Pity the candidate of a rural district in 1904 — it took three (four?) days for candidate Bell to canvas the larger towns in Sonoma County alone, and this district stretches all the way to Oregon (and at the time, it also apparently included more counties in the upper Central Valley). Party leaders and political celebrities were more involved in stumping for local candidates than today; no one thought it odd that vice presidential candidate Fairbanks was speechifying for an hour down in Stockton to reelect a Congressman.

Republican McKinlay had no less than the governor of the state campaigning for him: George Pardee, who, in fifteen too-short months after that election, would be the only major elected official to be roundly praised for his actions following the Great Earthquake of 1906. Most of the upset from the Press Democrat was aimed at the governor for having the effrontery to take sides in an election.

Democrat Bell’s champion was Thomas J. Geary, called “Sonoma county’s Democratic boss” by Lemmon’s newspaper. Geary was no inconsequential backwoods Baby Tweed; he earned a prominent place in this county’s hall of shame for pushing through the infamous Geary Act of 1892 when he was a member of the House. This law not only extended the Chinese Exclusion Act for another decade, but also made it more discriminatory. Chinese residents were now denied bail if arrested and prevented from testifying in court. It also forced all Chinese residents to carry a special ID issued by the federal government; caught without papers, unfortunates had to produce “at least one credible white witness” to swear that they were in the United States prior to 1892, else they’d be deported or spend a year at hard labor.

Geary campaigned hard for Bell, even traveling outside the county to the nether corners of the district. He may have viewed the contest as a surrogate battle against Governor Pardee; two years earlier, Geary was a serious contender to be the Democratic nominee for governor, stepping aside for another man, who lost to Pardee.

Endorsements also had greater weight in that era, particularly since Bell and McKinlay had roughly equivalent credentials, and it seems that neither was particularly well known in the district. Twice the Press Democrat offered editorials praising Bell for his connections to the late Morris Estee, an early California politician who had died the year earlier. Bell’s support from Geary and then posthumously from Estee, however, suggests much about the sort of person he really was.

Morris M. Estee is worth a quick digression here. Although he was affiliated with the Republican party, he could be a case study as a typical Jim Crow legislator from the Deep South. He staked out deeply racist positions that affirmed non-whites had lesser rights, but at the same time didn’t suffer such outrageous discrimination that it would draw the ire of Washington D.C. Some lowlights from his career:
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As the 1863 California legislature was trying to overturn the 1850 law that “no black, mullato person, or Indian should be permitted to give evidence in any court of the state in an action in which a white person was a party,” Estee offered a compromise that testimony could be accepted — but only as long as it was corroborated by a white

Estee wrote about the Chinese in 1876: “They have not any large intelligence; they have not any literature that amounts to anything; they have a little knowledge of the sciences, and some knowledge of the arts; they have no notion of music or poetry, or very few of the exalted ideas which distinguish between barbarian and civilized men, except honesty”

At the 1878-79 California Constitutional Convention, Estee, who insisted that he was as “anxious to get rid of the Chinese as any man in the State of California” argued they had a right to live in houses and should be allowed to catch fish. To “deprive them of the means of procuring the necessaries of life” would be wrong, and “would turn all civilized people against us everywhere,” he warned, particularly “public sentiment in the East [Coast of the U.S.]”

An excerpt from one of the Press Democrat’s two Estee-Bell editorials is below (the other assured readers that Estee knew Bell “personally and intimately”). As Bell became the Napa County DA in 1895, the party described would have taken place some time before he was 22. Following that item is an astonishingly direct editorial attack on Geary from the Republican.

…It was at the residence of the late Morris M. Estee near Napa that the writer first had the pleasure of meeting Theodore Bell. He was then a young man with his life work all before him. Mr. Bell was one of a number of young people who spent an evening at the hospitable Estee home. After the guests had departed, or it may have been the next morning, the writer asked who Mr. Bell was. “Theodore Bell?” replied the venerable jurist. “He is a young man who lives here in Napa. He is teaching school and studying law. He is a very fine young man. You will hear from him some day. If given the opportunity he should and I believe will become one of the country’s big men.” …

– Press Democrat, November 5, 1904

And now there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth because the newspaper having the “longest leased line” [an expensive private telegraph connection] declines to admit to its columns the name of Sonoma county’s Democratic boss. Of course the management of the paper is real mean to pursue this policy, but it is not the only mean thing in the world. That paper undertook to give our local Democratic boss prominence a few years ago. It showed him many favors. Through its influence he was pushed forward as the head of the last anti-Chinese movement and the Democratic nomination for the governorship seemed about to be conferred upon him. But he was discovered to be treacherous, even too treacherous to be considered by the Democratic party as a candidate for that or anyother [sic] place, and then he turned against the man and the paper that had tried to build him up after his political fall. Hence the present trouble. Let the good work go on.

– Santa Rosa Republican, October 11, 1904

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The mano a mano combat eased up after that skirmish, but both editors were still flushed for battle. Opposing political parties were labeled a “machine” or “gang,” and Republican editor Lemmon was ready to name names: Besides Geary (described above), others he condemned as part of a Democratic party cabal were Press Democrat editor Finley and Charles O. Dunbar, a state assemblyman running for re-election. Dunbar — who would later become mayor of Santa Rosa — was also a one of Finley’s partners in the Press Democrat, and was the only other person on the masthead (as “business manager”).

Finley seemed to have a wee too much invested emotionally in the election’s outcome. His editorials became increasingly shrill, even using long stretches of capitalization for inarticulate emphasis (SEE BELOW). Nearly every edition in the month before the election predicted a cakewalk for Alton Parker and/or Bell; the day before the vote, the PD reported Parker was relaxing on his farmhouse porch reviewing letters from office-seekers. Freudians can also draw their own conclusions as to Finley’s repeated references to Bell being the more manly candidate. The attacks on Republicans became hysteric. If Bell was “a brave, energetic, clean and brainy young man,” McKinlay was an indolent sloth, “lolling about in the luxuriant quarters of the Union League Club” in his tuxedo. Republican victory was a national threat; the over-the-top editorial cartoon showing a “Rooseveltism” bayonet through the U.S. Constitution gave no quarter.

Then suddenly it was over, and it was a rout; Roosevelt swept the nation, even breaking the coalition of the “Solid South” for the first time since the Civil War by winning Missouri. Teddy also won the Missouri-settled county here, including every precinct in Santa Rosa by comfortable margins.

Theodore Bell lost in a close race, as did Dunbar.

Probably exhausted by it all, editor Finley headed east for a vacation at the World’s Fair. A couple of weeks later, the Press Democrat reported he’d shipped his dad some persimmons picked from a tree on the Midwest family homestead, a far distance from the flapdoodles.

GOOD MORALS GANG

Geary, Dunbar, and Finley are the self constituted committee on good morals in this city. We are not informed as to when they reformed. What do the moral people of this community think of that gang in the character they have assumed? They are the principle ones making Bell’s fight in this county and the ones who will have most influence with him if he should be elected.

– Santa Rosa Republican, November 5, 1904

WHY SHOULD IT REQUIRE SO MUCH EFFORT TO DEFEAT A DEMOCRAT IN A STRONG REPUBLICAN DISTRICT LIKE THIS?

The Republican “machine,” as most everybody knows, is making the fight of the state in this district in the hope of being able to overcome Congressman Bell’s strength before the people, and defeat him.

The men and the influence back of Duncan McKinlay’s campaign are doing their very best to force him upon the people of this district, although they know the people do not want him.

In support of that policy these men, most of whom reside outside the district, have determined to have a big meeting her Monday night when Duncan McKinlay speaks, if it takes “the last dollar in the sack.”

It is announced that special trains are to be run form [sic] all directions, that the Governor of this great state is to be requisitioned and brought here from his home in Alameda county to make a speech in McKinlay’s behalf, and that a big “marching club” is to be imported from Oakland — which is also outside of the district — in a monster, stupendous and Herculean effort to get up a demonstration and to prevent that meeting from being a “frost.”

[..]

IF THESE THINGS ARE TRUE, WHY SHOULD THE “MACHINE” FIND IT NECESSARY TO WORK SO HARD TO DEFEAT THE DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE?

IN A “REPUBLICAN YEAR, AND IN A DISTRICT 3,000 REPUBLICAN TO START IN WITH, WHY IS IT APPARENT TO ALL OBSERVANT PEOPLE THAT THE REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE IS DOOMED TO DEFEAT?

THERE ARE JUST TWO REASONS: THEODORE BELL IS ALL THAT HE SHOULD BE, BOTH AS AN OFFICIAL AND AS A MAN AND DUNCAN McKINLAY IS NOT.

And that’s why “There’s nothin’ to it![“]

– Press Democrat, November 6, 1904

DEMOCRACY KNOCKED OUT

There was little Democracy in the so-called Democratic meeting in this city the other night. As far as possible there was avoidance of reference to the national party or the principles, practices or candidates of the same. Parker’s name was mentioned once, but it was greeted with slight applause. As far as possible it was an effort to use the livery of Republicanism in the service of Democracy. Geary presided, presumably in the interest of decency and morality. Poor old Democratic party…

– Santa Rosa Republican, November 5, 1904

Like the boy in the graveyard, the Republican press is whistling hard to keep its courage up, but it is a hard task. The local members of that party know their Congressional fight is lost, and many of them are privately admitting the fact on the streets.

– Press Democrat, November 6, 1904

Duncan McKinlay in his Tuxedo suit and lolling about in the luxuriant quarters of the Union League Club has undoubtedly been cutting considerable a swath around the Palace Hotel and certain other places that might be mentioned, since shaking the dust of this city and country from his feet, but he has been doing nothing calculated to add to his loyalty as a representative of this district if he should be elected to that position. Few will be apt to deny that the interests of the district would be far safer in the hands of a man like Theodore Bell, whose interest and hopes are all centered here in the district to which he has ever proved loyal, than to any man of whom the same things can not be said.

– Press Democrat, November 6, 1904

A vote for Theodore Bell for Congress today will be a vote to help a brave, energetic, clean and brainy young man along — one who during his ten years of public life has never yet given his friends and supporters any cause to regret having assisted him.

– Press Democrat, November 8, 1904

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