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David I

David Ignatius Walsh (11 November 1872 – 11 June 1947) was Governor of Massachusetts (D) from 8 January 1914 to 6 January 1916 (succeeding Eugene Foss and preceding Samuel W. McCall) and a US Senator from 4 March 1919 to 3 March 1925 (succeeding John W. Weeks and preceding Frederick H. Gillett) and from 6 December 1926 to 3 January 1947 (succeeding William M. Butler and preceding Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.).

Biography[]

David Ignatius Walsh was born in Leominster, Massachusetts in 1872 to Irish immigrant parents, and he worked as a lawyer in Boston before serving in the State House of Representatives from 1900 to 1901. He was an anti-imperialist and isolationist, opposing the American conquest of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War. In 1914, he became the first Irish and Catholic governor of Massachusetts, and he served in the US Senate from 1919 to 1925 and from 1926 to 1947. He spoke in favor of denouncing the Ku Klux Klan, opposed child labor legislation, supported increased penalties for the violation of Prohibition (despite being a drinker), and was known as a gruff and bull-voiced, populist debater. Though a Democratic Party member, he only reluctantly supported Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal and affiliated himself with the Old Right. He opposed US involvement in World War II, and he lost re-election in 1946 and died a year later.

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