A Legislature Deadlocks Over a U.S. Senate Seat
A joint-session vote fails to choose a senator, and the Post-Intelligencer demands that the Republican majority settle the contest in caucus before the session is consumed.
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.
The result of the vote in the joint session of the state legislature yesterday emphasizes the necessity of determining the choice of a United States senator by a caucus of the Republican majority. As remarked in these columns yesterday morning, no determinable end to the contest is apparent until a majority of the legislature and of the party take the matter in hand. There is no practical method of doing so save by the accepted usage of the party—a caucus.
This is a matter too serious for trifling methods, far too important to be made subject to the personal ambition of any present or possible candidate. The people of the whole state are impatiently awaiting the day when, this senatorial contest decided, the men whom they have selected primarily to make new and repeat obnoxious and hurtful laws shall settle down to business. That the majority will or can do so while this struggle for senatorial honors continues is palpably out of the question.
The legislatures of Idaho and Delaware, both Republican, are in deadlock over the same senatorial choice, solely because it has not been submitted for determination to the Republican majority within itself in caucus. In both cases the party suffers locally because it is the responsible majority, and the public is defrauded because the main business for which a legislature is elected and paid is unattended to.
Moreover, the party is liable to suffer nationally and in far greater degree, for those states, like Montana and Wyoming until recently and Washington today, may be but partially represented in the national senate. In that body the Republicans will need every vote to which they are entitled when reorganization is to be made.
To delay settlement of the senatorial contest, to prolong the present deadlock in our legislature, is both a partisan and political crime. If it be done to subserve the fancied or real interests of any senatorial aspirant, he is particeps criminis with those of his supporters who oppose submission of an assumed claim or an honorable ambition to a decision of their party.
“To delay settlement of the senatorial contest, to prolong the present deadlock in our legislature, is both a partisan and political crime.”
In 1895 the U.S. Senate was still chosen by the legislature, so a deadlock in Olympia left Washington only partially represented in Washington, D.C. The fight over a caucus—party insiders settling the seat before public business could move—has a familiar ring in an era of contested elections and stalled legislatures.
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