Gifford Pinchot - Long Road To A Second Term

Long Road To A Second Term

Following the completion of his term as Governor, Pinchot and his wife took a seven-month cruise to the South Seas. In 1926, Pinchot competed in a combative Republican Senate primary for the seat which he had sought a dozen years earlier. Boies Penrose, who had defeated Pinchot in the general election of 1914, died at the end of 1921, and Governor Sproul had appointed lecturer and Republican National Committeeman George Pepper to the seat. Pepper won a special election held in 1922, but was challenged by both Pinchot and Congressman William Scott Vare, the head of Philadelphia's powerful political machine. Pinchot took a strongly supportive stance on the issue of prohibition, while Vare vowed to repeal the Eighteenth Amendment within two years, and Pepper sought to straddle the issue. In the end, Pinchot finished a distant third, behind Pepper and Vare, who went on to defeat former Labor Secretary William Wilson in the general election. However, while Vare's election victory was recognized by the Senate, he was never officially seated, as allegations of impropriety were eventually brought before a special Senate committee. In January 1927, Pinchot testified before the committee, producing several thousand illegal paper ballots, and in 1929, Vare's election credentials were rejected by Senate, and the seat was declared vacant.

In 1930, Pinchot sought a second term as governor, battling for regulation of public utilities, the continuance of Prohibition, relief for the unemployed, and construction of paved roads to "get the farmers out of the mud." He was worried about mounting a political comeback that year. “I don’t want to make a fool of myself,” he said a month before announcing his candidacy.

Pitted against Francis Shunk Brown, the candidate of Vare’s Philadelphia machine, and Thomas Phillips, a former two-term congressman from western Pennsylvania, who was enthusiastically supported by the state’s “wet” forces, Pinchot overcame a deficit of nearly 200,000 votes in traditionally Republican Philadelphia to pull into a 12,000-vote lead on election night.

The 281,000 votes cast for former congressman Phillips, most of which came at Brown’s expense, appeared to have given Pinchot a narrow victory in the primary.

Brown’s attorneys immediately challenged the results, contending that some 60,000 ballots in Luzerne County should be tossed out because they had been perforated beforehand by county election officials in an attempt to prevent fraud. The legal battle ensued throughout the summer and nobody knew for sure who the Republican candidate for governor would be, especially since both men periodically claimed to be the nominee.

Ending four months of litigation and political turmoil on August 20, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, while castigating the Luzerne Common Pleas Court for marking (perforating) the ballots in the first place, upheld an earlier lower court ruling and declared that all 60,000 perforated ballots were valid, thereby certifying Pinchot as the winner of the May 20 Republican primary.

As expected, a number of key Republicans abandoned the former governor during the autumn campaign, one of the most significant defections being that of wealthy WW Atterbury, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, who resigned his seat on the Republican National Committee to actively support John Hemphill, Pinchot’s Democratic opponent.

Despite the opposition of many in his own party, including not only Vare’s powerful Philadelphia machine, but also many “wets” who revolted and created a separate Liberal Party that autumn — thereby giving the Democratic candidate two lines on the November ballot — Pinchot narrowly prevailed, defeating Hemphill by a margin of 1,068,874 to 1,010,204.

During his second term in office, Pinchot abolished the thug system of Coal and Iron Police appointed by his predecessor, Governor John Fisher. When Prohibition was nationally repealed in 1933, and four days before the sale of alcohol became legal in Pennsylvania again, Pinchot called the Pennsylvania General Assembly into special session to debate regulations regarding the manufacture and sale of alcohol; this session led to the establishment of the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board and its system of state-run liquor stores, reflecting Pinchot's desire to "discourage the purchase of alcoholic beverages by making it as inconvenient and expensive as possible."