Arthur R. Gould - Anti-Klan Republican

Anti-Klan Republican

The special election to replace Senator Fernald occurred near the height of the Ku Klux Klan's influence in Maine politics. Klan infiltration of the Republican Party split Maine Republicans, with klansmen finding their champion in Maine Governor Owen Brewster, and their chief opponents in former Governor Percival P. Baxter and Senator Frederick Hale. Gould, whose wife was Catholic, ran on an anti-Klan platform after receiving the Republican nomination for Senator, which caused Gov. Brewster to take the unprecedented step of denouncing his own party's candidate in the general election.

The Maine special election was of national importance because the U.S. Senate was evenly split along party lines (47 to 47). Maine Democrats, however, deserted their party in droves to vote for Gould, in order to break the power of the Republican Klan faction. In an unprecedented outcome, Gould carried every city and county in the state. The Chairman of the Republican State Committee hailed Gould's victory as demonstrating that "the sinister influence of an oath-bound organization no longer threatens the welfare of Maine". The issue would be played out one more time, however, when Gov. Brewster challenged Sen. Hale for the Republican Senate nomination in 1928, and lost, signaling the eclipse of Grand Dragon DeForest H. Perkins and the Klan as a force in Maine politics.

Although Gould was no friend of the Klan, once he joined the Senate Committee on Immigration, he sponsored some legislation of which the Klan would have approved. In 1930 he proposed a bill that would have set a quota on immigration from Canada, thus reducing Maine's Québécois population. The measure was defeated.