The Betting Frenzy at Pacific and Tenth
A high-stakes municipal election turns Tacoma’s city center into a chaotic, money-soaked spectacle where candidates bet on themselves and crowds swarm the streets in political delirium.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Since noon everybody in Tacoma has been either talking, cheering, or yelling for someone else. At the corner of Pacific Avenue and Tenth Street, a noisy throng hurrahed and screamed for Candidate Huson and Candidate Parker. From noon until dark the enthusiasts 'whooped it up' like Comanche bucks preparing for gore. Hats were waved at arm's length, and laboring men, attired in their best clothes, filled their lungs with cries of 'Huson' and 'Parker.' At that particular point, where the betting ran highest, the Parker men outnumbered the Huson crowd.
Eventually, $3,100 went up on an improvised board for Huson, and the Husonites let loose a screecher. Presently, bets of $300, $500, and $100 went up for Parker. Then Candidate Parker himself appeared with his son-in-law, Dr. Palmer. Mr. Parker glared at the Huson money and smiled a wicked smile. The Parkerites shouted for him to bet. Dr. Palmer encouraged him to do so. And he did. Candidate Parker wrote checks for $600 and $1,000 at the Tacoma National Bank on the opposite corner. Son-in-law Palmer carried the checks over into the crowd, and the crowd credited father-in-law Parker with betting his money on himself! Pandemonium reigned. Hats were flung up, and the bear-dance was executed then and there by the Parkerites. It is estimated that $25,000 was wagered in total throughout the city, with roughly $10,000 bet at the corner of Pacific and Tenth alone. Tacoma never before witnessed such political excitement; it seems to have broken out all over town like the measles.
“Hats were waved at arm's length, and laboring men, attired in their best clothes, filled their lungs with cries of 'Huson' and 'Parker.'”
Tacoma’s 1892 mayoral race mirrors the modern obsession with high-dollar political campaign finance and the visceral, often performative nature of public discourse. While the methods of betting have shifted from street-corner check-writing to digital Super PACs, the sense that civic power is a spectacle bought by those with the deepest pockets remains a persistent theme in Washington politics.
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