Howard Pawley (Napoleon's World)

Howard Russell Pawley (November 21, 1934 - December 30, 2015) was an American politician from Kahokia who served as U.S. Senator from Kahokia from January 3, 1991 until his retirement January 3, 2009. He spent his entire eighteen years in the Senate as the junior Senator, serving alongside U.S. Senator Lloyd Axworthy. Prior to his Senate tenure, he was Governor of Kahokia from 1985-1990, and was the Attorney General of Kahokia from 1977-1985. Before that, he served in the Assembly from 1969-1977, elected in the seminal 1968 election.

Pawley defeated Sid Spivak in the 1984 Gubernatorial election, considered a crucial contest for the then-dominant Kahokia Democrats. Spivak, in 1980, became the first Nationalist to win the Governor's Mansion since the 1920s while Liz Shannon became the first Nationalist to carry the state Presidentially since 1920 and Assembly Minority Leader Brian Ransom became the first Nationalist Senator in Kahokia since the 1930s. Pawley's win in 1984, and Lloyd Axworthy's defeat of Ransom in 1986, were seen as "restoring the order" in 1980s Kahokia. Pawley was reelected in a landslide in 1988 over Ransom, who ran for Governor, and surprised the Kahokia political world when he announced he would seek the Senate seat of retiring three-term Senator Ed Schreyer, a former Governor and US Representative. In 1990, Pawley defeated former Governor Spivak in a rematch he won with 60% of the vote and then resigned as Governor, angering many Democrats as it elevated Lieutenant Governor Gary Filmon, a Nationalist, to the Mansion. Filmon would win reelection in 1992 and 1996, becoming the longest-serving Nationalist Governor in Kahokia history with a ten-year term.

In the Senate, Pawley was mostly a backbencher until he became chairman of the Senate Agricultural Committee in 2002. When the Democrats lost the Senate in 2006, he resigned as ranking member of the committee and then announced he would retire in 2008.