Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [29]
The Republicans held their meeting the following evening in Turner’s Hall. They had little hope of victory in the election. The ward had been solidly Democratic for the past twenty-five years. Nonetheless Pulitzer urged that Republicans turn out for the meeting. “No one,” he wrote in the Westliche Post, “should be nominated who does not possess the absolute trust of a majority of the citizenry and can be considered their representative.”
Despite bad weather, a sufficient number of Republicans turned out that night to hold the nominating meeting. It quickly became clear, however, that the man they had hoped would run was not interested in the nomination. In the disarray one man moved that the ward secretary, Pulitzer, who was then out of the room, be declared the candidate. This motion was followed by one to close the nominations, and Pulitzer was selected unanimously. The hall reacted with applause, according to Republican press accounts—or with laughter if the Democratic reporters were to be believed. More commotion arose when Pulitzer reentered the hall, unaware of what had just occurred.
The next morning, Pulitzer the reporter gave a third-person account of the reaction of Pulitzer the politician. “In a few, apparently heart-felt words that he spoke to the meeting, he explained that he in no way had sought out this office, that he did not believe himself worthy of the trust that his fellow citizens had placed in him with this nomination, but that if elected, it would be always his highest and only goal to reward this trust.” The Democrat, doing its best to hold up the Republican Party banner, described Pulitzer as “well-known…a gentleman of character, considerable attainment, and decided and energetic” and one “who stands high in the estimation of the Germans in the ward” with “many friends among the Americans.” The paper predicted an election victory.
The wishful thinking suddenly became a possibility when the Democrats ran into candidate trouble. Their first choice declined the nomination. The party turned next to Stilson Hutchins, a Democratic friend of Pulitzer who was a newspaper editor, but he too turned it down. So with only four days left before the election, the Democrats settled on a tobacco dealer with no political experience. The stand-in candidate received a rapid political baptism when Pulitzer tarred him in the Westliche Post. “Who is this new candidate exactly?” wrote Pulitzer. “Few know, but they say that he is a bankrupt merchant, who had strong Rebel sympathies during the war.” A day later Pulitzer charged that the Democrat was ineligible to be a candidate. “He is neither registered in the ward that he wishes to represent in the legislature, nor has he ever voted in that ward.” In this attack, Pulitzer was playing with fire. He himself was constitutionally ineligible for the office. The minimum age to serve in the General Assembly was twenty-four. Pulitzer was not yet twenty-three.
With three days remaining before the election, Pulitzer went to the registrar’s office to sign a loyalty oath, as required by the Reconstruction constitution. In signing the oath, Pulitzer fulfilled a requirement for election, but he also engaged once again in dishonesty about his age. The same day, the Westliche Post published a letter of support for Pulitzer’s candidacy signed by a “Soldier and Worker.” It defended Pulitzer against what it called the “arrogant nose-turning and diplomatic shoulder-shrugging about the young age of the Radical candidate.” His youth, it argued, was no fault of his