The Ring Goes Down: Seattle Turns Out the Machine
A Democratic sweep in Seattle's city election stuns the men who thought they owned the town — and the Grand Army veterans they snubbed do the electing.
SEATTLE, March 9. — The election of J. T. Ronald for mayor, and of nearly all the Democratic ticket, was as great a surprise to the Democrats as it was to the ring Republicans. It was not a surprise, however, to many Republicans who voted for Ronald "to down the ring." It was clearly known before 3 o'clock in the afternoon that Ronald was way ahead.
When the Republican city convention met, McGraw and his friends refused to seat the delegation in the First ward, which was composed of ex-Mayor White's friends, and which had eight Grand Army men in it. The election shows that the Grand Army resented this indignity deeply. It is the belief here that the Grand Army and White's friends were largely instrumental in defeating the ticket.
When White ran for mayor the last time, Leary, the present Republican candidate for mayor, owned the Morning Journal, and boasted that he had spent $16,000 in a fruitless attempt to defeat White's re-election. So that when White's friends in the last Republican city convention warned McGraw and the ring that Leary could not be elected, the outsiders in the convention hall greeted the assertion with vociferous cheers.
No printers, newspaper men or correspondents voted for Leary because of his utterances on the solidity of the Morning Journal the day before he sold it to the Telegraph. The whole Democratic city ticket is elected except five members of the house of delegates, which is the high-sounding name of the lower branch of the city council.
“It was not a surprise, however, to many Republicans who voted for Ronald "to down the ring."”
In 1892 a newspaper owner could spend $16,000 of his own money to break a mayor and then run for the office himself — and the voters could still throw him out. The fight over who gets seated at a party convention, and which bloc of insulted voters stays home, is exactly the arithmetic modern campaigns still run on. Seattle's municipal politics were already a professional sport at the moment Olympia was still arguing about steamboat whistles.
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