B.K. Wheeler: The Senator Who Stopped FDR

The modest house on East Second Street in Butte once belonged to one of the most notable senators in Montana history. Burton Kendall Wheeler arrived in Butte with almost nothing, lost his belongings in a poker game, and rebuilt himself as a labor lawyer and progressive Democrat. Elected to the Senate in nineteen twenty-two, he championed unions, civil liberties, and the rights of ordinary Montanans against the copper companies that dominated the state.

He is perhaps best remembered for leading the Senate fight against Franklin Roosevelt's court-packing scheme in nineteen thirty-seven, the plan to add justices to the Supreme Court until it ruled in favor of New Deal programs. Wheeler, a fellow Democrat, called it an assault on the Constitution and helped defeat it. He served in the Senate until nineteen forty-seven, one of the longest and most independent careers in Montana history.