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  Former Idaho Rep. Ralph Harding dies at 77
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ContributorThomas Walker 
Last EditedThomas Walker  Oct 27, 2006 11:17am
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CategoryObituary
News DateFriday, October 27, 2006 05:00:00 PM UTC0:0
DescriptionBOISE, Idaho (AP) -- Ralph R. Harding, a former two-term Mormon congressman from Idaho who lost re-election in 1964 after publicly berating a church leader for supporting the John Birch Society, has died at the age of 77.

Harding died Thursday at a hospital in the town of Blackfoot, Hill-Hawker-Sandberg Funeral Home said. The cause of death was not released.

Longtime friend and former Idaho U.S. Rep. Richard Stallings, chairman of the state's Democratic party, said Harding will be remembered as much for his rapid rise in Idaho politics as for his abrupt defeat in 1964. Harding, a Democrat who served in the Idaho Legislature from 1955 to 1956, ran against 16-year incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Hamer Budge for Idaho's 2nd Congressional District in 1960 and pulled off a 4,000-vote, or 51.1 percent, upset victory.

"He surprised a lot of people by winning in 1960," said Stallings, who represented Idaho's 2nd Congressional District from 1985 to 1993. "Then, in 1964, he was one of the few incumbent Democrats who did not get re-elected in the L.B.J. (President Lyndon B. Johnson) landslide."
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