Republican National Convention. This time, with no incumbent president of his own party, delegates were split among over a dozen candidates on the first ballot on which Cummins finished fifth. After Cummins again finished fifth on the second ballot, he released his delegates, contributing to the third-ballot victory of Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes. Defeat and death In June 1926, insurgent Smith W. Brookhart defeated Cummins in the Republican primary for Cummins' Senate seat. Two months earlier, Brookhart had been removed from Iowa's other U.S. Senate seat when a majority of his colleagues in the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate voted in favor of Democrat Dan Steck's challenge to the outcome of the 1924 Brookhart-Steck race. Cummins had refused to take a position on the election contest, knowing that if Brookhart were unseated he would likely run for Cummins's seat. The month after his primary defeat, Cummins died in Des Moines. He is buried at the Woodland Cemetery there. Political legacy Apart from being the Iowa governor and U.S. senator, Cummins is remembered for serving as president pro tempore of the Senate from 1919 to 1925. In addition, two times he declared his intentions to run for the Republican presidential nomination but did not succeed. Cummins was perhaps the most influential and charismatic Progressive leader in Iowa politics in the first quarter of the 20th century. However, he gradually turned more conservative moving from La Follette's Progressivism to the New Era Republicanism of Warren G. Harding. In the 1890s, he led the Iowa Republican Party's progressive wing, or the so-called insurgents, to power at the expense of its old guard of standpatters, who had controlled the party almost since its inception. After his postwar withdrawal from the progressive movement and shortly before his death, Cummins was defeated by a progressive contender within his own party. Family On June 24, 1874, Cummins married Ida Lucette Gallery; they had one child, a daughter. His wife, Ida L. Cummins was an activist in the suffrage movement and very influential in the development of Iowa child labor laws. See also List of United States Congress members who died in office (1900–49) The Albert Baird Cummins House in Des Moines is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. References Further reading Bray, Thomas J. "The Cummins Leadership" Annals of Iowa (1954) 32#4 pp 241–296. online Harrington, Elbert W. "Albert Baird Cummins as a Public Speaker",