There were a couple of pieces on eBay recently that once I saw them – they had to be mine. And this has to be my favorite.
Thomas Matthew Berry was the 14th Governor of South Dakota. Berry, a Democrat from Belvidere, South Dakota. Elected governor twice, in 1932 and 1934, as Governor, he acted as Federal Relief Administrator and helped secure federal aid during the great depression.
According to Wikipedia…
He called the legislature into special session to legalize 3.2 percent beer and again to enact unemployment insurance. During his tenure, state property tax was abolished, replaced by gross income tax which was replaced by a state sales tax.
Berry ran for a third term in 1936 but faced Les Jensen, and a Republican Party that wasn’t going to go gently into the night as you can tell by this GOP sponsored flyer, which took aim at the myth that Berry had taken an ax to state government, noting instead that he’d simply carved up the state as political pie:
And, the rest is history. Les Jensen won the election. In fact, Les Jensen has been in the news quite a bit recently, as he’s received an update to his Gubernatorial portrait.