The Political Hunger Games for the Deputy Collector Post
As federal appointments loom in Seattle, local candidates and their fixers engage in a desperate, high-stakes game of political patronage and moral maneuvering.
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.
Anxious candidates for the deputy collectorship lay their heads on their pillows whispering hopefully 'Tomorrow.' If Collector Saunders had made the appointment the day after his own, he would have disappointed either Charles Keplin or Charles Hetfner. The search for the right man has become a spectacle of political maneuvering. Superintendent W. E. Wilson went to Port Townsend to see the collector but came away satisfied that Hetfner was not in favor. A friend of Saunders is disposed to give him credit for moral courage, suggesting Saunders is acting under direct instructions from Secretary Carlisle to exercise extraordinary care. All the talk of a 'smuggling ring' has been utilized by Democrats who wanted the office. It is quite possible that Saunders is not merely consulting men in Seattle, but in Portland, where Dan Murphy, the new district attorney, has secured the confidence of Carlisle. Murphy has sent for John M. Gearin, who formerly practiced law in Seattle, and turned over the opium and Chinese cases to him, with the object of clearing Portland of the stigma and, if possible, fixing it on Seattle. Junius Rochester is said to have argued that a strong man must be appointed, claiming that two special agents sent to Seattle to investigate the importation of opium suddenly disappeared—one never heard from again, and the other turning up in Japan long afterwards.
“Not only will all the host of candidates—save one—be mad, but all the friends of the hosts of candidates will swear at the loss of their time, passage money, telegrams and post charges.”
This 1893 report captures a moment when federal appointments were treated as local power-brokers' personal chess pieces. The obsession with 'smuggling rings' and the opaque nature of political hiring still rhymes with the anxieties about federal oversight and corruption that occasionally bubble up in modern administrative disputes.
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