Editing Lester C. Hunt (section)

===Governor of Wyoming===
Hunt was governor of Wyoming, from 1943 to 1949.<ref name=nytobit /> He faced hostile majorities in both houses of the legislature throughout his years as governor.<ref>Larson, ''History'', 495, 508–9</ref> The principal legislative accomplishment of his first term was the enactment of a retirement system for teachers.<ref>Larson, ''History'', 496</ref> He repeatedly proposed a retirement system for state workers in his second term without success.<ref>Larson, ''History'', 509-10</ref> During his first term, Republican U.S. Senator [[Edward V. Robertson]] charged that the Japanese citizens interned at [[Heart Mountain Relocation Center|Heart Mountain]], Wyoming, were leading pampered lives and hoarding supplies. The ''Denver Post'' wrote an exposé backing his complaints. Hunt dismissed that as a "political story" and said that "food stuffs cannot be brought into a city to feed 13,500 people in a wheel barrow and it would not be good business to bring it in every day." He toured the camp and said the internees' "living standard was, to my way of thinking, rather disgraceful."<ref>Larson, ''History'', 479-80</ref> At the end of the war, he wrote to the [[War Relocation Authority]] that "We do not want a single one of these evacuees to remain in Wyoming."<ref>Larson, ''History'', 480</ref>

When President [[Franklin D. Roosevelt|Roosevelt]] issued an executive order on March 16, 1943, creating [[Jackson Hole National Monument]], Hunt joined in mobilizing opposition and said he would use state police to remove any federal official who tried to exert authority in the Monument's lands. Congress refused to fund the Monument until 1950, when Wyoming's two U.S. Senators, [[Joseph C. O'Mahoney]] and Hunt, reached a compromise with the Truman administration. It merged most of the Monument's lands into [[Grand Teton National Park]], provided compensation for lost revenue, and protected local property owners.<ref>Larson, ''History'', 499–501</ref>

Hunt was a Wyoming delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1940, 1944, and 1948. He chaired the [[National Governors Association]] in 1948. His official gubernatorial portrait was painted by artist [[Michele Rushworth]] and hangs in the [[Wyoming State Capitol|state capitol building]] in Cheyenne, Wyoming.