Ramstad was Republican member of the Minnesota State Senate from 1981 to 1990 before entering the U.S. Congress. He served in the 102nd, 103rd, 104th, 105th, 106th, 107th, 108th, 109th, and 110th congresses, beginning on January 3, 1991. He first defeated former Minneapolis city councilman Lou DeMars in the 1990 election.

Ramstad was a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1991 until 2009, representing Minnesota’s 3rd congressional district, one of eight congressional districts in Minnesota. On September 17, 2007 Ramstad announced he would not seek reelection in 2008.

Ramstad considered ending discrimination against those suffering from mental health and addiction problems a major part of his legacy, and worked under both Republican and Democratic majorities to pass a Mental Health Parity Bill. Mental Health Parity was eventually passed and signed into law in December, 2008.

Ramstad is currently a resident fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics where he is leading a study group titled The Policy and Politics of Addiction.

Mercer Reynolds was an Ohio finance chairman for George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential and campaign, raising over $600,000 and was named to co-chair Bush’s inaugural committee.

From August 2001 to September 2003, Reynolds served as U.S. ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein. As the national finance chair of U.S. President George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign, Reynolds helped raise over $200 million for the successful effort and is sometimes credited with helping to deliver Ohio’s key electoral votes to the President.

Reynolds was a frequent guest of President Bush at the White House and at Camp David, and was a leading contender for the post of Commerce Secretary upon the 2004 resignation of Don Evans.

Franklin Dewey Richards was a national commissioner of the United States Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and a general authority of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church).

From 1920 to 1922, Richards was a LDS Church missionary in the church’s Eastern States Mission. During his mission, he was the president of the church’s New York, Boston, and Brooklyn districts.

In 1923, Richards received a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Utah. He practiced law in Salt Lake City until being named as the first Utah director of the FHA. In 1947, he became the national commissioner of the FHA in Washington, D.C.. Richards resigned this position in 1952 and pursued a career in mortgage banking.

Prior to his call as a general authority in the LDS Church, Richards was president of the church’s Northwestern States Mission. In 1960, he became an Assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. He served in this capacity until 1976, when the position was discontinued. At this time, he became a member of the newly constituted First Quorum of the Seventy and the senior president of the Presidency of the Seventy. In 1983, he was released from the Presidency of the Seventy to serve as the president of the Washington D.C. Temple; he served in this position until 1986.

Herman Guy Kump was the Democratic Governor of West Virginia from 1933 to 1937. Usually referred to as H. Guy Kump, he served as the 19th Governor of West Virginia during the Great Depression.

Herman Guy Kump focused upon public education, rights of property owners as related to taxation, and public welfare during his tenure as Governor of West Virginia. While Kump was Governor of West Virginia, new state programs were developed such as the state road administration, state park and forestry projects, state-run public assistance programming, and a county school system. His positions were moderate and he encouraged local control where possible.

Governor Kump served West Virginia during demanding economic times and some of the programs developed during his tenure are still operational.

Charles Marion La Follette was an American lawyer and politician from Indiana. His great-grandfather was William Heilman, who was in the United States House of Representatives from Indiana. He served as a Republican in the United States House of Representatives during the 1940s and took part in the post-World War II Nuremberg Trials.

During World War I, La Follette was in the United States Army from 1917 to 1919, where he served in the 38th Infantry Division of the 151st Infantry Regiment.

After his military service, La Follette studied law at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and was admitted to the Indiana State Bar Association in 1925. He set up practice in Evansville, Indiana. La Follette served as a Republican in the Indiana House of Representatives from 1927 to 1929, and in the United States House of Representatives from 1943 to 1947. In 1947 he served as deputy chief of counsel for war crimes in the Nuremberg Trials. La Follette then served as the Director of Americans for Democratic Action from 1949 to 1950, and served on the Subversive Activities Control Board from 1950 to 1951. He was a third cousin of Robert M. La Follette, Jr. and Philip La Follette. He died in Trenton, New Jersey on June 27, 1974.

Lemke was the attorney general of North Dakota from 1921 to 1922. He later was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1932, as a part of the Nonpartisan League. He served four two-year terms in Congress. While in Congress, Lemke earned a reputation as a progressive populist and supporter of the New Deal, championing the causes of family farmers and co-sponsoring legislation to protect farmers against foreclosures during the Great Depression.

In 1934, Lemke co-sponsored the Frazier-Lemke Farm Bankruptcy Act, restricting the ability of banks to repossess farms. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the act into law on June 28, 1934.

Later in 1936, Lemke accepted the nomination of the Union Party, a short-lived third party, as their candidate for President of the United States. He received 892,378 votes, or just under 2% nationwide, and no electoral votes in the 1936 election. Simultaneously, he was reelected to the House of Representatives as a Republican.

In 1940, after having already received the Republican nomination for a fifth House term, he withdrew from that race to launch an unsuccessful run as an independent for the U.S. Senate. He ran again for Congress in 1942 as a Republican and served four more terms, until his death in 1950.

Brad Little is the Governor of Idaho, and most recently served as the 42nd lieutenant governor of Idaho. A member of the Republican Party, Little was appointed by Governor Butch Otter to succeed Jim Risch, who resigned after election to the United States Senate.

Prior to his appointment as lieutenant governor, Little served in the state senate from 2001 to 2009 where he chaired the majority caucus and represented Legislative Districts 8 and 11 (change due to redistricting in 2002). Little won the 2018 gubernatorial election, the seventh straight for the Republican party in Idaho.

Of Scottish descent, Little was born in Emmett, Idaho, was raised on his family’s ranch in Emmett, and graduated from Emmett High School in 1972. He attended the University of Idaho in Moscow, was a member of the Idaho Alpha chapter of Phi Delta Theta Fraternity, and earned a bachelor’s degree in agri-business in 1976. Little married Teresa Soulen of Weiser in May 1978, and they have two sons and five grandchildren.

Little has had an extensive dual career tending to his family’s ranching interests (his grandfather was the “Idaho Sheep King”) and in public service. During the 1981 and 1985 legislative sessions, Little represented his father, David Little, in the senate on a temporary appointment due to illness, during which time he served on the Finance and Resources Committees. Little also managed his family’s ranching operation, Little Land and Livestock, for almost thirty years until his son, David, became manager in 2009 when Little was appointed lieutenant governor. He continues to work as the head of Little Enterprises, Inc. (a diversified farming and cattle operation), and is currently a member of the board of directors of Performance Design Inc. – a small Boise-based manufacturing company.

Little has also been involved in a variety of private organizations and companies based in Idaho and the Mountain West. Little is a former chairman of the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry (IACI), “The Voice of Business in Idaho,” and was a member of its board for twenty years (1981-2001). Little is also the former vice-chairman of the Idaho Community Foundation and the Emmett Public School Foundation, and the former director of the Idaho Wool Growers Association and the University of Idaho Foundation. He has also served in the past on the board of directors of Home Federal Bank, a small Idaho-based regional bank recently acquired by Bank of the Cascades, High Country News, and the Idaho Foundation for Excellence in Education.

Harry Hill McAlister was an American politician who served as Democratic Governor of Tennessee from 1933 to 1937. He also served as Nashville’s city attorney in the early 1900s, and as Tennessee’s state treasurer in the 1920s and early 1930s. Inaugurated as governor at the height of the Great Depression, McAlister enacted massive spending cuts in an attempt to stabilize state finances. He coordinated federal programs in the state aimed at providing Depression-era relief. McAlister withdrew from state politics in 1936 following a quarrel with powerful Memphis political boss E. H. Crump. He spent the last two decades of his life as a Referee in Bankruptcy in Nashville’s district court.

Thomas Lawson “Tom” McCall was an American politician and journalist in the state of Oregon. A Republican, he was the 30th Governor of Oregon from 1967 to 1975. A native of Massachusetts, he grew up there and in Central Oregon before attending the University of Oregon.

After college he worked as a journalist including time at Portland’s The Oregonian during World War II. Later he worked in radio and then in television as a newscaster and political commentator. He made an unsuccessful bid for Congress in 1954, losing in the general election to Edith Green. While working for TV station KGW, he produced a documentary on pollution in Oregon, which helped to spur environmental cleanup of the air and the Willamette River.

In 1964, McCall won his first political office, Oregon Secretary of State, followed by two terms as Governor of Oregon. As governor he worked towards environmental cleanup, the Oregon Bottle Bill, and public ownership of beaches on the Oregon Coast among others. Tom McCall Waterfront Park in Portland is one of several items named in his honor.

Paul Norton McCloskey, Jr. is a decorated veteran and former Republican Congressman. Having served in the Korean War and the Vietnam War, he was awarded the Navy Cross, Silver Star, and two Purple Heat awards. He then began his political career, first serving as Deputy District Attorney for Alameda county in California from 1953 to 1954, and then practicing law until 1967. He was then elected as a Republican to the 90th Congress and served to the seven succeeding Congresses (1967-1983). McClosky was the first member of Congress to call for the Impeachment of President Nixon after the Watergate Scandal and the first lawmaker to call for the repeal of the gulf of Tonkin Resolution that allowed for the Vietnam War.

In 1982, McCloskey was an unsuccessful Republican candidate for nomination to the United States Senate. In 1989, McCloskey co-founded the Council for the National Interest, and in the early 80s he taught political science at Santa Clara University. He unsuccessful in his 2006 run for Congress and in the spring of 2007, McCloskey announced that he had changed his party affiliation to the Democratic Party.