The Argus of Albany on January 4, 1906, offered its readers a nugget of political wit. “The insurance office boy who receives your card is likely to reply, nowadays, ‘The boss can’t see nobody. He is busy writing his resignation.’” New York City lawyer Charles Evans Hughes had just completed his investigation of the life insurance industry on behalf of the State Legislature.
Hughes, born in Glens Falls, was eager to get as far from the Albany quagmire as possible. “Charles E. Hughes, counsel to the legislative investigating committee, plans to sail for Europe about Feb. 1,” the Argus reported on January 17th. “Mr. Hughes, it is said, intends to rest for a month or more before resuming his law practice.”
There was already speculation that Hughes might run for Governor of New York State.
“Mr. Hughes, the inquisitor, to whom no witness must talk back, and Mr. Hughes, candidate for Governor, might run somewhat differently in the back districts,” The Argus suggested on January 19th.
Over the next few months, reporting in The Argus, a Democratic newspaper, on speculation about the Republican nomination would center primarily on state Senator Edgar Truman Brackett of Saratoga County and current Governor Frank Higgins. Brackett, who announced his candidate on March 19th, discounted the potential of a Hughes’ candidacy.
“Senator Brackett’s constituents, full of spring water, enthusiasm and buoyancy, repudiate the Hughes claim,” the Argus reported on March 21st.
On July 4th, The Argus reported that state Senator Alfred R. Page, R-Brooklyn, downplayed published reports that he and Assemblyman Ezra R. Prentice, R-Manhattan, were booming Hughes for governor.
“’Nothing to it,’ was the terse comment of Senator Alfred R-Page, who was in Albany yesterday to consult Governor Higgins on a private matter.”
Page had been initiator of a joint Senate and Assembly committee that had hired Hughes to investigate the utilities industry. Prentice had been a member of the joint Senate and Assembly committee that hired Hughes to represent the life insurance industry.
Page said that a New York World reporter who contacted him about Hughes misrepresented his response.
“I told the newspaper man that Hughes was all right, that I didn’t know that he was a candidate for the nomination,” Page said, “I didn’t say that I was for Hughes or for anyone
else, and I didn’t speak for the Republican organization.”
The Argus continued to occasionally mention the bearded Hughes as a possible novelty candidate.
On July 5th, the paper suggested, tongue-in-cheek, that state Sen. Edgar Truman Brackett of Saratoga Springs would carry the barbers’ vote if he was the nominee. “The Saratoga Senator has for years, with devilish ingenuity, kept his countenance smooth shaven. How can ‘His Whiskers,’ the Hon. Charles Evans E. Hughes, reply to an argument like that?”
On July 21st, The Argus reported that Higgins and Brackett were the only potential gubernatorial candidates that had delegates lined up for the upcoming nominating convention.
There was still speculation about Hughes, but others doubted it, according to a Utica Press report that The Argus republished.
“The Buffalo Commercial … has started a boom for Hughes as our next governor. It hardly seems possible that he could tie up with such men as Platt and Odell,” two of the leading Republican bosses.”
Indeed, Hughes would run against newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst in that fall’s race for Governor and with the backing of then President Theodore Roosevelt he defeated Hearst in close race.
Photo: Governor Charles Evans Hughes.
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