# Robert La Follette Sr. Robert M. La Follette Sr. (1855–1925) was a Wisconsin Republican-turned-Progressive Senator, the leading **[[Progressive Era]]** political reformer outside the Roosevelt-Wilson presidential tradition, and the 1924 third-party presidential candidate who carried 16.6% of the popular vote and Wisconsin's 13 electoral votes — the most successful third-party presidential run between [[Theodore Roosevelt]]'s 1912 Bull Moose campaign and [[George Wallace]]'s 1968 American Independent run. He was known as "**Fighting Bob**" for his combative oratorical style and his sustained political opposition to corporate-political-machine domination of state and federal government. As Wisconsin Governor (1901-1906), La Follette implemented the "**Wisconsin Idea**" — a state-level progressive-reform program including direct primary elections, railroad regulation, civil-service reform, expanded workmen's compensation, and university-faculty involvement in state policy. The Wisconsin Idea became the operational template for state-level Progressive reform across the 1900-1920 period. As U.S. Senator (1906-1925), he opposed U.S. entry into World War I (one of six Senate votes against the April 1917 war declaration), opposed the Espionage and Sedition Acts (1917-1918), and built the small but influential Progressive Republican bloc that fought the Harding-Coolidge restoration through the 1920s. His 1924 presidential run under the Progressive Party label — endorsed by the American Federation of Labor and the Socialist Party — produced 4.8 million popular votes (16.6%). The structural mechanics of the campaign required ballot access in 17 states; in others he ran as the Socialist Party candidate. He carried only Wisconsin in the [[Electoral College]]. La Follette died eight months after the election; his son Robert La Follette Jr. succeeded him in the Senate. ## Right-wing relevance La Follette's right-wing significance is principally as a Progressive-Era foil and as the carrier of an alternative-American-political-tradition that the post-1968 right-wing coalition largely defines itself against. The Wisconsin Idea — state-level progressive-reform infrastructure, expert administrative governance, anti-corporate regulation — is one of the structural antecedents of what contemporary right-wing politics calls the "administrative state." La Follette's anti-war 1917 position is also an operational antecedent of the 20th-century non-interventionist tradition that has migrated across the political spectrum (American First Committee 1940, post-Vietnam left, contemporary paleoconservative anti-forever-war right). ## Connections - [[Theodore Roosevelt]] — Republican-Progressive rival; the two led parallel progressive movements that occasionally cooperated, more often competed. - [[Woodrow Wilson]] — La Follette voted against Wilson's WWI declaration; broader opposition to Wilson's Progressive-internationalist agenda. - [[Calvin Coolidge]] — Republican president La Follette ran against in 1924. ## See also - [[1924 Presidential Election]] — La Follette's third-party run. ---