The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1899-03-20
SECRETS OF
A CANDIDATE
WHO FAILED
Cannot Sail a Junk to
WindWard.
AN ARMY OF ALSO RAMS"
DESERVE GRATITUDE OF BILL
POSTERS AND PRINTERS.
Proof That All the Intellect of Oak
land Is Not Absorbed in
the Whirl of Petty
Politics.
AN ARMY OF ALSO RAMS"
DESERVE GRATITUDE OF BILL
POSTERS AND PRINTERS.
Oakland Office San Francisco Call,

residence there long enough to enable him
TO run for Office. He will not feel that he
IS a stranger on account of his ambition,
for the practice has become a habit. Out
of every two dozen men you meet whose
faces are at all familiar at least eighteen
of them have also ran" Nor is this habit
spasmodic 1t is constitutional, for the
Oaklander has not yet been found who
will confess that he is has been 1t
f1atters his vanity and ambition to believe
that he Is a yet and this idea Is only
dispelled by a funeral.
The past week has beer one of comic
opera Henry Clay Baraabee has done
very well at the Macdonough, but his
efforts are Insignificant compared TO the
comic opera of last Monday, Whlch
had for its stage the seven wards OF this
city. This kind of amusement is not COM
plete without its clown. Oakland farce
was presented with more clowns than Ie-
Robbed of all its "asides," Mondays
experience demonstrated one great prln-
ciple-that TO be successful in Oakland d
candidate must either have a good Repub-
lican nomination or own brewery
To a man who has lived on land all his
life Mondays election must have been
funny. but to any one who has passed a
decade at sea il reviVes all kinds of I'M
pleasant comparisons. There is a good
deal of similarity between beating against
q head wind and running for office. When
convention and drifts out with the tide 4
quick passage is assured him to the end
of his journey. Everything goes SWIM
rningly and each day based on dead reCk-
Oning5-the deadeSt of TeCkOning-he
pricks off his position on the chart along
the course which is going to land MIN IN
office On paper a splendid showing IS
made and no rocks or shoals are in sight,
everybody goes along with the good fell
low and successful trip is assured until
the sun comes out and some bearings are
taken, or until the ballot-bOX shows the
'falsity of the dead reckoning" Then
adverse currents, leeWay of friends, un-
known rocks of combination are all dis
covered and the unlucky navigator VINO
vainly persuaded himself that he was in
command of a hrSt-claSs clipper realizes
that he has been trying 70 beat against
wind and tide in some kind OF an old Chi
nese flat-bottOmed junk that could not
get to windward even if it had tug
ahead Of 1t.
1t is always easy to induce a successful
candidate to talk. 1t is not nearly so
easy TO enter into the confidence of one
OF the army of the unsuccessful. When
they know their doom they creep into
their holes and for weeks, as a rule,
nothing is seen of them, Whey they re-
appear the election is a thing of the past,
something not TO be discussed with rel
fish. A couple of days ago one OF the un-
fortunates ran across my path, and under
the promise of secrecy he consented to let
me INTO a few Of his secrets,
1T isn't so bad after ALL" said he
You have such lots of company. he
only way in which the average Oakander
IS remembered is by his record as a run
ner for office. Somebody has said that
the only time an Oaklander runs IS when
an Office is in sight, but this is grossly
untrue, and l shall not deign to CONTRA
dict it; I always thought / knew all
and peep through the curtain, and an
other thing TO go behind the scenes anu
experiment little on your own behalf
Tha HrcT
looking through a camera-eVerythlng IS
upside down from what you thought 1t
was. You realize the immeasurable gulf
existing between the candidate on the plat
form who smiles TO the convention, talks
about the unsought honor and declares
his adherence of any one who would
seek an office instead of being drawn
toward that office by a dOuble-Jeam, and
the candidate who is comforting with ms
executive committee as TO how to raise
enough money to keep the thing going till
election day. This limit of spending mon
ey under the purity act is the biggest joke
in the campaign. The assessments alone
of some of the candidates reach their
limit, and when the honest aspirant Tor
Office mildly suggests that he cannot
come up to expectations, or rather de-
mands, the old hand at the game quietly
suggests TO him that there ought TO be
a friend or two who would be willing
for the good of the cause 10 PUNK do
nation in the general fund, which, OF
course, would not appear as coming from
the candidate.
These friends are not hard to find;
they flock around you. 1t is surprising
how many friends are interested in a can
didate If he has the remotest chance OF
being of service TO them ultimately. l
hate TO think of the miles | might have
walked trying to borrow dollar before
I was nominated, when ! found out now
easy 1t is to fare sGmptuously after nom
ination through friends of whom had
never previously heard.
more people that have an interest in you,
the. more there are anxious for your sue
cess l made a big mistake. l declined
TO borrow and was foolish enough not to
be an object of interest to an army
of creditors, and, consequently, no one
cared how l Jared. This is an error-no
debtors, no workers.
"a little campaign is an eye-opener.
There are some humiliating features to it.
For instance, it is not pleasant on your
way home to run across vacant lot and
see il adorned with hundreds of impress
sions of a face you are well acquainted
with If you shave yourself 1t is still less
pleasant to notice that the vacant lot ad-
Joins the house Of a dear true friend who
had promised faithfully that every card
you gave him would mean one vote. This,
however, is only a trifie. Another unhap-
py episode is on looking through the re-
turns to find that in the very precinct
where lives some one on whose Yeracity
you would risk your life you have not re-
cuse to explain such an incident. The
meanest time of all, however, comes when
you are forced TO file detailed account of
how much the experiment cost. When I
carry my report to the city clerk 1 can
imagine my friends getting out their pen
ellis and figuring up just how much per
vote it cost, and might say right here
that guess II will come about two drinks
per red cross on the ballots.
There is one pleasant side to this har-
rowing experience. After the election
eVerybody, or nearly everybody. feels the
same-they have all been there. console
myself with the thought of how others
must be feeling. For instance, I could i'm
agine M K Miller weeping with John L.
Davie, P. J. Keller .consoling with Andy
McDonough, Bobby Graham pouring, balm
isch shaking hands with the doctor
Looking a little farther back I could see
PROCESSION. Thomas r. Clarity and w. w
Camron And after many companies have
passed in review before, my. memory I see
fhe sorrowful form of Major Woodward
bringing UP the rear. And there are 9TH
ers; a town of others