By Ray Hill For decades, one of the constants of Knox County’s political life was Hal Harrison Clements, an attorney who dabbled in politics, although it is likely more accurate to say that he was an attorney whose true vocation was politics and he dabbled in the law...

By Ray Hill Andrew Lawrence Somers has long since been forgotten, but his was an important voice in the U.S. House of Representatives for many years. Somers was first elected to Congress when only 29 years old and stayed there for the rest of his life. The service of...

By Ray Hill Edna Flannery Kelly spent 20 years in the U.S. House of Representatives, where she represented Brooklyn. Mrs. Kelly was the first woman to be elected to Congress from New York City and made her presence felt in the House. Things might have been very...

By Ray Hill For decades, one of New York State’s most popular public officials was Jacob K. Javits.  Rising from a tenement located on the Lower East Side, Javits worked his way through the New York University School of Law and began a law practice with his brother,...

By Ray Hill Throughout his life, Herbert Romulus O’Conor earned a reputation as a man of industry, capability and capacity. O’Conor also possessed an impeccable sense of timing, which, in politics, is a gift from God. As with catching the trapeze bar, timing is...

By Ray Hill Lansdale Ghiselin Sasscer sounds like a name conjured by a writer like Margaret Mitchell, who wrote “Gone With the Wind.”  The very name makes one think of Southern aristocracy, and while Lansdale Sasscer lived in a Border State, he was certainly born to...

By Ray Hill When I was a youngster, there were certain life stories which defined something unique about that individual’s climb from poverty to success, and it was almost invariably described as an “American success story.”  That would certainly apply to the life of...

By Ray Hill Republicans are not especially plentiful in Maryland, and GOP candidates have always had to swim upstream to win elections in the Free State. Phillips Lee Goldsborough was no exception, and he managed something no other Republican has accomplished to date:...

By Ray Hill Both political parties had selected their respective nominees for the United States Senate in New York.  Republicans had once again nominated Senator Kenneth B. Keating, who had served for twelve years in the House of Representatives before winning a...

By Ray Hill Hillary Clinton was not the first outsider to shop for a seat in the United States Senate from New York; that distinction belonged to Robert F. Kennedy, younger brother of President John F. Kennedy. Robert Kennedy had been the assistant legal counsel to...