He went to work as a legislative assistant to United States Senator William Proxmire in Washington, D.C., and, while there continued his education at American University, where he received his master's degree in international law in 1963.
Running as a first-time candidate Democrat in the heavily-Republican Menominee–Shawano district, he was considered a long-shot against incumbent Theodore Abrahamson, a power broker in Shawano County for over two decades.
[6] He resigned from the Assembly in July 1974[7] to accept an appointment as a special assistant to the newly elected State Superintendent, Barbara Thompson.
[10] He resigned less than two years later, in 1980, to launch a campaign for Superintendent of Public Instruction of Wisconsin, challenging his one-time boss, incumbent Barbara Thompson.
[6] Grover had become an outspoken critic of Thompson, who—since the November 1980 election of Ronald Reagan—had taken to publicly campaigning for nomination as United States Secretary of Education.
Grover instead accepted a job in the Wisconsin Department of Administration to oversee a new state career program for people who do not attend college, the Office of School to Work Transition.