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George Aiken (cont.)

In those early years, between 1931 and 1940, Aiken was too often underestimated. Few of his well-financed foes realized that Aiken's folksy style masked one of the sharpest minds in the country. Even in 1940, after Aiken had served two terms as governor, Rutland Herald Managing Editor Jack Wettleson "regarded Aiken as a hayseed or country bumpkin who shouldn't be taken seriously," according to Robert Mitchell, then a State House reporter and later publisher of the Herald.

This quiet horticulturist from Putney began his political career in 1931 when he took a seat in the Vermont House. The speaker of the House, aware only that Aiken liked flowers, appointed him to the Conservation Committee. "They thought I knew all the trees and plants, but they overlooked the fact that the Conservation Committee had consideration of the streams and the waterpower of the state," remembered Aiken decades later. Aiken did love plants, but he hated the private power companies

"The utility boys were trying to take over the state," he said. As the session opened, the speaker of the House sponsored a bill to construct 80 dams on Vermont rivers, a move designed to aid the power companies. Aiken fought the bill and won. Two years later he was the speaker of the House. Two more years and he was lieutenant governor; another two and he was governor.

Aiken had cultivated a political base even before he entered politics. He was the author of several books on fruits, berries and wildflowers and he traveled the state on behalf of his Putney nursery. "I had been active in the Grange, active in the Farm Bureau, and I had the nursery and about 10,000 customers in Vermont, in virtually every town in the state," he once said. "Believe me, that's probably how I got elected."

The white-haired nurseryman served as governor for four years, during which he flirted with a presidential bid. As he worked to reshape Vermont, he sought to rebuild the national Republican Party, which had been devastated by the Democratic victories during the Depression. In a nationally broadcast speech at the GOP's Lincoln Day dinner in New York, Aiken set the party regulars sputtering when he said, "The greatest praise I can give Lincoln today is to say that he would be ashamed of his party's leadership today."

As enthusiasm for him grew, Aiken was described as a "5-foot-8 Lincoln." The publication in 1938 of his book "Speaking from Vermont" was described by the writer Bruce Catton as "the fuse leading to an Aiken boom in 1940." However, 1938 saw Aiken cool to the prospect of a presidential bid and 1940 saw him running for the U.S. Senate.

His victory in the Republican primary over the establishment's candidate, Ralph Flanders, marked the last time the old guard challenged Aiken. The next year Aiken's fight for rural America moved to Washington.

In Washington, Aiken was known as a man of modest power but immense influence, a person to whom presidents turned when they were in trouble. He was a Republican who had breakfast almost every day for 20 years with the Democratic leader of the Senate. He was a simple man who stopped daily on his way to the Capitol to feed the pigeons.

And unlike many in Washington, George Aiken's Yankee roots never weakened during his years in Congress. "I've never felt at home in Washington," he told a reporter as he prepared to leave the Senate in 1975. "No, Washington's not home. Home's up on the mountains in Vermont where I always lived."