Campaigns Drawn to a Close

Graphical History Tour checks in one last time on the midterm campaigning ahead of the 1926 midterms:

"Why Change" by Charles Kuhn in Indianapolis News, Nov. 1, 1926

The GOP went into the election in full control of Congress and the White House. Indianapolis News front page editorial cartoonist Charles Kuhn spent the final week of the campaign drawing variations on one theme: Republicans brought the nation six years of unprecedented prosperity, so why change?

"Anxious Days for Mothers" by James "Hal" Donahey in Cleveland Plain Dealer, Oct. 29, 1926

All politics being local, Hal Donahey highlighted the diverse issues bedeviling individual Republican Senate candidates around the country with President Coolidge looking on. Today’s tour explores some of these races.

"Nothing to Hide Behind" by James "Hal" Donahey in Cleveland Plain Dealer, Oct. 19, 1926

Since Donahey brought it up, we'll get Ohio out of the way first. In "Anxious Days for Mothers," Donahey showed Senator Frank Willis beset by "Newberryism," named for Michigan Senator Truman Newberry, notorious for the huge amount of money he spent to get elected in 1918 and pressured into resigning in 1921. Donahey tended to support Democrats (his brother "Honest Vic" Donahey happened to be the Democratic Governor of Ohio), so it's hardly surprising that he didn't see Republicans' record in quite the enthusiastic way Charles Kuhn did.

Detail from "Halloween Time" by Carey Orr in Chicago Tribune, Oct. 31, 1926

We were just discussing Klan involvement in Indiana's Republican Party (an issue Kuhn was more than happy to ignore), an unwelcome stumbling block in Senator James Watson’s race for reelection. Both of Indiana's senators had testified to an investigation led by Senator James Reed (D-MO) to deny being beholden to the KKK. 

Running for reelection, Senator James Watson played down his contacts with Klan representatives, saying that their people met with many other senators, and merely shared his views on the League of Nations and World Court. As for his meetings with former Grand Wizard D.C. Stephenson, by this time serving time for rape and murder, and threatening to tell all about Indiana Republican deals with the Klan, Watson testified,

"I know Stephenson. All Indiana politicians know Stephenson. He was an active fellow and went about at gatherings and conventions. ... Stephenson was never in my room privately but once, and then nothing was said about politics or anything else. He said, 'I came to pay you a visit.' After talking a while, he left.

"I didn't know why he came, and I don't know now. I had gone to bed when I heard a knock at the door. I got up and let him in and we sat and talked for a while. Then he left."

"Admirers of Coolidge Who Had Intended to Vote for Smith" by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, Oct. 30, 1926

Moving along to the Senate race in Illinois: the Republican establishment was embarrassed by its standard bearer, Senator Frank L. Smith (whom Donahey drew tackled by anti-Prohibition “Wets”). It was revealed that while he was Chair of the state's Commerce Commission, Smith had accepted over $200,000 from railroad magnate Samuel Insull and other public utility officials. The steadfastly Republican Chicago Tribune reported:

The President has not lifted a finger to help Smith, presumably because the President could not stomach the scandal attaching to the candidacy of the Republican nominee as a result of the conduct of Smith in taking money from the great public utility corporations subject to his regulation as chairman of the Illinois commerce commission.

It has been known for several months that Coolidge was greatly shocked at the conduct of Smith and had hoped at one time that Smith would have the decency to withdraw after the exposure of the scandal and would relieve the party of the embarrassment of his candidacy. The President was disappointed when Smith refused to budge.

Coolidge responded to a protest by a Smith defender that the Democratic candidate, George E. Brennan, had accepted a $15,000 donation from Insull by snapping, "But Brennan wasn't regulating Insull's properties, was he?"

"To the Rescue" by Fred O. Seibel in Richmond Times-Dispatch, Oct. 28, 1926

The one candidate for whom Coolidge actively campaigned was his home state Senator William Butler (the guy getting stomped by his support of tariffs in Donahey’s "Anxious Days for Mother" cartoon), who had been appointed in 1924 to finish the term of the late Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. 

Butler campaigned as "a candidate for office on a platform that pledges a continuance of the American policy of adequate tariff protection for our industries. My opponent [former Senator David Walsh] has received a Democratic nomination, and he is running on a platform that tries to fool the voters by making one gesture toward protection and another toward free trade."

"Nothing Doing" by Wm. Hanny in Philadelphia Inquirer, Oct. 29, 1926

William Scott Vare had won Pennsylvania Republicans' senatorial primary on an anti-Prohibition platform (see here). Nebraska's Senator George Norris, praised Prohibition of alcohol because "this greatest evil of all mankind is driven from the homes of the American people," and urged Pennsylvania to elect the Democrat, William Wilson. Norris, a Progressive Republican, often voted against establishment Republican legislation, earning the epithet "One of the Sons of the Wild Jackass."

Meanwhile, the Philadelphia Inquirer and its editorial page cartoonist, William Hanny, were in the awkward position of having strongly opposed Vare in the primary as a corrupt machine boss with ties to organized crime, but now urging voters to elect him anyway.

"Wasting Their Time and Bait" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, Oct. 27, 1926

If criticizing a GOP candidate was uncomfortable for Bill Hanny, fellow Republican "Ding" Darling lit into Vare and Smith without hesitation. The two were the poster boys for campaign funding excess (Donahey's Senator Willis notwithstanding, it seems). Vare and gubernatorial candidate Edward Beidleman jointly spent over $788,000 on their campaign; Smith's campaign chest was about $400,000. Adusted for inflation, those amounts would be around $15 million and $7.6 million today, respectively — chicken feed by today's standards.

($15 million is slightly less than the sum nazi oligarch Elon Musk alone has spent to boost corrupt sleazebag Ken Paxton alone.)

Getting back to our History Tour, James K Pollock, Jr., described the state of campaign finance laws in his 1926 book, Party Campaign Funds (Alfred A. Knopf):

"Despite the fact that the federal laws regulating campaign funds are often referred to as corrupt practices acts, it is erroneous to believe that these laws are of the class mentioned. There is only a federal publicity law with a few subsidiary requirements, one preventing the receipt of contributions from corporations, another prohibiting bribery, and another preventing the solicitation of gifts from civil service appointees. The last laws which could properly be described as corrupt practices acts were repealed in 1894 and nothing of a comprehensive nature has since been substituted in their place." (page 227)

"Leaving It At the Wrong Door" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Oct. 27, 1926

In the New York governor's race, Republican Ogden Mills accused incumbent Democrat Alfred Smith (no relation to the Illinois Senator) of responsibility for adulterated milk sold in New York City. Touting analysis by Pease Laboratories that found no such adulteration in their test samples, Smith proclaimed his vindication of the charges.

Opposition to Prohibition was a huge issue in New York City, championed by both Al Smith and incumbent GOP Senator James Wadsworth, Jr. Upstate, both politicians' positions were a harder sell. 

"Do I Look Enough Like a Camel" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Oct. 10, 1926

Q Toon: The Bottom Line

Heading into the final stretch, the midterm election elections keep getting steered into silliness by our Codger In Chief.

Donald T. Rump campaigned in Texas for Almost As Corrupt Ken Paxton by telling voters what an homely slob the guy is. Then he went to Georgia and waxed rhapsodic about how gubernatorial candidate Rick Jackson is such a hunky slab of chiseled beefcake.

In Ohio, T-Rump got even more creepy, praising Senator Jon Husted’s firm, shapely buttocks. Later, just in case he was coming across as a wee bit too gay, Trump shared how much he enjoyed gazing at Nicki Minaj’s caboose, too.

Is making callipygiosity into a campaign issue just Trump’s way of distracting everybody from Vivek Ramaswami’s totally cringe endorsement by the kitten-killer widow of Amy Acton’s child molester step-father? Maybe not; but on the other hand, he’s kept his yap shut about any of their derrières.

✍

P.S.: I had wanted to draw at least one cartoon during this campaign about Michigan’s Senate race between Mike Rogers and Abdul el-Sayed as a nod to my Between the Lines readers, but, since T-rump apparently has no opinions regarding Rogers’s posterior, I could never come up with an original LGBTQ+ angle. 

Now I’ve just read that el-Sayed has got an ad up on Grindr, which certainly would have been worth a cartoon. (The ad was actually produced and paid for by the Christopher Street Project, an organization solely dedicated to electing champions for the transgender community.)

Sadly, my next cartoon for Q Syndicate — based in Ann Arbor, by the way — will only come out after the polls have closed.

So Ohio will have to do.

Eking Out a Sneak Peek

What a nightmare getting this week's cartoon from paper to the internet has been!

Our cable-phone-internet provider was in the neighborhood performing a supposed upgrade last Thursday night, leaving us with no service at all for most of Friday. After the cable and phone were restored, we discovered that we still had no internet.

My better half was unable to fix it himself, so he called the service provider. They sent a guy out here Saturday evening; he spent a couple hours on the computer, in the yard, on the television cable boxes, and ultimately determined that he couldn't do anything with our router because it isn't the provider's. He left us with only the desk computer connected to the internet — no WiFi for the rest of the house.

This morning, I found that the computer and my printer-scanner had no connection. I had the scanner scan my cartoon to USB, then swapped the USB to the computer; but my god, what a horrible scan! Not having been able to adjust the threshold level of the scan, every bit of erased pencil showed up. Worse, all of the lettering (with the inexplicable exception of that on the jersey of the guy on the right) looked as if I had smeared every letter while the ink was still tacky.

I spent a full hour making the text legible again. I should have just cut it out and typed in the dialogue.

Everything about this computer, moreover, seems to struggle much, much, slower than ever before. 

Our provider suggests renting one of their routers in place of the one we bought only a year or two ago. Their router will end up costing more than ours in a matter of months.

I may be cutting back on this blog until we can get somebody to repair the mess wrought by this goddamned Spectrum upgrade. 

October and Ober Again

In lieu of enjoying fresh autumn air and colorful fall foliage, this week's Graphical History Tour rummages through the dank and dusty vaults of Bergetoon Cellars in search of a half century of October scribblings. 

1976

in Park Beacon, Racine WI, Oct. 1, 1976

This week's tour starts off with a bit of genuine juvenilia. (Is there a singular form of that word?) I drew this cartoon for my high school paper to accompany a brief column by another student about her time as a Navy brat in the Philippines four years earlier.

It sounds absolutely dreadful. After a 25-hour flight with stops in Alaska and Japan, she, her mother, and her siblings arrived in the height of monsoon season. Visibility was nil due to rain and fog, her sister was running a fever, and her step-father wasn't there to take them to Sulric (sic) Naval Base. They eventually got onto a bus for a five-hour ride on roads that were all but impassible.

Something might be missing from Brenda's story after the harrowing account of her family's arrival. They finally made it to Sulric (Subic?); her mother phoned the step-father; he arrived and asked if they were ready to go; and all plane reservations were cancelled for another week. The End.

I checked: Brenda had no Part II in the next issue.

1986

in NorthCountry Journal, Poynette WI, October, 1986

I think I may have already posted in this blog every cartoon I ever drew in October of 1986, including this one.

My cartoons for the NorthCountry Journal were meant to complement each month's editorial. This one had to do with erosion control efforts for Wisconsin farmland, most of which is in the Mississippi River watershed.

1996

in UW-M Post, Milwaukee, Oct. 3, 1996

People (usually Republicans) used to talk about needing to run government like a business. Well, before Trump started running it like one of his businesses, anyway.

Pabst Brewery was once a premier powerhouse in the Milwaukee beer industry, but was falling on hard times by the late 1990's. The corporate solution was to renege on their commitments to retirees who had devoted a lifetime to the firm.

It took another generation before Pabst became, if not popular, trendy again in Wisconsin, and it didn't last long.

The lesson to be learned is: the folks who have done the actual work are expendable. That is how business is run nowadays, and how Republicans who want government run like a business run government.

2006

Q Syndicate, October, 2006

With yet another school shooting in the news this week, and Republicans campaigning against the LGBTQ community for lack of anything positive to say about their own record, I think it's worth bringing this cartoon back today.

It's not a perfect analogy, but it has proven nearly impossible to get through to those devotees of the second half of the Second Amendment. I thought this was worth a try.

Now, for you ammosexuals out there, I will readily admit that the latest slaughter at Bend, Oregon, was stopped by one of those fabled, if ever-elusive, Good Guys With a Gun. But only if you will also admit that a sixteen-year-old who is too young to drink alcohol responsibly is also too young to have a high-powered rifle of his very own.

2016

for Q Syndicate, October, 2016

Finally, we are just about up to the moment of Donald Berzilius Trump's first election, thanks to the Electoral College, of the presidency of the United States.

His most fervent supporters, then as now, were the religious right, neoconservatives, urban-hating rednecks, alt-right neo-Nazis, and Russia Russia Russia. There were also Log Cabin Republicans and the even more right-wing GOProud gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and Caitlyn Jenner, enthusiastically shilling for Trump in spite of the palpable contempt for them from all the folks in the first sentence of this paragraph.

Conventional wisdom even in the final weeks of the campaign was that Hillary Clinton was going to trounce Trump handily. There was even talk of her winning in perennially Republican Utah and Arizona.

Which I bring up a propos of, oh, nothing ... just the excited talk of flipping House and Senate seats in Texas, Kansas, Alaska, Iowa, Maine, and my own back yard in a couple of weeks from now.

Q Toon: J.D.'s Stand-up Act

Before coming to the defense of Vivek Ramaswami’s despicable attack ad last night, J.D. Vance was campaigning with Texas's eminently corrupt Republican senatorial candidate, Ken Paxton, last week. Some fellow in the crowd there called out "I love you" at the Vice President.

In the interest of leaving some room for drawing, I left out a little of  Vance's reply. Perhaps I should have left in the line, "I'm the Vice President," in case my caricature of him in his skivvies might not be readily identifiable. I hope readers could tell that this wasn't Volodymyr Zelinskyy, Ted Cruz, Zohran Mamdani, or Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

So anyway, Republicans have determined that if they can't say anything nice about their own candidate, just make shit up about the Democrat. James Talarico isn't a gay vegan transgender commie Buddhist French dauphin, but that hasn't stopped Republicans from joking-no-joke that he is. 

All kidding aside. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

P.S.: Being a seminarian, Talarico would perhaps love that guy from the Paxton rally in an agape way.

Toon: He Calls It As He Seized It

I was considering drawing a cartoon naming Donald Joffrey Trump as Vladimir Putin's "Apprentice" (get it? get it?). Then I decided I'd rather go with a more up-to-date reference.

Brevity being the soul of wit, I'm sure that if this conversation between Trump and Putin ever occurred, Trump would go on and on about how nobody knew that dumb has a "B" in it and he's so surprised that he hadn't thought of this clever wordplay before now; and then he'd repeat the joke and congratulate himself for being such a stable genius, much better than that Jimmy Kimmel fellow who gets such lousy ratings and ABC ought to lose its broadcast license, just like CNN and the failed New York Times because everybody says Trump should have gotten the Nobel Prize for bringing peace to the Gulf of America but they refuse to report it—

All the while, Putin would have shut off the portion of his brain that translates English to Russian much earlier.

This Week's Sneak Peek

I have an update for my recent caricature of local congressional candidate Mitchell Berman.

Contribution reports for the third quarter have Berman outraising Incumbent Congressman Bryan Steil; Berman's principal donors include labor unions and the Democratic Party, but the majority of contributions have been smaller donations from individuals.

The punditocracy is chattering about Democrats having a chance here this year, and Steil has taken notice. He has a new ad on TV in which a woman, who appears to be in her bathrobe in her kitchen, says she has hear that "radical activist Mitchell Berman went to a local school and confronted school officials. With children inside, he was escorted out. His actions put the school in lockdown."

She doesn't want Berman's antics at her children's school, or in Congress. A black-and-white photo of Berman takes over the screen, and a narrator pronounces him "too radical, too crazy."

Racine County Eye fills in the missing details of this story.

Long story short: Berman lives in Raymond, a rural township in Racine County. Moms for Liberty candidates won a majority on the Raymond School Board in 2021; the next year, they decided to fire Raymond School Principal Jeff Peterson for being gay.

That's not the official reason, of course. They just wanted to replace him with a principal who wasn't gay.

Peterson had grown up in Raymond; his mother had been in the Raymond Parent-Teacher Organization, his father had served on the school board, and his sister taught at the school. He had supporters in the community, and Berman was one of them.

In December of 2022, the Raymond School Board met at the home of one of its Moms for Liberty members, in violation of the state's open meetings law; they later claimed that it wasn't a "meeting" but a "retreat." On September 27, 2023, Berman went to the Raymond School to ask for the minutes of that meeting. He was eventually told that they couldn't find the minutes, and he was escorted out of the building.

Berman's behavior during his wait depends on which side of the Peterson business you're on. For some reason, someone decided to put the school on "soft lock-down," while Berman reportedly sat quietly scrolling through his phone. 

Superintendent Michael Garvey did not respond to direct questions from the Racine County Eye. Instead, he sent the statement the school issued reiterating there was no threat to students, just a fear of disruptions.

There were panicked parents who came to take their children home due to the soft lockdown, so that "fear of disruptions" was a self-fulling prophecy.

And a conveniently scary campaign ad.