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Philip Fox La Follette was born in Madison, Wisconsin, the son of Robert Marion La Follette, Sr. , governor, senator, and United States presidential candidate, and Belle Case. That he was the son of a famous public man was, by his own account, the controlling influence in his public life. As a boy he participated in the family councils and was affected by the controversies that swirled about "Fighting Bob" La Follette. The experience provided a rarely matched political education.
La Follette attended public schools in Madison and in 1915 entered the University of Wisconsin. After the war he returned to the University of Wisconsin, from which he received his B. A. in 1919 and the LL. B. in 1922.
In 1918 he enrolled in the Reserve Officers Training program, was commissioned as second lieutenant, but did not go overseas. As a student he helped in political campaigns for Progressive Republicans and in 1924 participated in his father's bid for the presidency on an Independent Progressive ticket.
With the death of the elder La Follette in 1925, La Follette's older brother, Robert M. La Follette, Jr. , sought his father's Senate seat. Philip organized and managed the campaign, and "Young Bob" won election to the Senate, a position he would hold for twenty-two years.
In 1924 he was elected district attorney of Dane County but after one term (1925 - 1927) returned to private law practice and a part-time lectureship at the University of Wisconsin Law School. In 1930 La Follette challenged incumbent Walter J. Kohler for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, winning by more than 100, 000 votes. He easily won the general election, pledging the aid of the state in combating the growing depression. Observers commented that he had inherited "Old Bob's" political sense, oratorical ability, style, and zest for campaigning--more so than his older brother. With the legislature split between progressives and conservatives, La Follette saw much of his program defeated.
The year 1932 was a bad one for incumbents, and La Follette lost the Republican primary to ex-Governor Kohler, who in turn lost to Democrat Albert Schmedeman. Two years later, the Wisconsin progressives, led by La Follette and his brother, broke with the state Republicans and formed the Progressive Party of Wisconsin. On this ticket La Follette won reelection to the governorship but his program was again blocked by a hostile state senate. The chief legislative casualty was the defeat of a comprehensive public works and relief bill that would have made Wisconsin unique in having its own work relief program distinct from the federal Works Project Administration (WPA), despite the promise of $100 million in federal funds.
Reelected by a large majority in 1936, La Follette pushed through a comprehensive program, described by some as a "Little New Deal. " Like his father, he made use of the "Wisconsin Idea, " bringing such specialists as David Lilienthal and John R. Commons into his administration to help formulate policy. But his support of the ouster of University of Wisconsin President Glenn Frank in 1937, whose relations with the university community had soured, gained him additional enemies. Some denounced him as a dictator who ignored the principles of academic freedom.
The Progressive party had been highly successful in Wisconsin, and La Follette reasoned that it was time to extend its principles to the national scene. Anticipating that the Democratic party would shift to the right and that Roosevelt would retire after two terms, he launched the National Progressives of America (NPA) in a great mass meeting at Madison on April 28, 1938. He described the movement as not a third party but an organization that was certain to become the party of the future. His choice of a symbol, a cross in a circle on a white background, was unfortunate. He interpreted it as "Abundance with Freedom. " Critics, conscious of the symbolism accompanying the rise of dictators in Europe, derided it as a "circumcised swastika. " Few progressive leaders endorsed the new party and, contrary to expectations, Roosevelt did not retire in 1940.
Further, La Follette attempted to organize the NPA nationwide in 1938 and run for a fourth term as governor at the same time. As a result, he lost the election by a large margin to conservative businessman Julius P. Heil. La Follette spent much of the next three years trying to keep America out of war, making numerous speeches for the America First Committee.
But after Pearl Harbor, he reenlisted in the army. He spent most of the war serving on the staff of General Douglas MacArthur in the South Pacific, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel. The war killed the NPA, and in 1946 the La Follette brothers disbanded the Progressive Party of Wisconsin and returned to the Republicans. After his brother's narrow loss in the Republican primary that year to Joseph R. McCarthy, La Follette described the decision to dissolve the Progressive party as a "political blunder . .. of the first order. "
After the war La Follette practiced law in Madison. In 1948 he supported the unsuccessful bid of General MacArthur for the Republican nomination, and in 1952 he backed General Dwight D. Eisenhower. He served as a director of the Hazeltine Corporation in New York and for the years 1955 to 1959 was president of this electronics company. After his return to Madison in 1959, he resumed the practice of law and engaged in writing until his death, in Madison.
During his tenure as governor, La Follette pushed through a new labor code that encouraged collective bargaining and, in a special session, secured the enactment of the first comprehensive unemployment insurance law in any state. His governorship saw the implementation of many of the progressive measures of the New Deal, with La Follette being responsible for the implementation of some of them on the state level before the Roosevelt Administration could do so on the national level.
Philip La Follette married Isabel Bacon of Salt Lake City on April 14, 1923. They had three children.
