The Tenderloin Primary: How Tom Humes Won the City
Corruption, colonized voters, and the struggle to reform Seattle's municipal government at the turn of the century.
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 battle at the Republican primaries and convention held in this city raged with a fierceness that was unprecedented in the annals of Seattle. It is useless to say at this time that Tom Humes won out, for that you know too well, but the methods he was compelled to resort to in order to win do not reflect much credit on his winning. For the first time in the history of the Republican party in this city it was compelled to colonize voters from the 'tenderloin' district in the respectable and resident parts of the city to defeat the contentions of good government. It seems the Humes workers found out just how many Republican voters there would likely be in the resident portions of the city and then registered equally as many hobo voters to offset their wishes and then waged the battle with this host of colonized voters. The vote in every precinct in the city shows the closest and most hotly contested one ever reported at a primary.
“For the first time in the history of the Republican party in this city it was compelled to colonize voters from the 'tenderloin' district in the respectable and resident parts of the city to defeat the contentions of good government.”
This account of 'colonizing' voters—moving people between districts to sway local outcomes—mirrors modern anxieties about redistricting and the integrity of municipal power. The clash between 'good government' reformers and the 'tenderloin' machine remains a central theme in Seattle's long history of civic friction.
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