Quentin Burdick: Six Straight Defeats, Then 32 Years as King of Pork

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Quentin Burdick was born in 1908 in Munich, North Dakota, son of Usher Burdick, a Republican lieutenant governor and longtime congressman. He broke wild ponies on the family ranch near Williston, captained his high school football team and played blocking back for Bronko Nagurski at the University of Minnesota, where a knee injury later kept him out of World War II. After law school he returned to Fargo in 1932 and represented farmers facing Depression foreclosures, the period he said gave him a social conscience. Running with the Nonpartisan League on the Republican ticket, he lost races for attorney general, state senate, lieutenant governor, governor and U.S. Senate between 1934 and 1956, then helped merge the league with the Democrats in 1956.

In 1958 his father withdrew from his own House race on the condition that the league back Quentin, who won the seat. His first wife, Marietta, died that year. After Senator William Langer died, Burdick ran in 1960 on the slogan Beat Benson with Burdick, aimed at Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson, and defeated Governor John Davis by 1,118 votes. Nine days later he married Jocelyn Peterson, a widow. Over 32 years in the Senate he chaired Environment and Public Works from 1987 and steered federal money into rural North Dakota, earning the nickname King of Pork. He died in office in September 1992 at 84, and Jocelyn was appointed to his seat, becoming North Dakota's first woman senator.

• His first House speech called for Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson to resign over lower crop price supports.
• His son Gage died in a woodworking accident at the family home in 1978 at age 16.
• In 1990 he was one of only nine Democrats to vote against confirming David Souter.
• Late in his tenure, polling showed 76 percent of North Dakotans thought he should step down.
• Kent Conrad reversed his plan to leave the Senate and won the special election for Burdick's seat.