 Chris Carlson Carlson Chronicles |
“Benewah County has an opportunity which may never come this way again.†- St. Maries Gazette Record, June 6, 1946
The above item was the last point in a campaign ad for C.A. “Doc†Robins, a former three-term Benewah County State Senator running for the 1946 Republican gubernatorial nomination.
The 61-year-old Robins easily defeated former two-term Idaho Governor C.A. “Bott†Bottolfsen in the primary and went on to defeat incumbent Governor Arnold Williams by a landslide in November.
Robins was the first governor of Idaho from the northern part of the state in more than 50 years and surely will be, as the ad suggests, the only governor with ties to Benewah County ever.
Ask people on the streets of St. Maries today who “Doc†Robins was and the vast majority don’t have a clue. There is no sign as one enters St. Maries that it used to be the hometown of arguably one of the most influential people in Idaho’s political history. Nor is there any notice erected anywhere in the county.
And that’s a shame.
Robins, a physician, was not only a fine governor, by all accounts he also was a warm, wonderful human being who cared deeply about his patients, was always approachable and certainly possessed an exceptional bedside manner. He delivered most of the babies born in the county for many years.
His fellow state senators elected him that body’s president for the 1943 session of the Idaho Legislature. Re-elected to a fourth consecutive term in 1944, he surely would have been elected its president again. But he resigned from the Senate rather than leave St. Maries without any doctor, which would have been the case had he attended the 1945 legislative session.
Politically, 1946 was an incredibly important year with electoral outcomes heavily influencing the future of the state and its politics. The epoch-changing events began with the death of Republican U.S. Senator John Thomas on Nov. 10, 1945.
On Nov. 17 Democratic Governor Charles Gossett resigned as governor, an act which elevated his Lieutenant Governor, Arnold Williams, to the governorship. Williams then appointed Gossett to the vacant Senate seat. The gamesmanship did not set well with the voters in part because Williams became Idaho’s first Mormon governor at a time when there was still a bias against members of the LDS church, particularly among north Idahoans. (more…)