Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 40, Number 57, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 March 1908 — ECHOES OF THE CONVENTION [ARTICLE]

ECHOES OF THE CONVENTION

One of the Liveliest Conventions Ever Held in Jasper County Leaves No Bad Tastes. The convention Monday was a hummer and was as full of the spirit of rivalry as any ever held in the county, and concluded with the best of good feeling. And today both victors and defeated are standing shoulder to shoulder in a spirit of the greatest brotherly love. The only contested offices in the county were those of sheriff and surveyor and when Louis P. Shirer was nominated for sheriff, his closest opponent, Chas. Morlan, moved that his selection be made unanimous and Gus Grant seconded the nomination, and Myrt B. Price and R. A. Mannan did the same thing when the surveyor nomination went to W. Frank Osborne. And there was not a, sore spot engendered during the short but lively canvas that preceded the convention. Probably the greatest amount of rivalry was worked up between the friends of the gubernatorial candiddates and this was responsible for much of the interest. The “Jim” Watson partisans set about to get the delegation and some of the friends of the other candidates set about to keep them from getting the delegation. The rivalry warmed up last Thursday when caucuses began to be held and about all the able bodied republicans in Rensselaer and vicinity were aligned with either one side or the other. The Watson opponents were divided between the other candidates and were for either Chas. W. Miller or Hugh Th. Miller, with an occasional Wm. L. Taylor mai in their crowd. The contest at the convention asserted itself when C. C. Warner and J. L. Leatherman, as representatives of the different factions, were pitted against each other for the chairmanship of the convention. Warner won by a vote of 81 to 63. This Just about decided the delegate matter, for practically every delegate had been solicited and had made up his mind about how he was going to vote and for whom each candidate before the convention stood, and it was just about in this proportion that the convention was divided between the Watson and the anti-Watson delegates. The rules of the convention provided that the selection of the delegates from each commissioner’s district be' made in doubles, and the, first tefiTof strength came when the Watson men nominated L. W. Faris and Chas. Peregrine and the antis, nominated John O'Connor and H. W. Marble. The Watson people got 79 and the other side 65 votes. Chas. G. Spitler and Bruce Hardy, running singly and independently,met a similar fate in the Becond, where S. R. Nlcholi and W. L. Wod won out, and A. A. Fell and O. P. Tabor were defeated by the two Johns, Porter and Wilson, in the third. And then Jas. N. Leatherman was defeated by Walter V. Porter, for the delegate at large. The Watson advocates were generous in the exultation and the losers took defeat without any bad results and if some one had moved to make the Watson choice unanimous it would have probably carried.