There are three men who served as governor of Iowa for fewer than two months. One of them pinballed between state and local government after sitting in the big chair. According to the U of I’s Biographical Dictionary of Iowa:
Leo Elthon of Fertile, in Worth County, was a state senator who won election as lieutenant governor in 1952. Governor and lieutenant governor were independent of each other at the time, and terms were only two years long, and he ran again in 1954. But before the earlier term ended, Gov. William Beardsley died in a car accident.
“Elthon served as governor of Iowa for 52 days (the only governor to succeed to the office due to the death of his predecessor), and was then reinaugurated as lieutenant governor,” the Biographical Dictionary says. Those 52 days earned Elthon a place in the governors list and a State of the State address he didn’t have to worry about fulfilling!
After Elthon served his second term as lieutenant governor, he became mayor of Fertile and then returned to the Iowa Senate.