A traveling country singer became one of Idaho’s most liberal US senators and was later arrested
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IDAHO FALLS – As the Senate clerk called for Theodore Bilbo to be sworn in, Glen Taylor rose from his desk to object.
It was Jan. 3, 1947 and Taylor, Idaho’s senior U.S. Senator — a progressive Democrat from Pocatello who historians say may be the state’s most liberal politician to date — opposed Bilbo’s inauguration. The newly re-elected Democrat from Mississippi was a white supremacist and a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Racist comments had reportedly dominated his 1946 re-election campaign.
In a 2019 book by three-term Ohio Congressman Sherrod Brown, the author explains Bilbo told voters “to get out and see that no n***** votes.”
A special committee investigating Bilbo’s campaign determined Bilbo encouraged voter registrars to “think up questions enough to disqualify undesirables” from voting. Bilbo apparently supported violence against African-American voters.
Later, an investigation into his campaign expenditures found he’d received numerous illegal gifts on the campaign trail, including a new car and a swimming pool for his home.
Despite these charges, a committee consisting of three democrats and two republicans recommended on a party line vote that Bilbo be sworn in anyway.
Three weeks later, when Bilbo was called to the front of the Senate Chambers to be sworn in, Taylor stood up and requested Bilbo’s swearing in be delayed.
“What a hypocritical and blasphemous gesture we would witness today, if Mr. Bilbo were to stand in our midst and place his hands on The Holy Bible and swear (falsely) to democratic institutions, to free elections, to the rights of citizens,” Taylor said, according to Brown.
Taylor spoke against Bilbo for about an hour, Brown writes. The author includes an excerpt from a well-known newspaper columnist at the time, who explains “Bilbo came over and sat down a few feet from the speaker … glowering up with an arrogance rarely equaled in Senate history.”
Several republicans introduced a resolution to deny Bilbo his seat.
Bilbo had cancer at the time and had an upcoming medical procedure. The Senate minority leader asked for the discussion to be tabled while Bilbo underwent surgery.
Bilbo never was sworn in. He died eight months later on a New Orleans hospital bed.
Taylor’s arrest and political views
Civil rights was an issue Taylor supported nearly two decades before it became a national movement led by Martin Luther King — and Taylor often paid a high price for his beliefs.
In 1948, Henry Wallace, former vice president to FDR, ran for president on a third party ticket and selected Taylor as his running mate. Harry Truman ultimately won that election, but during a campaign stop in Birmingham, Alabama, Taylor was arrested while speaking at a black youth rally.
The Birmingham Police Department arrested Taylor for trying to enter a door labeled “coloreds only.” Brown writes in his book that Taylor was driven around in a police car and “subjected to taunts and threats” from officers before being taken to jail.
“It was a big story all around the country. Not every day a United States senator gets arrested,” political historian Marc Johnson told KTVB in 2021.
To this day, KTVB reports Taylor is the only sitting U.S. senator to ever be arrested for protesting.
Taylor was a controversial figure in politics for espousing what his political opponents called “semi-socialist” views. This perception came in part from Taylor’s opposition to the Truman Doctrine, foreign policy established by President Harry Truman that pledged American support to “free peoples” resisting communism.
“The pathological fear and hatred of Russia … is leading some of our more affluent citizens to risk the extinction of mankind in a desperate effort to erase communism from the earth,” Taylor said in a radio speech in 1947. “Our militaristic Wall Street Foreign Policy … has failed to make friends of Russia, and by its arrogant manner has cost us the friendship of practically every country on earth.”
Taylor’s early life and introduction to politics
Taylor was born in Portland, Oregon. His family moved to Kooskia in northern Idaho six weeks later, according to his obituary. He settled in Pocatello years later with his wife and kids.
He held a variety of jobs in his early life, and left school after his eighth-grade year to work for his brother’s stock theater company. Eventually, he gained a reputation as a country-western singer.
As an adult, he and his wife, Dora, toured with their kids in a family band called The Glendora Singers.
In 1932, the 28-year-old Taylor visited his cousin in Arco. Taylor found a book on his cousin’s bookshelf called “The People’s Corporation” by King Camp Gillette, the creator of the Gillette razor.
In the book, Gillette refers to himself as a “Utopian socialist” and Taylor was awestruck with many of his ideas.
This got him thinking about politics.
Four years later, Taylor was in Driggs looking for a place for his family to perform and saw Gov. C. Ben Ross and his secretary of state holding a campaign rally at a small theater in town. To Taylor, it looked like a rehearsed vaudeville act.
“If he can do this and get elected to office … so can I,” Taylor wrote in his 1979 autobiography. “But I can do it better than C. Ben Ross because he is an amateur and I am a professional.”
When he told his wife about his decision, she reminded him that they didn’t have a permanent address in Idaho. That’s how they ended up in Pocatello.
Though Taylor first ran for Congress in 1938, his first election victory didn’t happen until 1944 when he narrowly defeated his Republican opponent, C.A. Bottolfsen, with 51% of the vote.
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The first professional actor ever elected to Congress used his performance skills to get elected.
Taylor’s son, Arod, recalls his father’s unusual campaign style in Brown’s book.
“We bought a small boat,” Arod says, and “put it on top of our old Ford, put our luggage in the boat and covered it with a canvass and sat on it when we were singing. I entertained them, daddy spoke to them, and mother collected the money. We did that about five or six times a day.”
After the election, Taylor continued strumming his guitar for crowds during a cross-country trip to Washington on horseback.
“Upon his arrival in Washington, D.C., Taylor rode his horse, Nugget, up the steps of the U.S. Capitol building,” one article reports. “The housing shortage caused by World War II was still in full swing and so he and his family had a difficult time finding a place to live. In response, Taylor stood outside the building and sang (to the tune of ‘Home on the Range’), ‘O give us a home, near the Capitol dome, with a yard for two children to play.'”
The performance was successful in attracting attention from renters.
The Red Scare and life after politics
Taylor’s efforts in standing up to what Brown calls “McCarthyite hysteria” in the early 1950s made him a political target.
His political opponent, Republican Herman Welker, lumped Taylor into a group of “87 communists in Idaho … and radicals and stooges and crackpots who consistently follow the party line and play right into the communist cause.”
Taylor failed to secure a re-election bid. He ran again in 1956, but lost the primary to Democrat Frank Church, who went on to serve in the U.S. Senate for 24 years.
Taylor and his wife moved to Milbrae, California in 1958 and started making hairpieces. He started wearing toupees as a stage performer years earlier.
“There isn’t much demand for bald juvenile leading men, and I tried everything – sheep dip, what have you – and that just made it fall out faster,” Taylor once said.
When he first ran for public office, he wasn’t wearing a hairpiece. He concluded that voters “didn’t have much use for bald politicians” but that “I ran the fourth time with it and won.”
Taylor earned a patent for his product and his handmade hairpieces became a popular business venture called Taylor Topper Inc. Today, it’s called Taylormade Hair Replacements. It’s owned by Taylor’s son, Greg.
Taylor’s bio also lists several acting credits in his later years. According to IMDB, he appeared in an episode of “Death Valley Days” in 1960 and 10 episodes of “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriett.”
Taylor passed away in 1984 at age 80 from Alzheimer’s.
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