An election for the United States Senate was held by the Pennsylvania General Assembly beginning on January 17, 1899, to fill the seat then held by Matthew Quay for a six-year term beginning March 4, 1899. Quay was a candidate for re-election, but he was damaged by a pending indictment for involvement in financial irregularities with state money; his trial took place during the three months that the legislature attempted to resolve the Senate deadlock, and he was acquitted the day it adjourned, having failed to elect a senator. Quay was appointed to the Senate seat by the governor, but the Senate refused to seat him on the grounds that the governor lacked the constitutional authority to make the selection, and the seat remained vacant until the next meeting of the legislature, in 1901, when Quay was elected.
Quay was Pennsylvania's Republican political boss, and had served two terms in the Senate. Dissident Republicans and reformers were determined to defeat him for a third term, and sought to elect candidates in the 1898 elections for the legislature. Prominent among the anti-Quay forces was Philadelphia businessman John Wanamaker, who had been defeated for the Republican nominations for senator in 1897 and governor in 1898 through Quay's influence. Wanamaker made speeches against Quay during the 1898 campaign, though he refused to seek the Senate seat himself.
Although Republicans had an ample majority in the legislature, enough were opposed to Quay to deny the senator the majority he needed for re-election. Democrats and anti-Quay Republicans refused to join together to elect another candidate, though they had a majority between them. Democrats supported their 1898 gubernatorial candidate, George A. Jenks, while the dissident Republicans voted for several candidates before settling on Benjamin F. Jones. The legislature voted once a day during the session of over three months; no compromise was reached, and the session ended on April 20 without the election of a senator.
After the session and Quay's acquittal, Governor William A. Stone appointed Quay to the vacancy, but the U.S. Senate refused to seat him by one vote, and the senatorship remained vacant until 1901. Quay blamed his fellow Republican political boss, Mark Hanna of Ohio, for the defeat in the Senate, and gained revenge at the 1900 Republican National Convention by supporting Thomas C. Platt's scheme to politically sideline Governor Theodore Roosevelt of New York by making him vice president, over Hanna's strong objection. After Quay's return to the Senate in 1901, he served there until his death in 1904, when control of Quay's political machine passed to his fellow Pennsylvania senator, Boies Penrose.
Background
In drafting the Constitution, the members of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 agreed that United States Senators would be chosen by state legislatures, not by the people. Federal law prescribed that the senatorial election was to take place beginning on the second Tuesday after the two houses of the legislature which would be in office when the senatorial term expired, convened and chose legislative officers. On the designated day, balloting for senator would take place in each of the two chambers of the legislature. If a majority of each house voted for the same candidate, then at the joint assembly held the following day at noon, the candidate would be declared elected. Otherwise, there would be a roll-call vote of all legislators, with a majority of those present needed to elect. In the event that no senator was elected, the legislature was required to hold at least one vote in joint assembly each day until it ended the session or a senator was elected. If a vacancy occurred when the legislature was not in session, the governor could make a temporary appointment to serve until lawmakers convened. This system was prone to deadlock if legislators could not agree. In the 1890s and 1900s, eight states failed to fill Senate seats for periods ranging from 10 months to four years; from 1901 to 1903, Delaware went unrepresented in the Senate.
Matthew Quay was born September 30, 1833, in Dillsburg, Pennsylvania. After completing his education, he became a lawyer in 1854, practicing in Beaver, Pennsylvania, and became prothonotary of Beaver County in 1856. He served as an officer in the Union Army, and was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions at the 1862 Battle of Fredericksburg. Quay was elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, taking office in 1865, and became part of the political machine of U.S. Senator Simon Cameron. Beginning in 1872, Quay served as Cameron's lieutenant. By the mid-1880s, Quay had seized control of the state Republican Party from Cameron's son, Senator Don Cameron, and in 1887 was himself elected to the Senate, with re-election in 1893. Money and patronage were Quay's weapons in gaining and maintaining power; he freely raided the state treasury, dispensing loans to those he favored and using state money to buy votes or the opinions of newspapers. He recognized the importance of this resource, himself serving as Pennsylvania State Treasurer from 1885 to 1887, and once said, "I don't mind losing the governorship or a legislature now and then, but I always need the state treasuryship."
Opposition to Quay and indictment
There had, since 1882, always been some opposition to Quay within the Pennsylvania Republican Party, but it had always been beaten. Pennsylvania's senior senator, Don Cameron, announced he would retire at the end of his term in 1897. Philadelphia businessman and former United States Postmaster General John Wanamaker wanted the seat, which would be filled by the General Assembly in early 1897. Since most Republican legislators were beholden to Quay, his choice of nominee was usually accepted by the Republican legislative caucus, and Quay supported Boies Penrose. Wanamaker entered the race anyway, making speeches demonizing Quay, and making alliances with reformers in the legislature. Nevertheless, Penrose easily won the vote in the Republican legislative caucus in early 1897, and was elected. Wanamaker continued his anti-Quay campaigning through his effort to gain the Republican nomination for governor in early 1898, and even though he failed, continued to give speeches against the senator, hoping to generate enough opposition to prevent his re-election by the legislature in early 1899. His speeches brought the issue of bossism home to the voters of Pennsylvania, and helped elect Democrats or anti-Quay Republicans.
On October 3, 1898, Quay was arrested for conspiracy to defraud the People's Bank of Philadelphia. Quay had arranged in 1896 for $1,000,000 of state funds () to be deposited in it and had persuaded John S. Hopkins, cashier and manager of the bank, that the funds be invested in the Metropolitan Traction Company of New York, sending a telegram: "If you buy and carry a thousand Met for me I will shake the plum tree", believed by investigators to mean that funds from the state treasury would be used to cover the speculation. The stock collapsed, the bank failed, and Hopkins fatally shot himself. It was alleged that the bank was paying the interest on state funds not to the state treasury, but to Quay. The information had been available for months; according to Quay biographer James Kehl, the indictment was timed to have had the greatest effect on the upcoming elections. In spite of the allegations, Quay's hand-picked gubernatorial candidate, William A. Stone, was victorious by over 110,000 votes.
Also indicted was Quay's son Richard and state treasurer Benjamin Haywood, though Richard Quay's indictment was withdrawn and Haywood would die before the verdict. The anti-Quay political forces did their best to capitalize on the claims of corruption against Quay and his associates, attempting to deny him re-election while appearing to remain loyal Republicans in the public eye. The trial was repeatedly delayed in late 1898, leading Quay to appeal to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania to get a judge assigned, wanting the matter disposed of before the legislative balloting for Senate began in January. Instead a trial was set for late February.
Caucus and early balloting
The legislature that was to convene in January 1899 consisted of 164 Republicans, 84 Democrats and 6 Fusionists, the last being elected across party lines by an anti-Quay coalition. On January 3, 1899, the Republican legislators convened in caucus to choose a candidate for senator. Under the conventions of the time, anyone who attended would be bound by the outcome, and only 109 Republicans showed up, of whom 98 voted for Quay, an outcome which was made unanimous. Since there were 254 legislators in full, Quay needed 128 votes in the joint assembly to be elected, and even if the dissenting attendees could be counted in, he was 19 votes short of election. Nevertheless, his supporters cited the outcome as a triumph, and predicted the senator would easily pick up the remaining necessary votes. The Democrats refused to join with the dissident Republicans to elect a senator, but decided on former congressman George A. Jenks, who had been their nominee for governor the previous year, as their candidate for Senate, while the Republicans who refused to support Quay initially had no single candidate, as Wanamaker had refused to run. Confident of re-election, Quay made $40,000 () available to bribe wavering legislators into supporting him.
The initial voting in the two houses of the legislature took place in the state capital of Harrisburg on January 17. Quay received 27 votes in the Senate and 85 in the House, for a total of 112. Since there were a number of absentees and vacancies, 124 votes would be needed for election in the joint assembly, which put Quay 12 votes short. The Democratic candidate, Jenks, received 12 votes in the Senate and 70 in the House, and the leading other contender was John Dalzell, a Republican congressman from Pittsburgh, with 16 votes. This gave Quay a majority in the Senate but not in the House, necessitating balloting in joint assembly. Page 6 image here
By the rules of the joint assembly, there was to be one vote each day unless legislators decided otherwise. Quay received a plurality on almost each vote, and sometimes a majority, but only on days a quorum was not present. Congressman Joseph C. Sibley, a Democrat, was working for Quay and urged the Pennsylvania Democratic legislators to vote for Quay. Instead, the Democrats continued to support Jenks. On February 27, the prosecution in the criminal case against Quay asked for more time; the matter was postponed until April as the senator's supporters claimed the case had collapsed. On March 3, angered when John R. Farr, Speaker of the state House of Representatives, adjourned that body in a manner the Democrats and dissident Republicans considered arbitrary, they remained on the floor and announced they would elect their own Speaker, but they did not have enough for a quorum, and after the effort was denounced by a former Democratic Speaker, it collapsed. That night, Quay's term in the Senate expired, and the seat became vacant; only Penrose represented Pennsylvania in the upper house.
Later voting and deadlock