Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 | Page 8

Rush, Stetson, Strobridge, Thompson, Walker - 14.
Machine - Bates, Pills, Finn, Hartman, Leavitt, Lewis, Martinelli, McCartney, Price, Reily, Savage, Weed, Welch, Willis, Wolfe, Wright - 16.
By time-honored custom it has become a rule for the majority[5a] in the Senate - and the same holds in the Assembly - to meet in caucus to decide upon the details of organization. This is done on the theory that the House should be so organized as to permit the majority to carry out its policies as expeditiously and with as little friction as possible. By the unwritten rule of the caucus, the majority governs and each member who attends the caucus is bound in honor to vote - regardless of his individual views or wishes - on the floor of the Senate or Assembly, as the majority of the caucus decides. Thus, by going into caucus with the sixteen machine Senators, the fourteen anti-machine Senators were placed in a position where they were, under caucus rule, compelled to vote on the floor of the Senate as the sixteen machine Senators dictated. This gave the machine on the floor of the Senate thirty votes out of forty on questions affecting organization, and permitted it to name the President pro tem., the Secretary of the Senate, the Sergeant-at-Arms, and gave it filial voice in the appointment of the various attaches.
Had the line of division in the Senate been Republican and Democratic, the Republicans in the Senate might very properly have caucused. But inasmuch as the machine Republicans stood during the entire session for one set of policies, and the anti-machine Republicans for another, the caucus was at best an incongruous affair. Especially is this true when it is considered that the anti-machine Republicans immediately after they had left the caucus united with the anti-machine Democrats in a three-months contest with the united machine Democrats and machine Republicans. But having surrendered the organization of the Senate to the machine, the anti-machine Senators, although in the majority, fought under a handicap, finally lost the weaker of their supporters[6], and in the end went down in defeat. Had the real majority, rather than the artificial majority, of the Senate caucused on organization, that is to say, had the anti-machine Republicans and the anti-machine Democrats caucused, and organized to carry out the policies for which they stood and for which they fought together during the entire session, the Republican-Democratic-machine element would have been defeated at every turn. But no such policy governed, and the anti-machine Republicans waddled after precedent into the caucus trap that had been set for them. Later on in the session the anti-machine Republicans and anti-machine Democrats did go into caucus together, and by doing so won the hardest fought fight of the session.[7]
In the Republican Senate caucus on organization, the machine Senators, under the crafty leadership of Wolfe and Leavitt, worked their unhappy anti-machine associates much as a playful cat, with a sense of humor, toys with a mouse. As the cat lets the mouse think that it has escaped, the machine let the anti-machine forces think they were organizing the caucus. Leavitt had been leader of the Republican caucus at previous sessions but he suffered "overwhelming defeat" at the hands of a "reformer." The "reformer" in question was Senator Wright, who had been well advertised as the father of the reform Direct Primary law. Before the session closed, the anti-machine element was to learn just the sort of "reformer" Wright is. Wright, however, in the interest of "harmony," was nominated for caucus leadership by Senator Wolfe. Leavitt's name was not even mentioned. The unanimous vote went to Senator Wright, who was duly declared elected Chairman of the Senate Republican caucus for the Thirty-eighth Session of the California Legislature.
The reformers were also permitted to name the Secretary of the caucus. This time a genuine anti-machine Senator was selected, A. E. Boynton.
And then came a question which brought out the gleam of the machine's teeth. Senator Boynton moved that Senator Bell, of Pasadena, be admitted to the caucus. Somewhat to the discomfiture of the reformers, Bell was not admitted.
Senator Bell's case is a suggestive one. He is a Republican, having been elected from one of the strongest Republican districts of the State, the Thirty-sixth Senatorial District, which takes in Pasadena. But Senator Bell was not named by the machine; in fact, he was elected as protest against machine methods. The Pasadena Republicans tolerated machine domination as long as they could. Then, in 1906, they induced Bell to run against the "regular" machine nominee for the State Senate. Bell ran as an independent Republican. He overwhelmingly defeated his machine opponent. Arrived at Sacramento at the session of 1907, he applied for admittance to the Republican caucus.
There was ample precedent for his admittance, but curiously enough no anti-machine