Frederick Robert Zimmerman (November 20, 1880December 14, 1954) was a German American politician from Milwaukee, who served as the 25th Governor of Wisconsin. He served before and after his governorship as Wisconsin Secretary of State—for a total of eighteen years in that office. He also served one term in the Wisconsin State Assembly. His son, Robert C. Zimmerman, was also Wisconsin Secretary of State from 1957 until 1975. Background and early career Zimmerman was born in Milwaukee, son of Charles E. Zimmerman and Augusta Fiesenhauser Zimmerman. He was a grandson of German-American Forty-Eighters. His father was born in New York state and came to Milwaukee in 1875. His mother was born in Wisconsin of parents who were natives of Stuttgart. Zimmerman's father, a molder, died when he was 5 and at an early age he began contributing to the support of his family by selling newspapers. After completing grammar school, he attended night school briefly, and held various jobs until he was 22, when he started the Bee Hive Dairy, distributing milk to Milwaukee residents. He left this job, after his marriage, to take a position as a traveling salesman with the Pfister & Vogel Leather Company, and also worked as a bookkeeper for a Milwaukee lumber firm. Elective office Legislature Zimmerman was elected to the Wisconsin State Assembly by six votes in 1908 in a three-way race, receiving 1703 votes on the Republican ticket to 1697 for Democrat Harry R. McLogan, and 1159 for Socialist Gilbert H. Poor, to represent the 8th Milwaukee County district (8th and 23d wards of the City of Milwaukee). He was an active member of the Progressive faction of his party, but served only one term (1909–1910), losing the 1910 election in a four-way contest to Socialist James H. Vint with 1521 votes, to 1501 for Zimmerman, 143 for McLogan, and 12 for Prohibitionist William H. Trout. Secretary of State In 1922, Zimmerman (by then an industrial relations manager for Nash Motors) had moved to the Town of Lake and served two years on the Town Board. He received the Republican nomination and election as Wisconsin Secretary of State in 1922 (with 77.7% of the vote in a four-way race) and re-election in 1924 in a five-way race, earning a then-record 509,771 votes statewide. During this period he remained closely identified with the Progressive faction of the Republican Party. Governor When the Progressives refused