Alben W. Barkley

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Alben William Barkley (November 24, 1877 – April 30, 1956) was an American lawyer and politician from Kentucky who served as the 35th vice president of the United States from 1949 to 1953 under President Harry S. Truman. In 1905, he was elected to local offices and in 1912 as a U.S. representative. Serving in both houses of Congress, he was a liberal Democrat, supporting President Woodrow Wilson's New Freedom domestic agenda and foreign policy. Endorsing Prohibition and denouncing parimutuel betting, Barkley narrowly lost the Kentucky Democratic gubernatorial primary in 1923 to fellow representative J. Campbell Cantrill. In 1926, he unseated Republican senator Richard P. Ernst. In the Senate, he supported the New Deal approach to handling the Great Depression in the United States. Democrats chose him to succeed Senate Majority Leader Joseph Taylor Robinson upon Robinson's death in 1937. His 1938 re-election bid was an intense, bitter victory against Governor A. B. "Happy" Chandler. When...

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