Theodore Roosevelt Dalton

Ted Dalton led the Republican Party as a Virginia state Senator from Roanoke and twice as candidate for governor. Dalton ran in 1957 against Democrat J. Lindsay Almond. The race featured blistering attacks from both sides over school desegregation. In the middle of the race the Little Rock school desegregation crisis intensified and Dalton had difficulty convincing white conservatives his party would stand firm on segregation. Dalton tried to reassure these voters that he believed in segregation, but he also argued that some schools inevitably would be integrated in Virginia. Dalton practiced law in Roanoke with Richard Poff, another Republican leader. In 1959 President Eisenhower appointed Dalton a U.S. District Court Judge for the Western District of Virginia, and in the early seventies Dalton's name was circulated as a possible Nixon appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. Dalton retired from the federal bench in 1975.