Louise M. Shadduck (October 14, 1915 – May 4, 2008), nicknamed the "Lioness of Idaho,"[1] was an Idaho journalist, political activist, public servant, author, speaker and lobbyist,[2] and the first woman in the United States to serve in a state Governor's executive cabinet level office as a departmental secretary.
[3] As Idaho's popular newly-appointed Secretary of Commerce and Development, under 24th Governor of Idaho, Robert ("Bob") Smylis (1914-2004, served 1955-1967), and supervising a small office of the Department of Commerce and Development, often leading visiting corporate business executives on horseback adventures in the mountains, she stimulated the state's economy to its ten best years of growth.
[5] Author of five history books, president of the National Federation of Press Women[4] and independent lobbyist with major accomplishments in forestry and human rights, she was one of Idaho's most decorated and celebrated citizens.
[1][7] Her family had purchased the farm for $700 at the foot of Canfield Mountain, raising vegetables, chickens, goats, and cows.
[7] Shadduck was sent to report on the 1944 Republican National Convention in Chicago, Illinois (which nominated New York state Governor (and famous New York City district attorney (prosecutor), Thomas E. Dewey (1902-1971), as their candidate for president against long-serving 32nd President and military commander-in-chief during the war of Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945, served 1933-1945).
[5] At the end of World War II (1939/1941-1945), she founded the Kootenai County Young Republicans organization in the North Idaho panhandle.
Gaining recognition in that organization, she rejected attempts by the Republican Party to recruit her, instead sticking for the time being to her talents in journalism.
During the 1952 presidential election campaign, Shadduck spoke for Republican Party presidential candidate and former United States Army commanding general in Europe during the earlier Second World War of Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969, served 1953-1961), and his "I Like Ike" themed election campaign, sharing a head table with the retired general and briefly Columbia University president and future 34th president.
In 1956[5] she made a run herself for the United States Congress, in the lower chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives against two-terms incumbent Democratic Party opponent Gracie Pfost (1906-1965) for the First Congressional District of Idaho seat.
Now four years later in the 1956 general elections, it was the first time in United States history where both major political parties chose female candidates facing off against each other in a House of Representatives / congressional race, and drew nation-wide attention in the news media.
After leaving his office, she lobbied for Idaho's forest industries and rewrote the timber tax laws to make it profitable for renewable logging on managed private property.
Reacting to the arrival of a racist white supremacist group in northern Idaho, she lobbied effectively for an amendment to the state's malicious harassment laws.
That amendment allowed for civil damages to be awarded in cases of malicious harassment and was instrumental in dismantling the supremacist compound.
She enjoyed mentoring young people beginning their studies or careers, and her personal friendships are cited as a source of her political influence in Idaho's history.