George Sutherland served as an elected official for a total of 18 years – four years as a member of the Utah Senate (1896-1900), two years as the state’s lone member of Congress (1900-1902) and 12 years as one of Utah’s U.S. Senators (1904-1916). However, what is noteworthy about Sutherland’s service as an elected official – like so much else in his life – is not for how long he served, but how much he accomplished in the time he had.

Despite the number and weight of his accomplishments as an elected representative, Sutherland’s first run for public office was a failure. In the 1880s, Sutherland involved himself with a new political party called the Liberal Party, of which Sutherland’s father was “an early supporter,” organized around opposition to polygamy.

As an attorney in private practice, Sutherland had represented in court members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who were being prosecuted for practicing polygamy – including advancing a legal theory that would lead to the release of many Latter-day Saints from jail when it was accepted by the U.S. Supreme Court. Sutherland’s role in this legal outcome would endear him to many Latter-day Saints. However, despite Sutherland’s willingness to ensure that polygamists received their 6th Amendment right to counsel in court, he personally opposed polygamy.

In 1890, Sutherland ran for mayor of Provo as the Liberal Party nominee. Although he received some support from younger Latter-day Saints, he failed to win the election. After The Church of Jesus Christ’s manifesto ending polygamy was released later that year, the Liberal Party eventually dissolved.

Sutherland gravitated to the Republican Party where he would be unsuccessful in his next attempt at elected office. He sought the Republican Party’s nomination to become their candidate for Congress in 1892, but failed to secure it.

After Utah achieved statehood in 1896, Sutherland ran for and was elected as a state senator in the inaugural Utah State Legislature. His legal expertise led to his appointment to lead the Judiciary Committee, which drafted the state’s first criminal code. He also “introduced the law which declared that mining and irrigation were industries of paramount importance in which the entire people of the state were interested, and that therefore in their behalf the right of eminent domain should be exercised,” and proposed the state’s first workers’ compensation system.

After one term in the Utah Senate, Sutherland again ran to become the Republican nominee for Congress in 1900. This time he succeeded. His opponent in the general election was his previous law partner, former schoolmate at Brigham Young Academy and incumbent member of Congress William H. King. Sutherland defeated him by 241 votes out of more than 90,000 ballots cast.

As Utah’s member of Congress, Sutherland played a key role in legislation that allowed federal funding to go toward Western water infrastructure. Under this law, “millions of dollars [were] expended in the construction of reservoirs, canals and other water systems for the irrigation and redemption of arid lands.” These water projects “allow[ed] the West to grow much faster than it would have if water projects had been left to private and state financing.”

However, Sutherland’s commitment to his principles sometimes meant that he “refused blindly to follow the Republican Party.” In one such instance, he opposed monetary policy proposed by his own party. That bill failed to pass both chambers of Congress.

Sutherland chose not to run for reelection to Congress in 1902. However, in 1904 he was chosen to become one of Utah’s U.S. Senators by the Utah Legislature – that at the time selected the state’s senators under the U.S. Constitution. Midway through his first of two terms in the Senate, he would again be faced with a test of whether he would put his principles above political desires.

In 1907, fellow Utah Senator Reed Smoot was being held back from taking the Senate seat to which he had been duly elected because of his membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and accusations that Smoot had been practicing polygamy, which was against the law. Sutherland had in 1902 opposed Smoot’s nomination “on the sole ground that it was unwise to send to Washington a high church official as the State’s representative” (Smoot was an apostle in The Church of Jesus Christ). Now, five years later, Sutherland had the opportunity to advance that political perspective by persuading the Senate to expel Smoot.

However, Sutherland acknowledged in a speech to his Senate colleagues, that there had been no credible evidence presented to the Senate that Smoot was a polygamist. It was primarily an argument made in the press and spread around using that means. In today’s terms, Sutherland might argue that Smoot had been the victim of a misinformation campaign.

“A lie travels fast; the truth crawls slowly,” said Sutherland in a quote as applicable today as it was in 1907. In his concluding statement, Sutherland said the following:

Reduced to the last analysis, then, we have a man here who has never violated any law so far as we know; whose conduct in every respect is above reproach; who has been opposed to the practice of polygamy ever since he was a boy, and yet whose expulsion from the Senate is demanded…. Such a demand to me seems hysteria pure and simple.

The Senate ultimately voted to seat Smoot.

During Sutherland’s second Senate term, he “was the driving force” behind legislation to establish a federal worker’s compensation system. As one source noted, “In magazine articles, in public addresses, and in speeches in the Senate, Senator Sutherland brought the pending legislation before the country.” While there have been reforms to that system since that time, the system still exists today.

Sutherland’s most notable accomplishment in the Senate was perhaps the instrumental role he played in advocating for women’s suffrage. He gave many speeches in the Senate and in public on the matter, and twice (in 1914 and 1916) introduced the legislation that would eventually become the 19th Amendment. In a similar vein, his wife Rosamond Lee Sutherland advocated nationally and assisted the country’s suffrage leaders. In that sense, George and Rosamond were something of a women’s suffrage power couple.

During his Senate service, Sutherland was “instrumental in drafting the criminal and judicial portions” of federal law, gained a reputation as “one of the leading Constitutional authorities in the country” – called at various times “the greatest Constitutional lawyer in Congress” as well as “the living voice of the Constitution” – received national notoriety for his defense of an independent judiciary, and advocated for the rights of Americans abroad in times of war and the duties of the nation regarding those rights.

In 1916, Sutherland would run for reelection in the first election of U.S. Senators by direct vote of the public. The media noted that he was “always a shy stump speaker,” and Sutherland would go on to be defeated by his challenger. Ironically, that challenger was the same man he defeated in his 1900 run for Utah’s Congressional seat: William King. Just a few years later, Sutherland would be nominated and confirmed to serve on the United States Supreme Court.

Many politicians have had longer careers as elected officials than George Sutherland. Fewer have produced in just 18 years of elected service the weight and breadth of accomplishments. Whether on domestic or foreign policy issues, state or federal affairs, Sutherland consistently took part in legislative efforts that were consequential to the nation, noteworthy in their substance, and long-term in their impact. It is perhaps no coincidence, then, that upon his death he was called “one of the ablest men ever to come out of the West.”