A Senate Seat, a Stubborn Judge, and a Wasted Session
In January 1893, a Republican faction's refusal to honor the caucus choice paralyzed the Washington legislature and threatened Senator John B. Allen's re-election.
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.
OLYMPIA, Jan. 30.—The senatorial deadlock continues. The refusal of the factious minority at Olympia to ratify the caucus choice of two-thirds of the Republicans of the legislature has become obsolete in the leading states of the Union. In the past, every refusal of the minority to indorse the caucus choice of the majority has wrought mischief to the party, and in every instance this attack upon the majority has resulted in the replacement of a first-class Republican with an inferior man. For the present situation the only excuse offered is that Judge Turner will not release his friends from their promise to support him. This is no excuse; the friends of Judge Turner are not bound to support him after all reasonable hope of his election has been extinguished; they are certainly not bound to help him protract a purely factious resistance to the election of the choice of the majority of the party. If there is a spark of party patriotism left in the small faction of Republicans who are responsible for the senatorial deadlock at Olympia and the waste of a third of the time of the legislature, the choice of two-thirds of the Republican party will be respected and Senator Allen be re-elected before the close of the week.
“Who is Judge Turner that he should be permitted to viciously oppose the wishes of the great majority of his party?”
The 1893 deadlock is a reminder that legislative obstruction is as old as Washington statehood. Before the Seventeenth Amendment, U.S. senators were chosen by legislatures, so a small faction could stall an entire session and block a Senate seat. Modern Olympia still argues over when minority leverage becomes a dereliction of duty.
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