Finally, Cleveland said, “All right, I’ll run, but only on condition that the rest of the ticket is made up to suit me.”
He wanted John C. Sheehan, the incumbent city comptroller, booted off the ticket. Sheehan had a reputation for shiftiness and political malfeasance, and Cleveland refused to have him as his running mate. On this issue, he was unyielding.
“I’ll be damned if I’ll run with that Irishman,” he said.
Three days later, when the convention was called to order at Tivoli Hall, Cleveland was still dithering. Three party honchos were delegated to track him down and inform him that all his conditions had been met: Sheehan was done for, and in his place the nominee for comptroller was Timothy J. Mahoney. This was the same neighborhood rascal who in his youth had sneaked into Lewis Allen’s orchards to pilfer peaches. Mahoney had joined the police force, and political connections had aided his rise through the ranks, to captain and then inspector. All that time, he had stayed in contact with Cleveland. He was now the city auditor. Given the ethnic politics in play, with his Irish name, he made a credible replacement for Sheehan.
The committee caught up with Cleveland in court, where he was arguing a case before New York State Supreme Court Justice Albert Haight. They pulled him aside to inform him of his man Mahoney’s nomination. Cleveland listened to the news, then went over to Justice Haight. Cleveland and Haight had been friends since 1872, when Cleveland was sheriff and Haight, at age thirty, had been elected to the county bench. Back then, he had been known as “the Boy Judge.”
Nodding at the three men hunched over in the corner, Cleveland told the justice, “This is a committee from the Democratic city convention, and they want to nominate me for mayor. They’ve come over to see if I’ll accept. What shall I do about it?”
“I think you’d better accept,” Haight replied. “Your chances may be pretty good.”
“But I’m practicing law, and I don’t want it interfered with.”
“The mayoralty is an honorable position,” Justice Haight countered. “You haven’t any family to take care of. I’d advise you to accept.”
Cleveland pondered what Haight had to say, but just didn’t know what to do. Was a life in the public spotlight really for him? He asked the justice to adjourn the case to give him a chance to think things through.
“Court stands in recess for half an hour,” Justice Haight announced.
While the committee waited, in the courtroom Cleveland reviewed the pros and cons for a final time, then said, “Go back and place me in the running.” In the interest of party harmony, he added, “Make up the rest of the ticket to suit yourselves.” With that, at 4:30 p.m., a keyed-up committeeman ran back to Tivoli Hall to break the news to the “great unwashed,” as a Republican newspaper referred to the packed convention hall. He elbowed his way through the throng and announced, “He’s accepted, boys! He’s accepted! Let’s have a drink!”
Meanwhile, Cleveland had made his own way up Washington Street to Tivoli Hall. When he strode in at 5:00 p.m., wild cheers erupted. He took the stage and announced, “I accept the nomination tendered to me.” Then he put forth his vision of low taxation and integrity in government. Right after his brief remarks, Cleveland returned to his case in Justice Haight’s courtroom and picked up his argument where he had left off.
During that mayoral campaign of 1881, Cleveland hoisted many a stein of beer. Most of the electioneering took place in the city’s saloons, where men congregated in large numbers. (Women’s suffrage was still four decades away). Cleveland made his stump speech standing not behind a rostrum but atop a beer barrel. He rallied the citizenry under the banner of good government, striking a bipartisan tone of contempt for machine politics: “A Democratic thief is as bad as a Republican thief,” he said.
The Courier and other pro-Democrat newspapers in Buffalo conspired to assist Cleveland in discreet ways. When he spoke at a rally at Diebold’s Saloon in the first ward, the Courier, mindful that conservative church elders might take offense at the venue, altered it to Diebold’s Hall. Those in the know had a good laugh when they read the article the next day, though the mischief went over the heads of the Episcopalian churchmen, who knew nothing of life in the Irish first ward.
Naturally, the Republican papers were doing their utmost to prop up their candidate, Milton E. Beebe, a mild-mannered architect who served as an alderman and was deemed to be in the pocket of the shady political ring that ruled City Hall. In the final weeks of the campaign, the Commercial Advertiser, crowning Beebe as the “workingman’s friend,” published the entire Republican ticket on its front page every day. The paper also took special pleasure in assailing Cleveland—“Grove” as he was scornfully called—for his “lordly manners.” He was derided as a “wealthy old bachelor and white-vested aristocrat” who “carries his head so high, as a rule, that he cannot see ordinary persons.” Cleveland’s draft-dodging days came up in another story, this one told by a veteran who said that after he had hounded Cleveland for a donation to send a delegation of soldiers to Yorktown for the centennial celebration of the British surrender, Cleveland sputtered, “I am sick and tired of this old-soldier business. You fellows have been well taken care of, and I am opposed to it on principle.” That was either a tactless stand or a gutsy one, depending on one’s point of view: Cleveland seemed to be taking a shot at the Grand Army of the Republic, the fraternal organization of nearly half a million Union Army veterans, known for its political clout. It was said that no Republican candidate could be nominated for president without the endorsement of the GAR. Yet for whatever reason, Cleveland’s scorn for the veterans’ vote failed to gain traction.
The first ward was shaping up to be key to a victory. It was typically a Democratic stronghold, but Cleveland was concerned that his ouster of John Sheehan from the ticket would lead to a tepid turnout, or even worse, outright sabotage by Sheehan’s legions of followers. The Commercial Advertiser tried to stir things up yet again with the accusation that Cleveland had “ostracized” the entire Irish American population from jury duty when he was sheriff and, this time, had refused to run on the ballot with “that Irishman Sheehan.” The Saturday night before the election, Cleveland poured all his resources into campaigning in the bars along the waterfront. His last stop was Schwabl’s saloon, right on Sheehan’s home turf.
Election Day fell on the first Tuesday in November. In those days, there were polling booths at police precincts, but more often than not, they were in private houses scattered around the city; a voter in the fourth ward, for example, had to cast his ballot at No. 62 E. Huron Street, the home of Frederick Schottin, a bookbinder. A Buffalo policeman stood outside each polling station, and as soon as the votes were tabulated, the officer ran to the nearest telegraph office to send the results to police headquarters.
The final returns gave Grover Cleveland a solid victory, 15,080 to Beebe’s 11,529. Jubilant Democrats were so appreciative of the coverage they had received in the Courier they marched in a procession with a band to the newspaper’s editorial offices, lit a huge bonfire, and serenaded the staff. It was, the Commercial Advertiser sourly reported, a “waste of good kindling.” For Republican mouthpieces such as the Commercial Advertiser, the election of Grover Cleveland and the Democrats was a “disaster,” which it blamed on the “treachery” of those Republicans who had switched party allegiance.
In truth, Cleveland was swept into office on a wave of revulsion over machine politics and the conduct of a clique of grafters known as the Ring who ran City Hall. Democrats and Republicans were deemed equally crooked. Cleveland’s platform of good government and his reputation for pugnacious honesty connected with the electorate. Plus, the German voters really delivered.
In Holland Patent, Ann Cleveland sat down at her desk and composed a letter to her son. Mrs. Cleveland had misgivings about Grover entering politics. “But now that you have taken upon yourself the burdens of public office do right, act honestly, impartially and fearlessly,” she wrote him.<
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Cleveland was inaugurated on New Year’s Day 1883, and immediately set the tone of his frugal new administration by refusing to hold a formal inaugural ceremony. The next day, he got down to business and sent the sixteen Republicans and ten Democrats who sat on the Common Council a stern message that hit them right in the collective solar plexus. The clerk started to read Cleveland’s address at 2:00 p.m.
First, the new mayor took aim at the “shameful neglect of duty” in the office of the street commissioner. How was it possible, Cleveland thundered, that the network of streets and sidewalks constructed by the city was in such deplorable condition and yet the city’s ten street inspectors could offer no record whatsoever of actually conducting a single inspection? And why did the city charge 26¢ per foot for the construction of plank sidewalks when private citizens were able to hire construction crews for 15¢? Henceforth, Cleveland demanded, as a blanket rule, that all city contracts be awarded to the lowest bidder.
One Republican alderman was so affronted he rose and moved that any further reading of the mayor’s address be dispensed with at once; he had heard enough. Perhaps curious about what was to follow, the council voted him down, and the rest of the mayor’s communiqué was read into the record. The aldermen listened as Cleveland went on to declare that he was “utterly unable to discover any valid reason” why municipal offices were closed at 4:00 p.m. when the city work force was paid to work until five. That policy was ending as of now.
The aldermen just sat there stupefied; they had never heard anything like this. Then they swiftly got back to the practice of business-as-usual machine politics.
A piece of legislation was passed creating the position of city mortician; the bill was sent to the mayor’s desk for his routine signature. Mayor Cleveland quickly surmised that the council was once again crafting a do-nothing patronage job for a political hack, to be named later. As Cleveland saw it, it was just another measure to bloat municipal government. It became his first veto.
More drama followed. A routine city contract came before the council: a politically connected businessman, George Talbott, was awarded a five-year contract to clean all paved city streets and alleys for $422,500. The curious thing was that Talbott was the highest bidder. A rival sanitation company with a perfectly acceptable history of honest work had put in a bid for $313,000 for the same contract. Another curious thing: Talbott’s original bid had been $372,000; he had raised it by $50,000. Everyone knew what was going on. It was so transparent it was almost laughable. Talbott was lining the pockets of the aldermen to win the contract. Even so, it took some horse trading to corral the necessary votes, but when it came before the council, it was awarded to Talbott, 15 to 11.
“This is time for plain speech,” Mayor Cleveland told the aldermen. “I regard it as the culmination of a most bare-faced, impudent, and shameless scheme to betray the interests of the people.” Cleveland’s language in vetoing the deal whipped the citizenry into a populist frenzy. Who could have imagined that the veto of a street-cleaning contract could galvanize the public?
John Weber, who lost the race against Cleveland for sheriff in 1870, would later recall it as “nothing short of a popular revolt. I cannot remember a time when interest in any municipal matter reached such a height,” he said. “Groups of men could be seen on the street, discussing it to the accompaniment of waving arms.” Weber watched in genuine amazement as the coverage of the scandal spread across the state, and as it did, he wondered if it would make Cleveland governor.
Cleveland had nothing against George Talbott. Actually, Talbott was a former law client and a drinking buddy. At the height of the hullabaloo over the veto, Cleveland took Talbott aside. “This is neither a personal nor a legal matter,” he said. “While I was your attorney, I was loyal to your interests. Now the people are my clients, and I must be loyal to them.”
A storm of public outrage was heaped on the Common Council, leading one alderman who voted for the contract to mutter, “I have made the greatest mistake of my whole life.” In the wake of Cleveland’s veto, when Talbott’s street-cleaning contract came before the body again, the humbled aldermen voted it down 23 to 2.
Cleveland detested the ceremonial duties associated with the mayoralty. On a scorching day in May, when he laid the cornerstone at the new YMCA building, he found it a “ridiculous thing for me to do.” Through some foul-up, the Express city desk had neglected to send someone to cover the event. Frank Severance, a bright cub reporter, was told to track down the mayor and obtain a copy of his YMCA speech. It was a tricky assignment. In all his dealings with Cleveland, Severance had found him to be as “gruff as a mastiff.” Every Cleveland veto message to the Common Council came larded with sarcasm.
Severance went to City Hall, but Cleveland was not in the office. On a hunch, he went down to Gerot’s, the French restaurant on Main Street that was known to be a favorite of the mayor’s. Sure enough, he found Cleveland alone at a table before an enormous pile of food. Severance gulped and approached him, uttering a stream of abject apologies for intruding on his meal, but the Express really needed a copy of the speech for the edition that was going to press. Cleveland locked eyes with Severance; the young man braced for a rant.
“Had your supper?” Cleveland asked.
“No, Mr. Mayor.”
“Sit down.”
Severance got his story—and the food was delicious.
Around this time, the Buffalo Times, in an otherwise-friendly sketch of the new mayor, wondered whether Cleveland’s “prejudices” against married people had induced him to select a fellow bachelor, Harmon S. Cutting, as his chief clerk.
Cleveland read the scandalous innuendo in a cold fury, suspecting that it was the handiwork of the City Hall grafters, sniping at him any way they could. He never forgave the Times publisher, Norman E. Mack.
Just as the street-cleaning veto was ebbing, another ruckus erupted—this one over sewage—with the shady aldermen on the Common Council once again stirring the pot.
For decades, the city had let raw sewage flow directly into the Erie Canal at Hamburg Street, where in the summer it would bake under the hot sun until it became a revolting stew of germs and offensive odors. This was a grave issue for the citizens of Buffalo. In 1881, more than a third of the city’s four thousand recorded deaths were due to typhoid and other epidemic diseases. On taking office, Cleveland declared that a modern municipal sewage system was now a priority. What he proposed seemed to make sense: the naming of an independent commission to supervise the planning and construction of the sewer line. That way the taxpayers of Buffalo would be assured of the “best available engineering skill.”
The machine politicians on the Common Council immediately screamed holy hell. Where Cleveland envisioned a state-of-the-art sewage system befitting a great and growing city, the aldermen saw the opportunity of lining their pockets slipping away. The last thing they wanted to do was to hand over control of the most expensive public works project in Buffalo history to an independent agency beholden to the mayor.
When Cleveland submitted the names of his five commissioners, the council rejected every one by a vote of 14 to 12. It was war. Cleveland’s retort was ruthlessly straightforward: He resubmitted every name, contemptuously informing the aldermen that their rejection must have been the “result of haste and confusion.” All the major newspapers in the city, Democrat and Republican, lined up behind Cleveland; and the aldermen were compelled, under threat of civil insurrection, to capitulate. The five independent sewer commissioners were confirmed by a vote of 17 to 8. It was a triumph for Cleveland, particularly when the costs of the sewer system came in at $764,000—previously estimated by the Republican-controlled council at an inflated $1.5 million.
All of Western New York watched the unfolding drama. In the late 19th century, public sanitation was such a life-and-death concern that faint stirrings of a Cleveland-for-governor movement began to appear in the Buffalo press. Even the publisher Norman Mack joined the campa
ign.
In the seventh month of his administration, as July came around, Cleveland prepared to go on vacation. As usual, he planned to visit his mother in Holland Patent. Then a telegram arrived with unsettling news: Ann Cleveland was close to death. The forty-five-year-old mayor hurried to Holland Patent. All the surviving Cleveland children once again gathered, even Anna Cleveland Hastings. She lived in Ceylon with her missionary husband and happened to be on one of her rare visits home when her mother was stricken.
The matriarch of the family lingered for several days, and the Cleveland siblings remained at her bedside until the end. Mrs. Cleveland was seventy-six when she died on July 19, 1882. Grover was disconsolate. Of all her children, he held a special place in her heart. She died without ever knowing that her bachelor son had fathered a son.
Cleveland sent a telegram to Harmon Cutting, notifying his clerk of his mother’s death. The Express, almost certainly after a briefing by Cutting, reported that the mayor “has always been devotedly attached to her, and will feel her loss deeply.” Holed up in a room at his mother’s house, Cleveland said he could only imagine “the desolation of a life without a mother’s prayers.” He conducted what city business he could and answered telegrams and letters of condolences. He poured his heartache into the inscription he composed for her memorial stone: “Her children arise and call her blessed.”
Mrs. Cleveland was buried in the same cemetery where a monument—inscribed with the legend, “Loving and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not divided”—had been erected for the two Cleveland brothers lost at sea in the Missouri disaster of 1872.
Holland Patent had not changed much since Grover’s departure nearly thirty years before, and he got a chance to get reacquainted with his siblings. Reverend William Cleveland had moved to Oneida County, not far from his late father’s parish. Mary Cleveland Hoyt was still in Fayetteville, and Louise Cleveland Bacon lived in Ohio. Susan Cleveland Yoemans was raising a family near the Canadian border. Only the gifted youngest sister, thirty-six-year-old spinster Rose, remained in their mother’s house.
A Secret Life: The Lies and Scandals of President Grover Cleveland Page 12