He was born in Albany, Minnesota, and raised in Towner County, North Dakota, the son of Fred Lemke and Julia Anna Kleir, pioneer farmers who had accumulated some 2,700 acres (11 km2) of land.

[1] As a boy, Lemke worked long hours on the family farm, attending a common school for only three months in the summers.

However, the family did reserve enough money to send him to the University of North Dakota, where he was not only a superior student, but also well known for his ability to impersonate the professors.

During the 1910s, the Nonpartisan League (NPL) was formed and quickly gained significant traction in North Dakota.

[2][4][5] In 1921, a special recall election, initiated by opponents of the NPL (the Independent Voters Association or IVA) successfully removed all three members of the Industrial Commission, all of which were NPL members: John N. Hagan (Commissioner of Agriculture and Labor), Lynn Frazier (Governor), and Lemke (Attorney General).

Lemke tried to get the Act re-passed by Congress, but was stymied by the Roosevelt administration which privately told Congressmen that they would exercise a Presidential veto against the bill.

In 1940, having already received the Republican nomination for a fifth House term, he withdrew from that race to launch an unsuccessful run as an independent for the U.S. Senate.

[10] Lemke died of a heart attack in Fargo, North Dakota and is buried in Riverside Cemetery.