John A. Hartle was a Minnesota

Minnesota

Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...

 Republican

Republican Party of Minnesota

The Republican Party of Minnesota is the Minnesota branch of the United States Republican Party. Elected by the party’s state central committee in June 2009, its chairman is Tony Sutton, and its deputy-chairman is Michael Brodkorb.-Early history:...

 politician and a Speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives. Born on a farm, he became a livestock farmer himself. He was elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives

Minnesota House of Representatives

The Minnesota House of Representatives is the lower house in the Minnesota State Legislature. There are 134 members elected to two-year terms, twice the number of members in the Minnesota Senate. Each senate district is divided in half and given the suffix A or B...

 in 1934. As a Republican, he caucused with the Conservative Caucus in the then-nonpartisan body.

Hartle served as chair of the Markets and Marketing and Civil Administration committees, and in 1949 he was elected to replace outgoing speaker Lawrence M. Hall

Lawrence M. Hall

Lawrence M. Hall was a Minnesota Democratic politician and is the longest-serving Speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives. He was elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives in 1934, and was affiliated with the Democrats, although the legislature was at the time a nonpartisan body...

. Hartle served as speaker for three terms, until the Liberal Caucus

Liberalism in the United States

Liberalism in the United States is a broad political philosophy centered on the unalienable rights of the individual. The fundamental liberal ideals of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion for all belief systems, and the separation of church and state, right to due process...

 gained a majority in 1955. Hartle served one term as Minority Leader

Minority leader

In U.S. politics, the minority leader is the floor leader of the second largest caucus in a legislative body. Given the two-party nature of the U.S. system, the minority leader is almost inevitably either a Republican or a Democrat, with their counterpart being of the opposite party. The position...

, and when the conservatives regained control of the body in 1963, he became chair, first of the education committee, and then the taxes committee. He retired from the legislature after the 1968 elections.