The Senator and the Prisoner
A political jab at U.S. Senator Levi Ankeny highlights a local man's sentencing to McNeil Island Penitentiary, linking corporate influence to the justice system.
Senator Ankeny’s paper, the Morning Union, republished an editorial item from Patrick Winston's paper noting that Adam Schmidt of Walla Walla has secured a place of federal service. It is a peculiar coincidence that his term of service is identical in length with that of the senator himself. There is, however, a trifling difference between the two: the senator goes unattended to the capital, while Mr. Schmidt goes with an escort to McNeil Island. Winston's Weekly might have added that while Senator Ankeny paid not less than $100,000 for his six-year term, Adam Schmidt gets his for nothing, the Ankeny machine footing all the bills for his campaign and his defense, and furnishing bail during his absence from duty. Some people might stop to debate whether it is a greater offense against good government to naturalize half a dozen Russians a few months ahead of time than to buy a seat in the United States Senate.
“Some people might stop to debate the question whether it is a greater offense against good government to naturalize half a dozen Russians a few months ahead of time than to buy a seat in the United States senate.”
This piece captures the fierce, populist-era distrust of the 'Ankeny machine' in Walla Walla. The critique—that the rich buy seats while the poor go to prison for technical immigration violations—mirrors modern debates about the disparate impacts of a two-tiered legal system.
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