The Democratic party was a “thing of the past,” 58 years ago

In September of 1959, state GOP chairman Claude Jasper spoke to about 200 La Crosse County workers, and declared that the Wisconsin Democratic Party no longer exists.  Jasper was exaggerating a bit.  The governor was a Democrat, Gaylord Nelson.  And so was one of the state’s two U.S. Senators, William Proxmire.  Jasper called Nelson a “phony” who stole a four-point tax plan from the previous Republican governor, Vernon Thomson.
 
Meanwhile, a rising Democratic party star drew big crowds around western Wisconsin that same week.  Senator Jack Kennedy of Massachusetts was pondering a run in the 1960 Wisconsin presidential primary.  Kennedy’s speeches drew 400 people to the Sawyer Auditorium in La Crosse, 600 to the LCU campus, and large audiences in Viroqua, Sparta, and Prairie du Chien.  The future president said Americans had lost their will to fight and sacrifice and endure.
 
The end of September brought Daylight Saving Time to an end in Wisconsin and many other states.  But each state had different laws about what some people called “fast time.”  Minnesota had the shortest daylight saving period in the country that year…from the fourth Sunday of May to the day after Labor Day.  The time changes became uniform in the 60’s, but they were confusing in 1959…58 years ago, yesterday in La Crosse.