Bob Bartlett's 435-Hour Threat That Forced Alaska Statehood

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Edward Lewis "Bob" Bartlett, born in Seattle in 1904, graduated from the University of Alaska in 1925 and spent a decade as a newspaper reporter in Fairbanks. After his father's death in 1935 he briefly ran the family mine, which he hated, then moved into government as secretary to the territory's congressional delegate and head of the unemployment commission. In 1939 President Franklin Roosevelt made him Secretary of the Alaska Territory, a post in which he often served as acting governor and sat on the Alaska War Council. Elected Alaska's nonvoting delegate to Congress in 1945, he introduced statehood bills in 1947 and 1950; the 1950 bill passed the House with Harry Truman's backing before dying in the Senate, opposed by Republicans who expected Democratic senators and Southern Democrats wary of civil rights votes.

In 1956 Alaskans held a constitutional convention and sent a shadow delegation of William Egan, Ernest Gruening and Ralph Rivers to Washington, while Interior Department official Ted Stevens quietly helped. Bartlett won over Dwight Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson, and in 1958, with help from the Library of Congress, his allies found an unused statehood rule giving every House member an hour of debate, a potential 435 hours that made opponents fold. Speaker Sam Rayburn credited Bartlett with statehood. As senator he passed the Bartlett Act on accessibility in federally funded buildings. He endorsed Mike Gravel over Gruening's 1968 write-in bid, died in December 1968 after heart surgery, and Governor Walter Hickel appointed Ted Stevens to his seat.

• The Library of Congress estimates he shepherded more bills into law than any other member of Congress.
• He missed his own ovation when the Senate passed statehood, spending the night calling people in Alaska.
• He and Gruening flipped a coin for senior senator, and Bartlett, who won, called Gruening "Junior" for the rest of his life.
• After the 1964 earthquake he flew into the disaster zone on Air Force One and helped secure federal relief.
• Before surgery he warned his surgeon that a change in Alaska's succession law would let the Republican governor replace him.