Arnold Williams, Democrat, was Idaho’s twenty-first governor. He was born in 1898 in Utah and moved to Rexburg, Idaho as a teenager. He was elected Madison County commissioner in 1932, a state representative in 1936 and became lieutenant governor in 1944. Williams took the governor’s office when Governor Gossett resigned in November, 1945. He proved to be generally progressive, and was concerned about the state’s hospitals and sought to remove their operations from the field of partisan politics. Politically, he was considered to be slightly to the left of Gossett, the leader of the conservative Democrats in Idaho. He was also the first Mormon to be governor of Idaho. Although Williams’ re-election campaign in 1946 was unsuccessful, he served as Secretary of State for Idaho from 1959 to 1966. Williams died in Idaho Falls in 1970.