birth, Activities and Leaders. Mandan, ND: Morton County Farmers Press, 1920.

See also

• 1952 United States Senate election in North Dakota
• 1958 United States Senate election in North Dakota
• List of United States senators expelled or censured
• List of United States Congress members who died in office (1950–99)

Footnotes