The Principled Politician: The Story of Ralph Carr - Paperback

by Adam Schrager (Author)

In the winter of 1941, as fear swept across America in the wake of Pearl Harbor, every Western governor closed ranks against Japanese Americans -- threatening to turn them away at state borders, some with violence.

Every governor except one. Ralph Carr, Republican Governor of Colorado, stood alone.

At a time when President Roosevelt was signing Executive Order 9066 and forcibly relocating over 110,000 Japanese Americans from their homes, Carr did something no other elected leader in the nation dared: he welcomed them to his state. Flooded with angry letters and death threats, facing calls for impeachment, Carr consulted his conscience and the Constitution and refused to bend. "If you harm them," he declared, "you must harm me first."

It cost him everything. His 1942 Senate bid ended in defeat -- a casualty not of scandal, but of principle. He died in 1950, largely forgotten.

Award-winning journalist Adam Schrager spent six years recovering Carr's extraordinary story, blending archival research with vivid storytelling to paint a portrait of a complex man and a nation at its worst and best. The Principled Politician is a compelling, deeply human biography that asks questions as urgent today as they were in 1942: What does it truly cost to do the right thing -- and who pays the price?

Author Biography

Adam Schrager is an Investigative producer and reporter with WISC-TV, the CBS affiliate in Madison, Wisconsin. He has covered politics for more than 20 years, most recently at Wisconsin Public Television and at KUSA-TV in Denver. Previously, he worked at commercial television stations in La Crosse, Madison and Milwaukee in the 1990's. Schrager is the author of The Principled Politician, a biography of former Colorado Gov. Ralph Carr whose stand on behalf of Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor would cost him his political career. The book led state lawmakers to name the new state justice center after the former Colorado chief executive. His latest book is The Blueprint: How the Democrats Won Colorado (and Why Republicans Everywhere Should Care), co-authored with Rob Witwer. It has been lauded by the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and political figures on both sides of the political spectrum. In his career, Schrager has won numerous journalism accolades, including more than twenty Emmy awards. He taught journalism at the University of Denver and at Marquette University for a number of years and has conducted dozens of seminars on the impact of the media on politics. Schrager has an undergraduate degree in history from the University of Michigan and a graduate degree in broadcast journalism from Northwestern University. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin with his wife and three children.