The personal scandal of one of Idaho's most popular politicians and why the voters never knew about it

Note: This story was originally published on March 28, 2023.

Idaho Falls – William Borah was “as far west as his paperback would take him” when he got out of the train in Boise.

It was October 1890 and the 25-year-old man from Fairfield, Illinois, came to the latest state of the nation on board the train on board the train. He settled in Boise, where he was successful as a lawyer.

According to his biographer Marian McKenna, Borah was always interested in “Oratory and the Writhap Word”, which he was attracted to the practitioner.

“I can't remember if I didn't want to be a lawyer,” said Borah. “There is no other job in which you can be absolutely independent”

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He married Mary McConnell, the daughter of Idaho's third governor, William McConnell, 1895.

The following year Borah turned his attention to politics. The progressive republican run unsuccessfully for the US representative house and expressed his support for the democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan. After an economic depression, discussions about increasing the money supply were a hot topic. Bryan supported the unlimited silver coin. Borah was on board with the idea, as many Idahoans. But it wasn't enough for Bryan to secure a win.

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Borah also lost the choice, but he won a seat in the US Senate in 1907. It is a position that he held for the next 33 years until his death in 1940. To date, he keeps the award to be the longest -serving US Senator of the Gemstate.

Borah's political achievements

As a senator, Borah was instrumental in the ratification of the 16th and 17th constitutional changes, the latter of which provided the direct choice of the US sensors. Previously, the state legislator chose its US delegation.

In a conversation with Eastidahonews.com, Bill Smith, the director of the Borah Foundation of the University of Idaho, explained the 17th amendment to win Borah with Idahoan's favor.

“Idahoans appreciate a bit of this Maverick touch, even in the 1900s and 1910s,” says Smith. “He is freed from the shift of the mechanism for the direct choice of US senators … to be nuanced in his positions.”

Borah was the chairman of the Senate Committee for 25 years, which gave it enormous influence on American foreign policy in the years after the First World War.

During this time he decidedly opposed President Woodrow Wilson's League of Nations because he believed that it would be obliged to fight the United States in foreign conflicts.

America voted in 1919.

A decade later, Borah campaigned for the Kellogg Briand Pact, which is also known as a Paris Peace Treaty. According to Brittanica, this document was “dispensed with the war as an instrument of national politics”, and almost every nation was for it.

Smith looks at this campaign Borah's most important political achievement.

“People misinterpret this as something that prohibits war on being ever passed, but the norm is trying to go to war on what to do for the countries to do this … and to do it in such a way that the standard position was not acceptable foreign policy, unless it fulfilled certain criteria,” explains Smith. “This was a big change in the way the world interacts.”

“It is a remarkable legacy that Idaho and the world continue to benefit,” added Smith.

Borah was often identified by members of the congress as “Borah von Idaho”, says Smith, and because of his strong leadership and speaking knowledge, he was often referred to as an Idaho lion.

He founded a legacy of senators from Idaho as chairman of the committee for foreign relations. Others who have served in this capacity over the years are the senators Frank Church and Jim Risch, who are now the longest -reigning member of the committee.

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But in the middle of Borah's political achievements was an affair with Alice Roosevelt Longworth, the daughter of the former US President Theodore Roosevelt. They had a child together who was generally known in political circles, but until recently the public did not know.

Borah and Alice Roosevelt Longworth

In a recent podcast interview, Sarah Cordery, who wrote a book about Longworth in 2008, said that Longworth was a writer and a celebrity who was married to Nicholas Longworth, the former spokesman for the US representative house. Like her father, Alice was well trained and had a lot of influence on politics throughout her life.

Although Alice loved her husband, Cordery said that Nicholas was an alcoholic who played the field and had several out -of -marital matters. But for Alice, her husband's political infidelity “was even worse.

“When he would not agree with the progressive party, she began to cool down in her affection to him, which speaks volumes about Alice's commitment to politics,” says Cordery. “Nick's matters continued and they became more public. They were once in Ohio and Alice and she literally stepped over Nick, who stood in the arms of another woman when they pimped on the grass.”

Alice and Borah met in 1908 in the capital of the nation when Borah, according to Boise lawyer and former Attorney General of Idaho, David Leroy, was a “newly shaped senator” student.

It was June 1912 before they had significant contact. Leroy explains that she and many other politicians were back to Washington DC of the Chicago Republican Convention on a train.

“They had conversations and were friends during this trip,” says Leroy. “Her romantic relationship probably started some time after March 1920 when Borah was a leader in the Senate against Woodrow Wilson's League of Nations.”

Borah and Alice shared similar views about the League of Nations and other political questions. Due to the high value she placed on politics, she quickly became “in love” with Borah. The lovers had a daughter together, Paulina, who was born in 1925.

The affair between Longworth and Borah was widely known in Washington, says Cordery. But it is unlikely that the public or Idaho voters knew something about it at the time because it was not reported by the media.

“Journalists knew about it, Washington Insider knew about it, but it was never anything they were thinking about. That would not have been appropriate at the time. They kept their private life privately,” explains Cordery. “The relationship between journalists and politicians was very different at the time.”

And as far as Paulina knew, Nick Longworth was her father. Nobody told her that she had grown up according to Leroy, and Borah was always called uncle.

Alice Sturm, Borah's 35-year-old great-granddaughter, who works as a landscape architect in Washington DC, spoke to Eastidahonews.com about the relationship between Borah and Paulina. She says when Paulina found out that Borah was actually her father, she was “not happy”.

Although Leroy says that Nick and Paulina are “inseparable”, Borah and Paulina have never had a relationship as far as Sturm knows.

Borah died in January 1940 of a brain hemorrhage six months before his 75th birthday. Paulina was 31 years old when she died in 1957, which storm calls a accidental death.

“She combined sleeping pills with alcohol. I don't think people knew that they shouldn't do it at the time,” says Sturm, pointing out that her death was not connected to the news about Borah with an emotional burden.

Although Sturm always knew that Borah was her illegitimate great -grandfather, she says that it has only become public knowledge to publish Cordery's book. It never caused her personal grief, but it has connected them to members of the Longworth family over the years.

Although she has never been to Idaho, she says that she has given her a connection to the state state.

When asked whether she has the wish to run for an office, he laughed and said politely: “No.”

“People … liked Borah”

Despite Borah's married unfaithfulness, Smith still makes his efforts to bring Idaho to the world stage, still a remarkable person from Idaho's past.

“When (Borah) came to Washington for the first time … he was wearing a 10-gallon hat. He had a western mood and a boast in his speech, which people liked,” says Smith. “Even when the policies of the Idaho shifted and the Republicans fell out of favor … Borah was still chosen. The people still liked Borah.”

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The fact that Borah was so popular led to its resemblance to one of two statues to represent Idaho in the US Capitol in the statue hall. It was placed there in 1947, seven years after Borah's death.

Idaho's highest mountain summit in the Lost Range of the Challis National Forest was named in Borah's memory in 1934, according to the Lewiston Tribune.

Leroy noticed Borah's role of enabling Idaho international recognition, and said Borah was Idah's first and leading “citizen of the world”. Many Idahoans are proud of this legacy.