Robert La Follette

Robert Marion La Follette is a politician from Doggerland who is currently serving as Minister of Industry and a member of the National Assembly under the Labor Worker's Party. He also served as Deputy Prime Minister of Doggerland under Kevin Trevor, the leader of the Labor Worker's Party, and the District Attorney of Mistlân. He is a royal guard for King Moose I.

Early life and education
Robert Marion La Follette was born on a farm outside of Primrose, Medost on June 14, 1955. He was the youngest of five children born to Josiah La Follette and Mary Ferguson, who had settled in Primrose in 1950. He was raised in Primrose throughout his whole childhood. He developed an interest in politics at age 8 after hearing about a march that had happened at the USA's capital city. He decided to run for class president when he got back to school a week later. He was projected to win the election, but after it was leaked to the media that he still wet the bed, his polling numbers dropped. He lost the election to Billy, who hadn't wet the bed in over a year, by one vote. Coincidentally, La Follette didn't vote in that election because he had to go to the bathroom as the voting booths were closing. So if he wasn't such a bed-wetter than he may have forced a tie and the teacher could've made him class president. What a loser, huh? La Follette was so distraught that he didn't run in any election until during his third and last year of middle school, when he decided to run for class president again. This time he won the election, 23-12. His high school didn't have the office of class president, so he decided to join a club instead. He was chair of the Young Progressives Club at Primrose High School for all 4 years, and was a member of the book club for one year. He played for the school soccer team in his senior year, tallying 10 minutes of play in the 20-game season.

After graduating from high school, La Follette took one year off of school and worked on the family farm. The next summer, he enrolled and was accepted at the University of Carabou in Nandels Port, Brun-Nord. He initially was going to get a degree in liberal arts, but decided to get a law degree instead. At Carabou, La Follette joined the politics club and served as a member of the progressive caucus. He decided that he needed to get some money, so he decided to work as a journalist for the local newspaper. His articles were known for their left wing bias and their hilarious satire. He studied at Carabou for four years until getting his JD. He then went back to Primrose to work at the family farm again. Soon after, the government set tariffs which damaged the La Follette farm along with many other farms. La Follette was a prominent figure in the Doggerfundt Riots, which were a series of demonstrations by mostly farmers that protested the tariffs.

Law firm work
After taking a year off and working at the family farm, La Follette moved to Mistlân in hopes of starting up his own law firm. He quickly realized that he didn't have the money or experience to do that, so he applied for a junior associate position at a law firm called "Trotsky & Lenin's Luxurious Law Firm", or "TLLLF" for short. The law firm hired him in 1980, and La Follette became a junior associate. La Follette worked very hard in his first few years at TLLLF, and eventually became a senior associate. In 1986 when Lenin, one of the partners at the firm, passed away under mysterious circumstances, Trotsky decided to ask La Follette if he wanted to become a partner. La Follette initially was reluctant to the idea, citing the substantial hours that the job would require, but eventually decided to take the job. The firm was renamed "Trotsky & La Follette's Luxurious Law Firm" or "TLFLLF". La Follette worked most of the cases at the firm, and even started to take cases all the way up in Crohall. Trotsky passed away in 1997, and the firm became La Follette's. La Follette changed the name of the firm to "La Follette's Luxurious Law Firm" or "LFLLF", which stayed the name until his departure from the firm in 2005. La Follette became the most prominent lawyer in all off Mistlân, and was known throughout the whole country of Doggerland. He won around 95% of his cases, until the city of Mistlân asked him to become the district attorney. He resigned from his position at LFLLF and became the district attorney on January 28, 2005.

District Attorney
He was a great prosecutor, and he went after the Doggerland Mob in the Mistlân area when no one else would. He stopped going after the mob when on January 20, 2013 while exiting his car, La Follette was shot in the right shoulder by a Doggerland Mob sniper bullet. The bullet exited out through his deltoid muscle and caused major blood loss. He was rushed to the hospital, and was almost killed by mob soldiers who were trying to finish the job, but they were stopped by the police. La Follette was in a coma for seven days, until waking up when he smelled some of his favorite steak that was being transported on a truck just outside of the hospital. The mob luckily didn't go at him after that, and La Follette didn't go after them anymore after the attacks on his life. The sniper was arrested and convicted a few weeks later and is still in prison.

Mistlân City Council
La Follette resigned from his job as district attorney on December 12, 2015 and announced his candidacy for Mistlân city council from the 3rd district. His decision came with mixed reviews, some citing how good of a DA he was and that he should stay is it, others saying that he has the ambition that the city council needed. He was the frontrunner in the polls until two days before the election, his opponent leaked to the media that he only played 10 minutes for his high school soccer team, even though they had 20 games. His polling numbers began to drop, and on election day things were so close that there needed to be a recount. La Follette's opponent and DA predecessor, Bjorn Ogard, won by 7 votes.

La Follette moved to a different house in Mistlân, which also changed the city district that he lived in. His new district was the 2nd district. In 2017, La Follette announced his candidacy for city council, but this time from his new district. The 2nd district had lots of mob activity, so lots of citizens affected by mob violence wanted La Follette in office because of how he went after the mob in his DA years. Others cited how he backed off of them in his last few years. In the 2nd district there were multiple candidates running, so the 2nd district decided to have a ranked choice voting election. Although La Follette was the front runner, Eric Cartman was coming close to him in his polls. La Follette and Cartman combined held a majority in the polls, but it was unsure how the other voters would vote if it came down to those two in the final round. When the election came around, La Follette and Cartman breezed through the first 4 rounds. It all came down to the fifth and final round, where La Follette and Cartman would face off. Polls were pretty much 50/50. La Follette edged out a victory, winning 427-385 (52.6%-47.4%). After several attempts to overturn the election results, Eric Cartman conceded the election.

La Follette had a fairly uneventful city council term. He was only able to pass 2 bills. One of them was to raise education funding, improve education quality, and make school lunches more affordable. The other was to ensure all Mistlân citizens lived within one mile of a park. He voiced support for almost all left wing bills that were proposed, and condemned most right wing bills introduced. He tried to raise taxes on the rich so that the city government would get more funding, but that was shot down. His residence was once vandalized with the words "eat horse s*** commie" spray-painted on his garage, but the vandalizers were caught one day later after uploading a selfie to Instagram with La Follette's garage behind their head and a caption that read "Yup! I did this. Communism must be stopped. #ancap #f***12". He chose not to run for reelection.

After his term was over, La Follette moved back to the family farm in Primrose, Medost. He lived there for a few months until moving to Abester, Brun-South.

Starting out
On January 26, 2021, the day after Doggerland switched from a monarchy to a parliamentary democracy, Robert La Follette joined the Labor Worker's Party. It was the first party to gain legal members, and La Follette was one of the original members, along with Arjun The Great and King of Purrsia. He quickly there after became party leader, and appointed Mel as deputy leader and Trashman as press secretary. The party got to work, getting their branding and platform set. The party posted many advertisements encouraging people to vote for the LWP in the upcoming election, which was set to be held on January 28.

During the days before the election, there were many talks about who was going to form a coalition so that a party or parties could hold a majority in the Parliament of Doggerland. La Follette was talking closely with his party as to who they were going to form a coalition with. Most of the party wanted to form a coalition with the biggest party, the United Left People's Party. La Follette talked with the ULPP leader and the Justice Party leader closely about forming a coalition.

On January 28, 2021, the January 2021 legislative elections were held. They were the first ever parliamentary elections in Doggerland history. Preliminary polls showed that the United Left People's Party would have the most seats, the Liberal Party second, and the Labor Worker's Party right behind them in third place. Then election day came. The ULPP won 44 seats, the Liberal Party 27, the LWP 23, the Communist Party 19, the Civic Union and Libertarian Party both had 11 seats, the Justice Party 6, the Independent Democracy Party 5, and the National People's Party 4. During the early morning of January 29, 2021, the Labor Worker's Party and the Justice Party both agreed to a coalition. About 2 hours later, the United Left People's Party agreed to the coalition also, forming a three-way coalition between them, the Labor Worker's Party, and the Justice Party. They decided to call the coalition "Forward! Alliance for Progressive Action" and are currently the ruling coalition in parliament.

Deputy prime minister
Newly elected Prime Minister of Doggerland Kevin Trevor appointed Robert La Follette to be the first ever Deputy Prime Minister of Doggerland on January 29, 2021. On February 9, 2021, Robert La Follette resigned from his positions as Labor Worker's Party leader and Doggerland Deputy Prime Minister. Mel succeeded him in both positions. La Follette succeeded Mel as Minister of Industry.

Member of parliament
Robert La Follette was elected to the Parliament of Doggerland on January 29, 2021 after the January 2021 legislative elections results came in. Since the Labor Worker's Party won 23 seats, and there were 22 LWP members at the time of the election, La Follette was granted one extra seat because he was first on the party list.

On February 23, 2021 La Follette testified as a witness in the Supreme Court case Conel Sanders, et al., National Assembly of Doggerland v. Green Party Leader Enochian. The full transcript of the trial can be read here.

On February 23, 2021 at 9:21 PM CET, Robert La Follette announced his candidacy for the Dogger Senate from the Fifth District. He was the first person to announce his candidacy from that district.

Economics
La Follette supports a progressive tax system. He wants to nationalize public transport but not the airplanes, nationalize the utilities (water, electricity, gas, etc.), and in times of great economic crisis nationalize the banks. He likes pensions for those who are over 60 years old and have worked for a long time at the place that they retired from. He supports a single-payer universal healthcare system. He thinks the governments should have high funding for stuff like healthcare, infrastructure, and education. He thinks funding for a certain school should be based off of the number of faculty and students who go there. He also thinks public colleges should have low tuition rates.

Social views
La Follette thinks that all races and ethnicities are equal and should be treated the same. He thinks that there should be strict anti-discrimination laws. He supports gay marriage and thinks anyone should be able to marry anyone. He says that he hates abortion, but that abortion should be available to anyone. He thinks that the government should fund Planned Parenthood, citing that a very high majority of the stuff they do is not abortions. He thinks marijuana should be legal, but other non-prescribed drugs should not. He likes affirmative action, but thinks there are other ways to gain racial and ethnic equality. He thinks the police should be demilitarized and should have better training in order to defuse situations. He would not be opposed to social workers coming to domestic disputes. He thinks the death penalty should be abolished,

Other views
La Follette supports strong mental health and background checks for those purchasing guns, and thinks all automatic weapons should be banned. He also thinks that gun sellers who sell guns to those who they know have not passed a mental health and background check should be fined, or if the buyer commits a crime with the guns, temporarily banned from selling guns or permanently banned if the crime is very serious. He wants mostly open borders and a path to citizenship. He supports free trade, but is not opposed to protectionism. He wants to put a ban on fracking and lower fossil fuels usage, and wants to have mostly solar powered energy by the end of the decade. He wants minimal troops over seas unless there is a foreign crisis, establish peaceful relations with as many countries as possible, and not deal with corrupt or oppressive governments.

Personal life


Robert La Follette met Belle Cass (1950-2021) at the University of Carabou in Nandels Port, Brun-Nord while he was studying law. They developed a friendship quit soon, bonding over their love of reform and their rural backgrounds providing common ground for a potential courtship. They started to date each other a few months later, and eventually got married on December 31, 1981, in a ceremony performed by a Unitarian minister. They had 4 kids together. They had Fola in 1982, Robert Jr. in 1995, Philip in 1997, and Mary in 1999.

Belle Cass became a prominent feminist figure in Doggerland, staging numerous protests around Doggerland for women to be treated the same as men in the country. She helped raised thousands of Euros for feminist causes. Fola married famous Dogger playwright George Middleton. Robert La Follette Jr. succeeded his father as the District Attorney for Mistlân, and is currently still serving.

Belle Cass died of a heart attack induced by stress on February 24, 2021. This caused extreme grief for La Follette, who considered resigning from his seat in the National Assembly.

La Follette is of Scottish ancestry on his mothers side and is descended from French Huguenots on his fathers side. People often cite he gets lots of his looks from his Scottish side of the family, and La Follette has said that "he takes pride in looking Scottish".

Activism


La Follette took part in the Doggerfundt Riots in 1978 and 1979 when his family farm was hit hard by the governments tariffs that affected many other farmers in Doggerland. He made many speeches at the protests but remained as non-violent as possible. He was arrested many times during the protests. He was one of the main leaders of the Farmer's March on Doggerfundt, which had close to 30,000 protesters. He met his life long friend and fellow LWP politician Mel while at the protests. The protests helped Mel become President of United Dockworker's Union, a spot that he held for over 26 years.