Tuesday, November 3, 1942. The 1942 Election.

Today was election day in 1942.  Overall, the nationwide election saw an increase in Republican office holders.

In Wyoming, the following occurred:

1942.  Lester Hunt, DDS, the sitting Wyoming Secretary of State and a Democrat narrowly defeated Governor Nels H. Smith.

Lester C. Hunt.

Hunt would serve as Governor for two terms before going on to becoming Wyoming's Senator.  He killed himself in 1954 after Washington D. C. policy picked up his son in 1953 for soliciting a male prostitute.  The scandal was kept quiet for awhile, but political opponents threatened to use it against him as a threat to keep him from engaging in a 1954 bid for office.

In the Senate Hunt had been an opponent of Joe McCarthy.

In the same year that Wyoming went from Republican to Democrat for the Governor's mansion, the state went in the opposite direction for the Senate.  Edward V. Robinson defeated incumbant Harry Schwartz.

Robinson.

Robinson's election was part of a nationwide treand that year that saw a Republican increase.  He's serve only one term and lose a bid for reelection.  He was Welsh and had served in the British Army in the Boer War, and is little remembered as a Wyoming politician.

Hunt's death, it should be noted, remains an enduring tragedy of the McCarthy Era, and one which, at least in some Wyoming circles, came to define McCarthyism and certain right wing elements of the press.

More on Hunt:

Baseball, Politics, Triumph and Tragedy: The Career of Lester Hunt

Robinson, on the other hand, gives us a rare example of a nearly completely forgotten Wyoming politician.  In some ways, that's a shame, as his life story was one that was somewhat typical of the era in that he was an early, post Frontier Era, immigrant to the state when a person could still enter ranching, which he did, in spite of having an engineering background.  Following his defeat for reelection he ultimately retired to Pendleton Oregon in 1958, where he died in 1963. 

 The Marines and Army begin an offensive on Guadalcanal at Koli Point.

Marine Corps pack artillery in action at Koli Point