An Editor Caught Lying About the Deal That Made a U.S. Senator
J. W. Lysons says the collector's removal had nothing to do with Boss McGraw's bargain — but the Tribune has his own dispatch from Olympia, sent during the fight, to prove otherwise.
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.
Editor J. W. Lysons, formerly of the Port Townsend Leader, in explaining the removal of Collector Bradshaw to the Spokane Review, says the removal was not the result of a deal made with Boss McGraw at the time of Senator Squire's re-election. He admits that the three Republican legislative nominees of Jefferson county intended to vote for Calkins for senator, and that they were nominated to vote for him and at that time intended to do so; but that the Tacoma newspapers began an indiscreet and bitter warfare in the interest of a sub-port in that city, and a few days before election the three members declared they were not pledged to Calkins and did not intend to vote for any Tacoma man for United States senator.
If Editor Lysons is now telling the truth, he told a miserable falsehood when he sent the following to his paper, the Port Townsend Leader, while acting as its correspondent at Olympia after the senatorial struggle:
"At the beginning of the session the three men from Port Townsend were favorable to Calkins, and he would then have received their votes if the election had taken place at that time. After canvassing the situation, however, it was seen that Squire could count on a certain strength of from 50 to 54 votes. Two or three other members stood in with the Jefferson county men, so that their strength was about five votes instead of three. McGraw and his friends saw this, and were willing to make every reasonable concession to Port Townsend in order to get these votes. While it has always been understood that they would vote for Calkins if their votes would elect him, they were careful not to pledge themselves so as to be tied down. In other words, they went to Olympia with the sole purpose in view of looking out for Jefferson county in the election of senator, as well as in matters of general legislation. Any one can see, then, that when they saw the opportunity to cast three votes for a man who lacked that number of election, there was a grand opportunity to make a swing. That is just what they did."
We think that Editor Lysons was truthful last January, and that his present statement to the Review is an attempt to smooth over the peculiar statesmanship of the Jefferson county delegation, one of whom, Mr. Wesson, the present collector, in a published interview said, "I voted for Senator Squire because I thought he would be the winner and I did not want to be on the losing side." Mr. Squire was a winner and Mr. Wesson didn't lose anything. Next.
“I voted for Senator Squire because I thought he would be the winner and I did not want to be on the losing side.”
Before the Seventeenth Amendment, U.S. senators were chosen by state legislatures — which meant three county members could hold a seat for ransom in a smoke-filled room in Olympia. The mechanics changed, but the genre did not: a plum appointment following a pivotal vote, a party boss brokering, and a journalist rewriting his own coverage afterward. Wesson's defense — 'I did not want to be on the losing side' — remains the most quoted sentence in Washington politics.
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