The perfect politician, the ideal political ally to a library, is often but not always an elected official. He or she is always an effective champion of "reasonable financial support," i.e., "the amount...which a thoroughly competent librarian can spend wisely." That is what J.T. Wyer, director of the New York State Library, said in his "What the Community Owes the Library," Presidential address to the American Library Association (ALA) Pasadena conference in May 1911. Wyer's formula describes the goal of all ideal allies in these economic hard times, civic leaders who agree that libraries are a fundamental necessity. The library champions in this article illustrate that the ideal political ally can come from nearly any library constituency. At the beginning of the public library movement, they made great efforts to guard against undue political influence on library development and governance. Today's librarians realize that although it is often complicated, indeed messy, there is no way a library can avoid political involvement. Convincing the community to come up with tax money to pay for that "reasonable financial support" requires great communication skills by the trustees and staff of every library. The skill of the librarians was to find these allies, enlist them, and arm them with the services, data, and messages to prove how essential the library is to the community it serves.