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A storm of public outrage was heaped on the Common Council, leading one alderman who voted for the contract to mutter, “I have made the greatest mistake of my whole life.” In the wake of Cleveland’s veto, when Talbott’s street-cleaning contract came before the body again, the humbled aldermen voted it down 23 to 2.

Cleveland detested the ceremonial duties associated with the mayoralty. On a scorching day in May, when he laid the cornerstone at the new YMCA building, he found it a “ridiculous thing for me to do.” Through some foul-up, the Express city desk had neglected to send someone to cover the event. Frank Severance, a bright cub reporter, was told to track down the mayor and obtain a copy of his YMCA speech. It was a tricky assignment. In all his dealings with Cleveland, Severance had found him to be as “gruff as a mastiff.” Every Cleveland veto message to the Common Council came larded with sarcasm.

Severance went to City Hall, but Cleveland was not in the office. On a hunch, he went down to Gerot’s, the French restaurant on Main Street that was known to be a favorite of the mayor’s. Sure enough, he found Cleveland alone at a table before an enormous pile of food. Severance gulped and approached him, uttering a stream of abject apologies for intruding on his meal, but the Express really needed a copy of the speech for the edition that was going to press. Cleveland locked eyes with Severance; the young man braced for a rant.

“Had your supper?” Cleveland asked.

“No, Mr. Mayor.”

“Sit down.”

Severance got his story—and the food was delicious.

Around this time, the Buffalo Times, in an otherwise-friendly sketch of the new mayor, wondered whether Cleveland’s “prejudices” against married people had induced him to select a fellow bachelor, Harmon S. Cutting, as his chief clerk.

Cleveland read the scandalous innuendo in a cold fury, suspecting that it was the handiwork of the City Hall grafters, sniping at him any way they could. He never forgave the Times publisher, Norman E. Mack.

Just as the street-cleaning veto was ebbing, another ruckus erupted—this one over sewage—with the shady aldermen on the Common Council once again stirring the pot.

For decades, the city had let raw sewage flow directly into the Erie Canal at Hamburg Street, where in the summer it would bake under the hot sun until it became a revolting stew of germs and offensive odors. This was a grave issue for the citizens of Buffalo. In 1881, more than a third of the city’s four thousand recorded deaths were due to typhoid and other epidemic diseases. On taking office, Cleveland declared that a modern municipal sewage system was now a priority. What he proposed seemed to make sense: the naming of an independent commission to supervise the planning and construction of the sewer line. That way the taxpayers of Buffalo would be assured of the “best available engineering skill.”

The machine politicians on the Common Council immediately screamed holy hell. Where Cleveland envisioned a state-of-the-art sewage system befitting a great and growing city, the aldermen saw the opportunity of lining their pockets slipping away. The last thing they wanted to do was to hand over control of the most expensive public works project in Buffalo history to an independent agency beholden to the mayor.

When Cleveland submitted the names of his five commissioners, the council rejected every one by a vote of 14 to 12. It was war. Cleveland’s retort was ruthlessly straightforward: He resubmitted every name, contemptuously informing the aldermen that their rejection must have been the “result of haste and confusion.” All the major newspapers in the city, Democrat and Republican, lined up behind Cleveland; and the aldermen were compelled, under threat of civil insurrection, to capitulate. The five independent sewer commissioners were confirmed by a vote of 17 to 8. It was a triumph for Cleveland, particularly when the costs of the sewer system came in at $764,000—previously estimated by the Republican-controlled council at an