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A ten-year-old Mike Lee heard a knock on the door of his McLean, Virginia, residence, the place the household had simply moved from Utah.
When his dad, Rex E. Lee, opened the door, the younger boy listened to a person exterior, “Hello, we’re your ward academics.”
“My dad simply laughed and mentioned, ‘Come on in guys.’ I bear in mind him saying one thing like, ‘Effectively, that exhibits how lengthy it’s been because you’ve set foot in a Mormon church, doesn’t it?’” the now Republican senator from Utah remembers.
His dad was poking enjoyable at first cousins Stewart and Morris “Mo” Udall, who used an antiquated title for Latter-day Saint “residence academics” who go to fellow congregants within the neighborhood to share a non secular message. At the moment, they're known as ministering brothers or sisters.
The senator mentioned his dad’s cousins lived close by in the identical Fairfax County residential group that has lengthy been residence to diplomats, members of Congress and high-ranking authorities officers.
However the scene of his dad chatting it up with family members, who all hailed from the tiny japanese Arizona city of St. Johns, marked the primary time the youthful Lee started realizing his prolonged household was populated with political and authorized legends from the West courting again to the 1850s.
His dad had simply been appointed solicitor normal for the Reagan administration. Stewart Udall was a former congressman and inside secretary within the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. And Mo Udall was in his eleventh time period representing Arizona within the Home. Three extra Udall-Lee family members (one Republican and two Democrats) would serve within the Senate, and Mike Lee, a Republican, turned the fourth.
If the senator from Utah fails to win a 3rd time period this yr, it may break a exceptional streak of a Lee or Udall relative serving in Congress in each decade because the Nineteen Fifties.
“The Udall-Lee run of eight consecutive a long time in Congress is almost unprecedented,” mentioned Jane L. Campbell, CEO and president of the U.S. Capitol Historic Society. “Solely the Dingells surpass the Udall-Lees for his or her consecutive variety of a long time in both chamber of Congress. And solely the Kennedys match the Udall-Lees in that regard.”
Udall and Lee family members typically wave off comparisons to the Kennedys, Bushes, Roosevelts, or Dingells. Former U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, of Colorado, as soon as recalled his aunt summing up such comparisons this fashion: “The Kennedys are rich, Catholic New Englanders; the Udalls are poor, Mormon dust farmers from the West.”
For higher or for worse, these “dust farmers” have had an outsized financial and environmental affect on the West, and observers say their public service the previous seven a long time is felt at present within the White Home, Congress, the Supreme Courtroom and all through the nation.
The Udall-Lee household’s spectacular political legacy had an inauspicious starting. Each strains of politicians share a typical ancestor — the infamous pioneer frontiersman John Doyle Lee.
An early convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Lee trekked throughout the Plains and helped settle the cruel southern Utah desert. He served within the Utah Territorial Legislature in 1858.
The political submit got here after Lee was a number one participant in one of many darkest chapters in western United States historical past that led to his execution by firing squad. Felony trials almost 20 years after the crime confirmed he helped perform the bloodbath of greater than 100 males, ladies and youngsters, throughout a local weather of hysteria when federal troops had been headed to Utah. The victims comprised an emigrant firm from Arkansas making their solution to California after they had been slaughtered on Sept. 11, 1857, by a gaggle of Latter-day Saint settlers and Paiute Indians in southwestern Utah.
A monument stands on the Nationwide Historic Landmark memorializing what is named the Mountain Meadows Bloodbath. And Lee’s involvement within the atrocity troubled lots of his descendants then, and now.
“I bear in mind listening to my grandmother, Lela Lee Udall, who was a granddaughter of John D. Lee, as soon as specific that it was a really heavy cross that her household needed to bear as a legacy of John D. Lee,” recalled Gordon Smith, a Lee and Udall descendant who served two phrases as a Republican U.S. senator from Oregon.
Sen. Mike Lee mentioned he senses the 2 prison trials his ancestor went via might have influenced his grandfather’s choice to go to regulation college. John D. Lee’s first trial ended with a hung jury. And his legal professional, William Bishop, who anticipated the identical end result within the second jury trial, was caught unprepared as a brand new prosecuting legal professional gained a first-degree homicide conviction, mentioned Richard E. Turley Jr., a former assistant church historian and co-author of a forthcoming ebook on the aftermath of the bloodbath and the Lee trials.
Lee’s execution by firing squad happened at Mountain Meadows.
Amongst Lee’s most loyal defenders was his son John David Lee, whose mom was Lee’s 14th polygamous spouse. And it was from John David that the Lee-Udall political progeny sprang.
Two of his daughters — Louisa and Lela — married Udalls, who themselves and a number of other of their siblings held outstanding public workplaces all through Arizona, together with mayor of Phoenix and chief justice of the state Supreme Courtroom. And their youngsters continued the custom with Stewart Udall turning into the primary within the household to be elected to Congress in 1955 as a Democrat.
He served till 1961, when he was named inside secretary within the Kennedy after which Johnson administrations. His brother Mo Udall succeeded him and represented the state’s 2nd Congressional District for 30 years. Throughout that point, he misplaced the Democratic nomination for president to Jimmy Carter in 1976.
Their Republican first cousin, Rex E. Lee, served as U.S. solicitor normal from 1981-85. His oldest son Thomas Lee, an affiliate justice of the Utah Supreme Courtroom, had been on brief lists, alongside together with his brother Sen. Mike Lee, of potential U.S. Supreme Courtroom nominees in the course of the Trump administration.
When Mo Udall resigned in 1991, a Udall-Lee descendant was absent from Capitol Hill for almost six years, till Smith was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1996. Two years later, cousins Tom Udall and Mark Udall, each Democrats, gained congressional seats in New Mexico and Colorado, respectively.
In 2008, Tom and Mark gained U.S. Senate seats however Smith misplaced his bid for a 3rd time period. The uncommon incidence of getting three family members serving within the U.S. Senate on the identical time occurred two years later, when Sen. Mike Lee was first elected.
Whereas far aside politically, Lee mentioned the Udalls supported their freshman cousin throughout the aisle.
“Each new member is assigned a mentor upon arriving, and Tom was assigned to be mine,” Lee mentioned. “It’s somebody to look out for you and inform you how the place works. He was very useful.”
Tom Udall, Stewart Udall’s son, is now U.S. ambassador to New Zealand after two phrases within the Senate.
Analysis into political dynasties in America finds that “energy begets energy.” A 2007 examine on political dynasties in Congress since 1789 discovered that “legislators who get pleasure from longer tenures are considerably extra prone to have family members coming into Congress later.”
The analysis didn’t supply causes, however one of many authors advised Reuters that it could possibly be youngsters of political dad and mom gained title recognition, discovered useful political abilities or received entry to political equipment that smoothed the best way right into a profession in politics.
Mark Udall, Mo Udall’s son, defined there was by no means stress within the household to pursue politics, however when individuals like Bobby Kennedy and different outstanding individuals are dropping by the home it does depart an impression.
“I simply thought public service was a splendidly thrilling and rewarding and significant solution to be on the planet,” he recalled.
Smith had an analogous expertise. His father, Milan Smith, served within the Eisenhower administration, so he spent his early years in Washington, D.C., and was effectively conscious of the political prominence of his distant cousins Stewart and Mo Udall. When he thought of coming into Oregon state politics, he and his mom paid a go to to her cousin Mo, who was hospitalized with Parkinson’s illness.
“I advised him I used to be pondering of operating for the Oregon state Senate. And he didn’t make any remark of remorse that I used to be a Republican, however he inspired me to do it.”
Lee, who additionally remembers dropping by cousin Mo’s congressional workplace when the youthful Lee was a Senate web page, added that he by no means felt any expectation to enter politics and that the Lee-Udall legacy in Congress isn’t a consider his in search of a 3rd time period.
“I can inform you with out hesitation that has by no means entered my thoughts,” he mentioned.
Mark Udall believes future generations of the household will seemingly get into politics when the timing is true for them. He didn’t determine to run for political workplace till his mid-40s and the method of campaigning didn’t come naturally.
“I had climbed the third-highest mountain the world, however I used to be too scared to go knock on doorways,” he mentioned with amusing.
The longer term technology of Lee-Udall politicians shall be following ancestors who affected the lives of almost everybody within the West and plenty of across the nation, observers say.
“For those who reside on the Wasatch Entrance and all the best way to Tucson, you’re affected by them every single day via water as a result of they received each the Central Utah Venture and the Central Arizona Venture funded,” mentioned retired historical past professor Ross Peterson, who has researched and written in regards to the lives of Stewart and Mo Udall.
Endangered species protections, nationwide parks and recreation areas, wild and scenic river designations, and wilderness designations had been created and expanded below the watch of the 2 brothers.
Whereas they had been each icons within the environmental motion, the knowledge of the formidable hydroelectric dam constructing in the course of the Nineteen Sixties that fueled ongoing financial progress within the West is questioned by some at present. Researchers have since discovered extra in regards to the affect the tasks have had on fisheries, and the megadrought afflicting the area the previous 20 years has policymakers rethinking how one can quench persevering with progress with a shrinking water provide.
Smith, who misplaced a son to suicide stemming from psychological sickness, sponsored laws to place federal funding for psychological well being on par with different well being care wants and altered the controversy over psychological well being in Congress.
Peterson mentioned the household’s efforts via nationwide coverage and nonprofit initiatives to proper wrongs completed to Native American tribes by white settlers started when their grandfather Levi Udall wrote the bulk opinion for the Arizona Supreme Courtroom extending the correct to vote for Native Individuals residing on reservations.
The Lee affect on the regulation didn’t cease on the state stage. Smith’s brother Milan Smith Jr. was appointed to ninth Circuit Courtroom of Appeals in 2006, the place he wrote a unanimous opinion in 2020 discovering Nevada’s COVID-19 restrictions violated spiritual freedom.
Probably the most influential within the authorized area was arguably Rex E. Lee, who's regarded by conservative and liberal authorized students because the mannequin solicitor normal, mentioned retired D.C. Circuit Decide Thomas Griffith.
Whereas Rex E. Lee is commonly famous for successful a excessive share of the instances he argued for the federal government earlier than the Supreme Courtroom, Griffith mentioned he was admired by his successors for skillfully and balancing the pursuits of the administration and the nation at massive.
“Generally the solicitor normal is known as the ‘tenth Justice.’ That’s overstating it a bit of bit, however there's a historical past of the Supreme Courtroom with the ability to belief the solicitor normal,” Griffith mentioned. “And as a lot as anyone, Rex is chargeable for that.”
The solicitor normal wasn’t the one Lee or Udall to have impressed and influenced Griffith. He lived throughout the road from Congressman Mo Udall, who gave the 15-year-old neighbor boy his first job on Capitol Hill as a summer season intern.
Being too younger to drive wasn’t an issue for Griffith.
“Each morning that summer season, Mo Udall would come up in his used Mustang convertible and honk the horn and little Tom Griffith would sit within the automobile with him and drive all the way down to Capitol Hill. After which at 5:30 at evening, he’d come by and say, “Let’s go residence,” Griffith recalled. “It was superior.”
Whereas their politics diverged, they stayed shut till Udall died in 1998. Griffith, a Republican, was serving as chief authorized counsel to the Senate and was requested by Udall’s widow to take a seat with the household throughout a memorial service within the Capitol. When Senate Democratic chief Tom Daschle came to visit to pay his respects he gave Griffith a quizzical look, prompting the Republican appointee to clarify his awkward state of affairs.
“I advised him, ‘I don’t need you to inform this to (Majority Chief Trent) Lott. I used to work for Mo Udall and he’s certainly one of my heroes.’” Griffith recalled. “And he checked out me and mentioned, ‘OK, our secret.’”
Editor’s observe:Matthew Brown’s spouse, Barbara Jones Brown, is co-author with Richard E. Turley Jr. of a forthcoming ebook on the aftermath of the Mountain Meadows Bloodbath and prison trials of John D. Lee.