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Thomas wasn’t well-known, but made an impact
Sen. Elmer Thomas (1876-1965), a Democrat from Lawton, has been called the least known of all Oklahoma’s political figures. His service in the state Senate from 1907 to 1920, the U.S. House of Representatives from 1923 to 1927 and in the U.S. Senate from 1927 to 1951 spanned the formative years of Oklahoma as a state as well as some of the most dramatic years in United States history.
He came to Lawton in 1900 and set up a law office there. He then became active in real estate, founding and developing the resort town of Mountain Park. He was elected to the state Senate in 1907 and became chairman of the state Appropriations Committee, where he helped write laws to finance the new state of Oklahoma. He ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1920 and lost. But he won when he tried again in 1922.
During his years as a U.S. congressman, in 1924, he got a bill passed that allowed the Kiowa, Comanche and Apache tribes to receive oil royalties from the bed of the Red River. After his election to the U.S. Senate in 1926, he made a name for himself in defending Oklahoma’s oil interests through an old-fashioned filibuster in which he attempted to get an excise tax on oil imported into the United States.
In 1932, he supported the Bonus March to Washington, where veterans attempted to advance the dates on which they would receive checks promised to them by the United States government after World War I.
In the depths of the Depression in 1933, Thomas had what he considered his greatest achievement. He attached an amendment to the Farm Bill of 1933 that allowed the new president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, to inflate the dollar in an attempt to raise prices to revive the economy.
Thomas got a bill passed to provide financing for the Grand River Dam in northeastern Oklahoma and got money for a Bureau of Reclamation project in Altus, which became Altus-Lugert Lake. He always was interested in projects to help farmers and the working man.
He rose to be second-in-command in the Senate Appropriations Committee, and in 1944, was only one of four senators let in upon the secret of the atomic bomb. In 1945, he attended the last session of the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals in Germany and worked to reduce expenditures on the Marshall Plan to revitalize Europe, though he approved the plan as a whole.
In appearance, he was tall, 6-foot-2, silver-haired and very stern looking. His speeches were long, but always full of the most minute facts and figures with which to support his arguments.
Unfortunately, he spent too much time in Washington, D.C., and was defeated in the 1950 Democratic primary by a new man, Mike Monroney, who seemed more in touch with the needs of Oklahomans of 1950. (Ironically, the same reason was given for Monroney’s loss to Henry Bellmon in the Senate race of 1968.)
Thomas’ legacy, though less well-known than others, remains a substantial one.
Information provided by Cherokee Strip Regional Heritage Center.
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