The High-Stakes Senate Betting Scandal
A political showdown over the U.S. Senate seat between Judge Calkins and Senator Watson C. Squire turns into a frantic, high-dollar gambling display in an Olympia hotel lobby.
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 senatorial battle remains unchanged tonight. Senator Squire still continues to have a long lead, and his friends remain confident that he will be elected on the first ballot with as much ease as he was fourteen months ago. Calkins and his friends, notwithstanding the severity of the King County contingent, keep up their old game of bluff. Offers to bet that the 'judge' will get there are frequently heard, but when money is put up by Senator Squire's friends, the anxious bidder disappears. This evening in the lobby of the Olympia hotel, Lawyer Doolittle, of Tacoma, offered to bet Major Routhe, of Spokane, $10,000 that Calkins would be elected. Major Routhe said his inside pocket does not contain so large an amount, but that he could get it from his friends. He was told to do so. Sheriff McGraw contributed $2,000, S. W. Scott and Senator Vandevanter $1,000 apiece, and Routhe and Senators Hyde and Van Houten subscribed $6,000 more, which made $10,000 in the Squire pot. Attorney Doolittle, when he heard of Major Routhe's success, slunk away and said he was only joking.
“Offers to bet that the 'judge' will get there are frequently heard, but when money is put up by Senator Squire's friends the anxious bidder disappears.”
This 1891 report of back-room deal-making and public gambling on election outcomes mirrors the modern concern over the influence of dark money and lobbyists in Washington state politics. Even in the 1890s, the tension between Seattle-area interests and their rivals in Tacoma and Spokane drove the legislative agenda, a regional friction that persists in the state's political culture today.
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