Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909Hichborn, Franklin
History
Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909
Hichborn, Franklin
California -- Politics and government
The record of the San Francisco delegation at the session of 1909, while
better in the Assembly than in the Senate, is not one for San Francisco
- or the State for that matter - to enthuse over. The votes on test
questions of the eighteen members of the Assembly and of the nine
members of the Senate, will be found set forth in tables in the
appendix.
The table showing the votes of the nine San Francisco Senators covers
sixteen roll calls, on which the San Francisco Senators cast 128 votes,
ninety-nine of which were in support of machine policies and only
twenty-nine against. Thus the nine Senators averaged on sixteen roll
calls, eleven votes for the machine and three votes against. Had the San
Francisco Senators broken even on the issues involved; that is to say,
had sixty-four of the 128 votes been cast for the machine, and
sixty-four against the machine, and the sixty-four anti-machine votes
been evenly distributed among the several issues, the machine would have
been defeated on every issue coming before the Senate.
The Assembly showing is not quite so overwhelmingly machine as that of
the Senate, but it is bad enough. Eleven roll calls are considered. On
these the eighteen San Francisco Assemblymen cast a total of 165 votes,
of which 108 were for machine policies and fifty-seven against. Thus,
even in the Assembly, the vote was approximately 2 to 1 in favor of the
machine. Of the fifty-seven anti-machine votes, eleven were cast by
Callan, who made an absolutely clean record, nine by Gerdes and seven by
Lightner, a total of twenty-seven for the three. Deducted from the total
of anti-machine votes, this leaves only thirty anti-machine votes for
the remaining fifteen members of the delegation. Or to put it the other
way, Callan, Gerdes and Lightner cast among them only four machine
votes, which leaves 104 machine votes cast by the other fifteen San
Francisco members.
On the individual issues the San Francisco Senators and Assemblymen made
as bad a showing as does their vote in the aggregate. The passage of the
Walker-Otis Racetrack Gambling bill for example demonstrates that the
poolsellers had little hold upon the legislators of any community of the
State outside of San Francisco. In the Senate but seven votes were cast
against the bill. Five of the seven came from the San Francisco
delegation - Finn, Hare, Hartman, Reily and Wolfe. The two remaining
came from Alameda and Shasta-Siskiyou Counties. Leavitt, representing
Alameda, and Weed, representing Shasta and Siskiyou, voted with the five
San Francisco Senators against suppressing bookmaking and pool-selling.
The record of the San Francisco Assembly delegation on the anti-gambling
measure is scarcely less suggestive. Before the Walker-Otis bill could
pass the Assembly the proponents of the measure had to win six fights,
as is shown by the table giving the several votes taken in the Assembly
on the Walker-Otis bill. The three most important of the six were:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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