After 50 years of cajoling, pleading, conniving, begging and maneuvering to become a state, Utah was eager finally to have a voice in the U.S. Senate equal to that of its sister states, right?
Well, not enough to inspire members of the state's third Legislature to compromise on a choice. After 164 ballots, no candidate had received the requisite 32 votes to succeed Frank J. Cannon as Utah's second member of the U.S. Senate. For the next two years, Joseph L. Rawlins was Utah's sole spokesman in the body.The failed election occurred before the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed in 1913. Prior to the amendment, which provided for direct election of U.S. senators, state legislatures were charged with selecting representatives to the country's top congressional body.
"At 12 o'clock midnight last evening, the joint assembly adjourned sine die, without having accomplished the purpose for which it met - the election of a senator for the term of six years," the Deseret News glumly reported.
The Legislature had not heeded Gov. Heber M. Wells' admonition at the opening of the session to elect "one of your fellow citizens to the exalted position of United States senator from Utah . . . without entrenching unreasonably upon the time of the members and without bitterness or unnecessary strife."
The session was, in fact, marked by exceptional rancor and accusations of foul play - even worse than the 1897 session in which it took 53 ballots to elect Rawlins to the Senate.
The first 1899 balloting took place in the separate houses, but when no winner was named, the houses met in joint session the next day, as provided in national law. After five ballots, no candidate had received more than 19 votes and the pattern was set for the rest of the session. From January to March, the state legislators continued to cast ballots daily, without any appreciable change in the outcome.
The candidates included the incumbent, Frank J. Cannon, who had represented Utah as a "Silver Republican," favoring a silver standard for U.S. currency, rather than gold; William H. King, A.W. McCune, O.W. Powers and Aquilla Nebeker, all Democrats; and George Sutherland, a Republican.
Later, in an attempt to break the deadlock, President George Q. Cannon of the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was offered as another Republican choice. (Sutherland was not a practicing Mormon.) The church leader drew 14 votes when his name first appeared on the ballot, and further into the process, he topped out at 23 votes, still nine short of election.
Party politics drawn along Democratic/Republican lines were fairly new to Utah, where for years voters had filed up behind the People's Party (primarily LDS) and the Liberal Party (primarily non-LDS.) Under the new nationally aligned parties, Utah leaders couldn't convince their members to compromise, and the balloting went on.
About midway in the session, McCune began to take an edge in the voting and by Feb. 17, many legislators predicted that when the 121st ballot was cast the next day, he would be declared the winner.
But before the clerk could call the roll on Feb. 18, Rep. Albert A. Law, a Republican, threw a king-sized clinker into the works. He proclaimed that McCune had tried to buy his vote for $1,500. In dramatic detail, he described the alleged bribery attempt.
McCune's camp immediately denied the charges and later said that the true fact of the matter was that Law had tried to "sell" his vote to McCune for $5,000. When McCune spurned the offer, Law perverted the facts to make the candidate look bad, supporters said.
The Republicans hurried to dissociate themselves from Law, announcing that he had been only a nominal Republican at best and that he had been disowned by the party before he attacked McCune.
The legislature named a seven-man bipartisan committee to investigate the charges and counter-charges, leaving the balloting process essentially in limbo, although a vote was taken every day in as required by law.
After three weeks of hearings, five members of the investigating committee concluded that Law's claims had not been substantiated, while two said the testimony indicated that his accusations were correct.
By the time the committee's official report was submitted, three days remained in the 1899 session.
With tension high and activity at fever pitch, the battle raged on. Thirty ballots were taken over the three days, with 14 on the final day.
"At an early hour an immense throng of citizens packed the rooms and corridors, the aisles and windows, the corners - every inch, in fact - of available space in and about the hall of representatives," the Deseret News said of the final day. "The people were eager to witness the closing scene in the long and finally fruitless contest to elect a senator and their disappointment at the close, as the clock struck twelve, was evinced in all sort of expressions of regret, vexation, disgust and in some cases, sorrow."
Among those who took up precious space - possibly more than they were entitled to, a News reporter suggested - were schoolteachers and their classes, who stayed to the bitter end.
The rhetoric was knee-deep.
A politically bruised and battered Law took the floor to castigate fellow legislators for im-pugn-ing his character. Sen. Martha Hughes Cannon insisted on an apology from Law when he claimed "every member of the opposition has cast insinuations upon me." Sen. Cannon said she, for one, had not disparaged Law and she wanted the record to show it. Unabashed, Law went on to describe McCune as a man "who, having attained the distinction of `millionaire' becomes so bigoted and debased in his ideas as to assume that he is the superior of his fellow beings, merely on account of his money."
Sen. David O. Rideout pulled out the literary references, declaring that a man without character was like a ship without a rudder. He then quoted Shakespeare's soliloquy on how a man stealing another's good name took "that which not enriches him and makes me poor indeed."
While the words multiplied and flowed, the clock ticked. Dramatic appeals for party unity, unsuccessful calls for caucuses and impassioned speeches supporting one candidate or the other had no effect. The final vote looked remarkably like the first. McCune snagged the most votes at 21, while George Q. Cannon had 18. The remaining 25 votes were divided among the other candidates. No one was close to the required 32. The last vote was tallied five minutes past the midnight closing time.
With Senate President Aquilla Nebeker's announcement that the session was over and no U.S. senator had been elected, the crowd surged onto the floor of the meeting hall. (The Utah Capitol Building would not be completed for another 16 years.) Some men shouted, others threw their hats into the air and women either waved their handkerchiefs or used them to wipe away the tears, depending on how they felt about the outcome.
"So ended the struggle that has cost the Democratic Party more heartburnings, more bitterness and more unforgettable differences than any battle it ever waged," the Salt Lake Tribune said.
The 1901 Utah legislative session was a study in contrasts. Legislators obviously had learned a lesson. In the first vote of the joint session, Thomas Kearns was elected Utah's second U.S. senator, beating McCune by 12 votes. Kearns completed the remaining four years of the six-year senate term.