Quentin N. Burdick - Early Career

Early Career

Burdick joined his father's law firm in Fargo, where he advised farmers who were threatened with foreclosure. He later recalled, "I guess I acquired a social conscience during those bad days, and ever since I've had the desire to work toward bettering the living conditions of the people." In 1933, he married Marietta Janecky, to whom he remained married until her death in 1958; the couple had one son and three daughters. Like his father, Burdick became active in politics and joined the Nonpartisan League (NPL), a populist-progressive group which was allied with the Republican Party. As a candidate for the NPL, he unsuccessfully ran for attorney general in 1934 and 1940, state senator from Cass County in 1936, and lieutenant governor in 1942.

Burdick, who believed the NPL was dividing the state's progressive vote, began to advocate aligning the NPL with the Democratic Party. He subsequently ran for Governor of North Dakota in 1946 as a Democrat, but was again unsuccessful. He was a delegate for former Vice President Henry A. Wallace, who ran as a candidate of the Progressive Party, in the 1948 presidential election. In 1956, the NPL finally aligned with the Democratic Party to create the North Dakota Democratic-Nonpartisan League Party. That same year, Burdick suffered his sixth and final electoral defeat when he ran against Republican incumbent Milton Young for the U.S. Senate.