returned to active duty during the Korean War era. He was assigned as gunnery officer aboard USS Mission Bay, a Reserve training ship berthed in Bayonne, New Jersey, and served until February 1953. He remained in the Navy Reserve after his second deployment and retired at the rank of captain in March 1971. Continued career Stafford served as Rutland County's State's Attorney from 1947 to 1951 and practiced law in a new firm, Stafford and LaBrake. Following his Korean War-era deployment, he entered Vermont statewide politics, serving as deputy attorney general for the state from 1953 to 1955, and attorney general from 1955 to 1957. In 1956, he was elected lieutenant governor, and in 1958 was elected governor. Stafford's ascent to the lieutenant governorship and governorship was unusual in that he did not follow the path of most Vermont Republicans. From the founding of the party in the 1850s, Republicans in Vermont had made use of the Mountain Rule, which called for candidates for governor and lieutenant governor to alternate between the east and west sides of the Green Mountains, and for governors to serve only two years in office. U.S. Senators were also allocated according to the Mountain Rule, with one from the east and one from the west. Under this system, candidates for governor and lieutenant governor were chosen by the party years in advance, and served in leadership roles in the Vermont General Assembly, including Speaker of the Vermont House of Representatives and President of the Vermont Senate. Stafford is one of Vermont's few governors who did not serve in the legislature. By the late 1950s, the Democratic Party was becoming increasingly competitive in Vermont, and in the 1958 election, Stafford won the governorship over Bernard J. Leddy with only 50.3% of the vote. In 1960, Stafford was the Republican nominee for Vermont's lone seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, supported by all factions of his party because he was regarded as the strongest challenger to Democrat William H. Meyer, who had broken the Republican Party's 100 year hold on statewide offices by winning election to Congress in 1958. Stafford won, and was subsequently reelected four times, serving in the House from January 3, 1961, to September 16, 1971. Stafford voted in favor of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and 1968, as well as the 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the Voting Rights