Альберт Камминс: Политик, Губернатор и Сенатор от Айовы

Politician, governor, and senator from Iowa

Albert Baird Cummins (February 15, 1850July 30, 1926) was an American lawyer and politician. He was the 18th governor of Iowa, elected to three consecutive terms and U. S. Senator for Iowa, serving for 18 years. Cummins was a leader of the Progressive movement in Washington and Iowa. He fought to break up monopolies. Cummins' successes included establishing the direct primary to allow voters to select candidates instead of bosses; outlawing free railroad passes for politicians; imposing a two cent street railway maximum fare; and abolishing corporate campaign contributions. He tried, with less success, to lower the high protective tariff in Washington.

Cummins was born in a log house in Carmichaels, Pennsylvania, the son of Sarah Baird (Flenniken) and Thomas L. Cummins, a carpenter who also farmed. He attended different schools including the Greene Academy at Carmichaels, and was matriculated at Waynesburg College. He completed required classes at Waynesburg College, However, historians consider his representation of farmers in the barbed wire case to be an anomaly because more often he represented corporations or businessmen. He unsuccessfully pursued a seat in the U. S. Senate in 1894. After Gear suffered a fatal heart attack in July 1900, Governor Leslie M. Shaw rejected numerous appeals to appoint Cummins to the vacancy, and instead appointed Jonathan P. Dolliver. Cummins initially vowed to seek the seat again in the 1901 legislative session, The "Iowa idea", as stated in the Iowa Republican Party's 1902 platform, favored "such amendments of the Interstate Commerce Act as will more fully carry out its prohibition of discrimination in ratemaking, and [such] modifications of the tariff schedules [as] may be required to prevent their affording a shelter to monopoly." The "Iowa idea" embodied the principle that tariff rates should accurately measure the difference between the cost of production here and abroad, but not set rates higher than necessary to protect home industries. However, Senator Allison died on August 4, 1908, two months after the primary and before the Iowa General Assembly chose among the primary winners. In November 1908, a second Republican primary was held, which Cummins won decisively. Later that month and again two months later, in January 1909, Cummins was appointed by the Iowa General Assembly over Democratic rival Claude R. Porter. He served as U. S. senator from Iowa for 18 years, from 1908 until his death in 1926. He served as president pro tempore of the U. S. Senate between 1919 and 1925. He also chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Committee on Interstate Commerce. Cummins generally supported President Woodrow Wilson's initiatives to regulate business, and authored a clause of the Sherman Antitrust Act. It symbolized Cummins' postwar break with the progressive movement, which would ultimately contribute to his defeat.

In January 1912, Cummins announced his intention to run for the Republican presidential nomination. He was considered as a candidate at the 1912 Republican National Convention. However, during the turmoil following the walkout of Theodore Roosevelt's supporters, Cummins's name was not placed in the presidential ballot. In the national election, Cummins supported Roosevelt rather than Taft, even though he opposed Roosevelt's creation of a third party. In 1916, Cummins again ran for the Republican presidential nomination at the 1916 Republican National Convention. This time, with no incumbent president of his own party, delegates were split among over a dozen candidates on the first ballot on which Cummins finished fifth. After Cummins again finished fifth on the second ballot, he released his delegates, contributing to the third ballot victory of Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes.

In June 1926, insurgent Smith W. Brookhart defeated Cummins in the Republican primary for Cummins' Senate seat. Two months earlier, Brookhart had been removed from Iowa's other U. S. Senate seat when a majority of his colleagues in the Republican controlled U. S. Senate voted in favor of Democrat Dan Steck's challenge to the outcome of the 1924 Brookhart Steck race. Cummins had refused to take a position on the election contest, knowing that if Brookhart were unseated he would likely run for Cummins's seat. The month after his primary defeat, Cummins died in Des Moines. He is buried at the Woodland Cemetery there.

Apart from being the Iowa governor and U. S. senator, Cummins is remembered for serving as president pro tempore of the Senate from 1919 to 1925. In addition, two times he declared his intentions to run for the Republican presidential nomination but did not succeed. Cummins was perhaps the most influential and charismatic Progressive leader in Iowa politics in the first quarter of the 20th century. However, he gradually turned more conservative moving from La Follette's Progressivism to the New Era Republicanism of Warren G. Harding. In the 1890s, he led the Iowa Republican Party's progressive wing, or the so called insurgents, to power at the expense of its old guard of standpatters, who had controlled the party almost since its inception. After his postwar withdrawal from the progressive movement and shortly before his death, Cummins was defeated by a progressive contender within his own party.

On June 24, 1874, Cummins married Ida Lucette Gallery; they had one child, a daughter. His wife, Ida L. Cummins, was an activist in the suffrage movement and very influential in the development of Iowa child labor laws.