Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [30]
Not a day had passed when Pulitzer did not use the pages of the paper to tout his candidacy. In humble prose, sounding rather like Dickens’s Uriah Heep, Pulitzer wrote—in the third person—that he would have surrendered the nomination to a more seasoned candidate had one emerged. “It is therefore the unforbearable duty of Mr. Pulitzer to accept this unanimously imposed candidacy and see it through.” He contrasted his attributes of watchfulness, tirelessness, and fearlessness with his opponent’s supposed Confederate sympathies, rumored bankruptcy, and alleged ineligibility. The Radical ticket is “pure gold compared to the candidates of the Irish Democrats…. They say that they would vote for the Devil himself in order to defeat the candidates of the Germans,” Pulitzer wrote on election eve. “What do our German friends have to say about that?”
On election day snow and freezing rain poured down. Only a little more than 300 voters, less than one-fourth the usual turnout, managed to make their way to the two polling stations: the German Emigration Society, on the river side of the ward; and R. Eitman’s Grocery Store, on the western side. The eastern portion of the ward, more densely German, cast 156 votes for Pulitzer and 66 for the Democrat. The margin for Pulitzer allowed him to overcome the Democrat’s anemic victory in the more Irish side of the ward, which the Democratic Party took by a vote of 81 to 53. The final count of 209 to 147 gave Pulitzer the seat in the legislature.
“We doubt that an election has ever taken place in our city under such unfavorable conditions and turned out as relatively satisfying,” wrote journalist and legislator-elect Pulitzer in the next day’s Westliche Post. The Radical victory in the Fifth Ward was important because the ward, though not a “fortress of local Democrats” and “Rebel elements” like the neighboring Sixth Ward, might still be considered a Democratic enclave, Pulitzer said. “Regardless the ward elected a Radical representative yesterday in place of its previous Democratic one. The majority of 62 that elected Mr. Pulitzer may seem small, but not when one takes into account that the total votes for both candidates in both precincts did not top 356.”
As if he were giving a victory night speech, Pulitzer continued his postelection analysis by thanking his colleagues. “The local press exhibited, with one single exception, such an honorable and collegial spirit with regard to Mr. Pulitzer’s campaign, that it is a true pleasure to give voice to our grateful recognition.” The one miscreant was the rival German newspaper Neue Anzeiger, which, according to Pulitzer, “deviated spitefully from the generous stance of the entire rest of the press.” His sensitivity to the one sour note of public criticism revealed that it had not yet dawned on Pulitzer that he had crossed the Rubicon. In only five years he had grown from a bounty-hunting Hungarian teenager to an American lawmaker.
He was now an elected politician.
Chapter Five
POLITICS AND GUNPOWDER
Shortly after New Year’s Day 1870, Pulitzer left St. Louis for the state capital, Jefferson City, and his new life as a legislator. It was a short, bucolic train ride along the meandering Missouri River, whose banks alternated between rich farmland and high overhanging cliffs. For those having political business in the capital, the trip was often gratis, as the Missouri Pacific Railroad gladly offered free passage to those who were in a position to return favors. In fact, it was a common practice for newspapermen, public officials, judges, politicians, and lawmakers to ride “deadhead,” as it was called. Pulitzer, who was among the poorest lawmakers that year, opted instead to obtain a travel per diem from the state.
The state capital, though not necessarily a backwater, was not a destination of choice for politicians from St. Louis and Kansas City. Many legislators remained unconvinced that this isolated former river trading