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Thomas Gore

Thomas Pryor Gore (10 December 1870-16 March 1949) was a Democratic US Senator from Oklahoma from 11 December 1907 to 4 March 1921 (preceding John W. Harreld) and from 4 March 1931 to 3 January 1937 (succeeding William B. Pine and preceding Joshua B. Lee).

Biography[]

Thomas Pryor Gore was born in Embry, Webster County, Mississippi in 1870; he went blind as a child due to physical accidents. He became a lawyer and became active in the Populist Party, and he settled in Corsicana, Navarro County, Texas in 1894 and became a campaigner for the Populist and Democratic parties. In 1900, he and his family moved to Lawton, Oklahoma, and he was elected to serve as one of the new state's inaugural US Senators in 1907. He became known as a pacifist and anti-interventionist, claiming that the wealthy engineered America's wars. Gore also supported the interests of farmers and Native Americans, but his opposition to conscription during World War I led to his loss of renomination in 1920; he was re-elected in 1930. Gore was initially a New Deal Democrat, but he later came to believe that "the dole spoils the soul" and feuded with President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He retired in 1937 and died in Washington DC in 1949. He was the grandfather of Gore Vidal.

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