Maurice Brookhart, Professor of Chemistry at the University of North Carolina
Steck, the first Democratic senator from Iowa since the American Civil War, had reached the Senate with the assistance of many conservative Republican voters (who refused to support the 1924 Republican primary victor, Smith W. Brookhart, because of his anti-business, pro-labor views) and an unprecedented vote by the Senate in 1926 to overturn its original choice to seat Brookhart in 1925.
Brookhart was born in a cabin on a farm in Scotland County, Missouri, the son of Abram C. and Cynthia Wildman Brookhart.