delanceyplace.com 11/29/11 - the most powerful man in america

• 0 COMMENTS

In today's excerpt - decades before today's religious right began its well-organized political efforts, the Christian-based Anti-Saloon League (ASL) waged the most successful single issue lobbying effort in American history which culminated in Prohibition—the Eighteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Its political operations were headed by Wayne Bidwell Wheeler, whose efforts were responsible for the election defeat of hundreds of legislators across the country and whose organization was sending out ten tons of political literature each day by 1912. Mild-mannered in appearance but described as "a locomotive in trousers," Wheeler's efforts started in locally in Ohio, where he targeted seventy sitting legislators and defeated every one of them—and later became "recognized by friend and foe alike as the most masterful and powerful single individual in the United States":

"By 1903, the year Wheeler became the ASL's Ohio superintendent, the league had targeted seventy sitting legislators of both parties (nearly half the entire legislative membership) and had defeated every one of them.

"The newly elected Ohio legislature installed that year was custom-built by the ASL—Wayne B.Wheeler, general contractor. Now it could enact a law that had long been the league's primary goal: a local-option bill plac­ing power over the saloon directly in the hands of voters. If Cincinnatians voted wet, Cincinnati would be wet, and if Daytonians voted dry, their town would be dry. Once different versions of the measure had passed both houses of the legislature, Governor Myron T. Herrick persuaded members of the conference committee to adopt some modifications he deemed necessary to make the law workable and equitable. 'Conference committees are dangerous,' Wheeler believed, partly because they made it possible for governors to step in and preempt the ASL's legislative agenda. Playing for stakes greater than those the league had ever risked before, Wheeler decided to take on Herrick.

"He was not an easy target. A successful lawyer and banker in Cleveland, Herrick was the political creation of Senator Mark Hanna, the Republi­can Boss of Bosses who had also invented William O. McKinley. Herrick had been elected governor with the largest plurality in Ohio history, had substantial campaign funds of his own, and had gladdened many a church-minded heart when he vetoed a bill that would have legalized racetrack betting. Additionally, Ohio Republicans had lost only one gubernatorial election in two decades.

"Wheeler and the ASL crushed him. They sponsored more than three hundred anti-Herrick rallies throughout the state, mobilizing their sup­porters in the churches by invoking Herrick's role in modifying the local-option bill and by suggesting that the governor—'the champion of the murder mills'—was a conscious pawn of the liquor interests. When the Brewers' Association sent out a confidential letter urging its members to lend quiet but material support to Herrick (his Democratic opponent was a vocal temperance advocate), Wheeler said he 'got [a copy of the letter] on Thursday before election, photographed it and sent out thousands of them to churches on Sunday.' In what was at the time the largest turnout ever for an Ohio gubernatorial election, every other Republican on the statewide ticket was elected, but Myron T. Herrick's political career was over. ...

" 'Never again,' [Wheeler] said, 'will any political party ignore the protests of the church and the moral forces of the state.' Or, more accurately, never again would they ignore Wayne B. Wheeler, who was now launched on a national career that would eventually make him, in the words of an ASL associate, the figure who 'controlled six Congresses, dictated to two Presidents ... directed legislation for the most important elective state and federal offices, held the balance of power in both Repub­lican and Democratic parties, distributed more patronage than any dozen other men, supervised a federal bureau from the outside without official authority, and was recognized by friend and foe alike as the most masterful and powerful single individual in the United States.' "