Hughes started the Iowa Better Trucking Bureau and was eventually elected to the State Commerce Commission board, which he served from 1958 to 1962, including a term as its chairman.

He described in his book how he climbed into a bathtub (to make the mess easier to clean up) with a shotgun, ready to pull the trigger, when he cried out to God for help.

He also embraced the Alcoholics Anonymous program of recovery and started an AA group in Ida Grove, Iowa, in 1955.

He then ran for Governor of Iowa on the Democratic ticket and defeated incumbent Republican Norman Erbe in 1962.

He established a treatment program in the state and was an effective spokesman for a more enlightened view of the role of alcohol in society.

Trade missions abroad, and a tour of Vietnam with other governors, provided him with foreign policy experience.

Later, the Register editorialized, "In our opinion, any man or woman who wins that battle and successfully puts the pieces of his or her life back together again deserves commendation, not censure."

The next years were difficult, in the wake of the 1968 assassinations of Kennedy and of Martin Luther King Jr., racial unrest in Iowa, and his increasing disappointment with American policy in Vietnam and the leadership of the Johnson administration.

At the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Hughes was giving a nominating speech for anti-war candidate Eugene McCarthy when violent demonstrations erupted on the streets of Chicago.

A number of people in recovery testified, including Academy Award-winning actress Mercedes McCambridge, National Council on Alcoholism founder Marty Mann, and AA co-founder Bill W. In his autobiography, The Man from Ida Grove: A Senator's Personal Story, Hughes writes that he asked a dozen other well-known people in recovery to present public testimony, but all declined.

"[1] In early 1970, Hughes began to get press recognition as a "dark horse candidate" for the 1972 presidential election.

Columnist David Broder described him as "a very dark horse, but the only Democrat around who excites the kind of personal enthusiasm the Kennedys used to generate."

According to Hunter S. Thompson, Gary Hart suggested after the '72 campaign that Hughes might have been the only Democratic candidate who could have defeated Nixon.

[3] On September 5, 1973, Hughes announced that, after a long period of soul-searching, he would retire from the Senate when his term was completed.

He said that, for "profoundly personal religious reasons" he would seek "a new kind of challenge and spiritual opportunity," and would "continue efforts in alcoholism and drug treatment fields, working for social causes and world peace."

"[4] In 1974, his last full year in the Senate, he succeeded in passing legislation that extended and expanded the original 1970 act.

He was invited to the signing of the bill by President Nixon, but "couldn't bring myself to attend, since his administration had fought it every inch of the way."

He had been active in prayer groups while serving in the Senate, and the last few chapters of his autobiography gave this aspect of his life special prominence.

Six weeks after the divorce, he married his former secretary, Julie Holm, with whom he had been living with for a year after he was separated from his soon to be ex-wife.