The Padded Guest List
A political movement to reform Seattle government gets caught red-handed inflating its support with the names of prominent citizens who never agreed to join.
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 citizens' meeting on Tuesday night was not as generally attended by representative citizens as was reported. A large number of those whose names appeared in the morning papers as having signed the call for the meeting yesterday denied any and all connection with the movement. The list published in the Post-Intelligencer was furnished by E. F. Blaine and Everett Smith. In fact, the list included many who neither signed the roll nor attended the meeting and several who had positively refused to be identified with the movement in any way. Dr. S. J. Holmes stated: 'The publication of my name... is erroneous, because I neither signed the call nor attended the meeting.' Many others, including J. MacDougall, Jacob Furth, and E. L. Terry, clarified that they had specifically refused to join in any premature movement toward nominating a citizens' ticket, preferring to stick with their existing party loyalties.
“I am too much of a Republican to do anything which would hinder the efforts of my party in that same direction.”
The practice of 'astroturfing' or inflating lists of endorsers to create a sense of inevitable momentum remains a staple of Seattle political campaigns, showing that the techniques of political boosterism in 1894 are strikingly similar to those used in modern ward politics.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.