Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1890-08-26
THE SALE OF A NOMINATION.

When the nomination of Mr.. Pond was
announced many of the press with frank
ness eminently creditable to Independent
as well as to partisan journalism, expressed
the opinion that the Democracy had
nominated one of its strongest men. This
was due to the mistaken belief that Mr..
Pond had remained in the lists untram-
meled and independent. In that supposed
attitude he stood more nearly upon level
with Mr.. Markham, whose manly indie
pendence and freedom from entangle-
ments won him his nomination, and
secured him the cordial Endorsement of
representatives in the Republican Conven-
ton who had stood firmly for other manly
and Independent candidates, such as Mr..
Morrow, General Chapman and others. 1t
was therefore natural and commendable
that Republican expression should speak
of Mr. Pond as foeman more worthy the
steel of Mr.. Markham than is usually pre-
sented by the Democracy.
But the San jose Convention had not
completed its labors, before it became
widely known to be an indisputable fact,
that candidates who refused TO crook the
knee to Christopher Buckley had been
sent to the wall in favor of Mr.. Pond, be-
cause the latter had made his peace with
the boss, had sent agents to him and liter
orally crawled in the dirt at his feet. This
fact put an, entirely new face upon the
candidacy of Mr.. Pond. 1t affirmed the
charge concerning the situation in the
municipal government of San Francisco,
that by cunning, but now transparent,
device, the equaminity of the solid nine of
the Board of Supervisors, is undisturbed
by the seeming antagonism of Mayor Pond,
who really holds his place by the grace of
the autocrat of the metropolis.
When E. B. Pond became the nominee
of Buckley he ceased to be candidate for
the Executive chair. He sank to the low
level of the meanest of Buckley's servitors
He bartered his independence for consider
ations that will become plain should the
calamity of his election overtake the State
A nomination that it was supposed was
the free will choice of free man by rep
resentatiyes of large body of the people,
became political event OF the most sensa-
tional character. 1t revealed to the peo-
pie compact OF the most far reaching
cunning, and gave the electors of this
State fair notice that by an act of hypoc-
risy and treachery an attempt was to be
made to betray the State Government into
the hands of Christopher Buckley. That
he was to dispose patronage and shape the
legislation of the State to answer the pur-
poses of his unholy ambition, which In
San Francisco is so far-reaching and has
such strength that not the meanest dis
charge of duty, the letting of the most in
consequential contract, the grant of the
most ordinary privilege, or the disburse-
ment of the slenderest salary can be had
without paying tribute to the political
roguery and merciless grasping OF the
power that has its genesis and its ending
in Boss Buckley.
The nomination of Pond, therefore, be-
came the candidacy of the chief of the
most pernieious bossism that has ever
afflicted the American people. Even cold,
unmagnetic and pulseleSs as he is, Mr..
Pond, without alliance with Buckley, had
elements Of strength that it would have
been weakness to have ignored, though
they were not such as counterbalance
those of the Republican nominee. With
Buckley championing and managing
Pond, who had done servile obeisance to
him, the candidacy of the latter, already
weighted down by the party of obstruc-
tion and disorganization, becomes simply
the candidacy of Buckley. The battle Of
the campaign assumes phase that is
novel in California politics, and that as
sures the election of the Republican citi
zen proposed by the most self-reliant, in.
dependent, untrammeled and self-assertivS
representative political body that ha,
made an impress upon the history of tn,
State.