Editor for Oregon, An: Charles A. Sprague and the Politics of Change
by Floyd J. McKay
Category: Biography & Autobiography

In chronicling the life of Oregon governor and newspaper editor Charles A. Sprague, Floyd McKay guides readers through the politics and journalism of twentieth-century Oregon. Newspaperman Charles Sprague, a progressive Republican, had lived in Oregon for only thirteen years when he became the surprise victor of the 1938 gubernatorial race. Although a capable governor, Sprague gained greater prominence during his forty-year tenure as editor and publisher of The Oregon Statesman in Salem. It was to Sprague's daily front-page column, It Seems To Me, that Oregon politicians looked for advice, and the column was required reading for other editors as they shaped a moderate Republican image for postwar Oregon. McKay examines the influence of Sprague's involvement in the Progressive politics of Theodore Roosevelt, his return to Republican orthodoxy, and his later emergence as a spokesman for liberal positions on race and justice, an evolution shaped by his governorship and service at the United Nations. Sprague's decisions - and later atonements - concerning ultra-patriotism in World War I and internment of Japanese Americans in World War II reveal an editor and governor torn by issues of his day.