Pfost, Gracie Bowers, 1906-1965

Variant names

Dates:

Birth 1906

Death 1965

Birth 1906-03-12

Death 1965-08-11

Gender:

Female

Nationality: Americans

Language: English

Biographical notes:

Gracie Bowers Pfost (March 12, 1906 – August 11, 1965) was an American businesswoman and politician. She was the first woman to represent Idaho in the United States Congress, serving five terms as a Democrat in the House of Representatives from 1953 to 1963.

Born Gracier Bowers in an Ozark Mountain log cabin in Harrison, Arkansas, Pfost was five when her parents moved to a farm near Boise, Idaho, in 1911. She quit Meridian High School at 16 in 1922 and worked as a milk analyst at a dairy in Nampa. The next year she married her supervisor, Jack Pfost. She later graduated from Link's Business College in Boise in 1929.

Pfost entered politics in Canyon County; she held several positions in county government between 1929 and 1951, including deputy county clerk, auditor, recorder of deeds, and county treasurer. She also served as an Idaho delegate to all Democratic National Conventions between 1944 and 1960. The Pfosts ran a real estate business in the 1940s and into the 1950s.

In 1950, Pfost ran for Congress and won the Democratic nomination over Harry Wall of Lewiston, but narrowly lost to Republican John Travers Wood, a physician from Coeur d'Alene. In 1952, she defeated former eight-term Congressman Compton White, Sr. of Clark Fork in the Democratic primary and unseated Wood in another close general election. Pfost was reelected in 1954, 1956, 1958, and 1960. The "Hell's Belle" of Congress, she was a moderately liberal Democrat, who earned her nickname in her first year, fighting for a large federal dam on the Snake River in Hells Canyon. After years of debate, the single high dam was ultimately defeated and built as a three-dam complex (Brownlee, Oxbow, Hells Canyon) by the local private utility, Idaho Power.

Though her House seat was considered secure, the death of Henry Dworshak in July 1962 prompted Pfost to run for his seat in the U.S. Senate. She was the Democratic nominee in the special election, but was narrowly defeated by the appointed Republican incumbent, former Governor Len Jordan. After leaving the House in 1963, Pfost remained in Washington and worked in the Federal Housing Administration as a special assistant on housing for the elderly. She was hospitalized in Washington with pneumonia in October and a few months later at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. Later diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease, Pfost was admitted to Johns Hopkins Hospital several times in 1965, and died there on August 11 at age 59.