Bronson M. Cutting

Bronson M. Cutting revolutionized modern New Mexico politics in the early twentieth century by bringing Hispanics into the political mainstream. No politician was more loved by his supporters and more hated by his enemies. Born into a wealthy, urbane New York family in 1888, Cutting attended Groton School and Harvard University. As a tubercular patient, he moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1911 and purchased the Santa Fe New Mexican several years later. Although nominally a Republican, he shunned party regularity to champion progressive reform in state and local government. After his service in World War I, Cutting organized the Hispanic veterans through American Legion chapters and forced the Republican and Democratic parties to adopt progressive planks and candidates and to include qualified Hispanics in their administrations. Once elected to the United States Senate in 1928, Cutting criticized the weak efforts of Presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt to end the Great Depression. While battling trumped-up charges of election fraud, Cutting died in a plane crash on May 6, 1935. Lowitt's volume is an excellent study of both Cutting and early twentieth-century New Mexico and United States politics.