Father Robert Haire, the Father of Direct Democracy

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[snip] A Michigan native, Fr. Robert Haire became a missionary to Dakota Territory in the early 1880s. Soon after his arrival, he established the first parish in what would become northeastern South Dakota, Sacred Heart Parish in Aberdeen. In another interesting irony of history, three-quarters of a century later, Sacred Heart would become the home parish of Tom Daschle, who represented South Dakota in the U.S. Senate for 18 years until his defeat in November 2004.

Fr. Haire, once an activist in the Underground Railroad, never settled for paving his flock’s way to the afterlife. He believed in perfecting the present through political action. From his pulpit and in public speeches, Haire became an early proponent of women’s suffrage and an advocate of prohibition of alcoholic beverages. For him, these issues meshed with his belief in state solutions to contemporary problems.

Unfortunately, the combination of temperance and radicalism didn’t sit well with all of his parishioners or with his bishop. In 1889, Bishop Martin Marty demanded that the priest choose between his pastorate and his politics. Fr. Haire chose politics, and Bishop Marty stripped him of his priestly privileges. He would no longer be pastor nor be able to administer the sacraments.

Although he challenged his censure, Fr. Haire increased his political activity. He got involved in the South Dakota Populist Party and is credited with helping found the state’s Socialist Party. As early as 1885, even before statehood was achieved in 1889, he saw a need for a “people’s legislature.” He believed that when the people were dissatisfied with the adequacy of representation by the legislature, they needed a direct way of impacting their government. Thus he and other South Dakotans developed the concept of the initiative and referendum process through which citizens could bring to a popular vote laws proposed by the people (initiative) or attempt to repeal acts of the legislature (referendum). Fr. Haire stumped for the proposal across the state and enlisted the Knights of Labor to promote the concept. When populists took control of the state legislature, they proposed a constitutional amendment, which the people of South Dakota approved in 1898, making it the first state in the country to recognize forms of direct democracy that have become a mainstay of American politics.
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Fr. Haire continued his political activism, but the death of Bishop Marty created an opportunity for him to return to the active priesthood. Marty’s successor, Bishop Thomas O’Gorman, reinstated Fr. Haire and assigned him as chaplain for a convent and hospital in his adopted hometown of Aberdeen, where he died in 1916. [snip] NCROnline