Empty Mansions

The title he wanted was senator, and the quest for it left his reputation forever stained.
    He had a few handicaps as a candidate. He was not the friendliest campaigner. He was a Protestant in a state with a heavily Irish Catholic workforce that could be motivated by its employers to vote as it was told. And many of those workers were employed byMarcus Daly, W.A.’s main rival in the copper mining business in Montana, who seemed determined to keep W.A. out of office.
    Both men were Democrats, and both owned mines, but they had little else in common. Daly, a burly extrovert born in Ireland, never ran for office and lived on a Montana ranch, where in the 1890s he bred some of the fastest racehorses in America. Clark, a reed-thin introvert born in Pennsylvania, spent time in Europe, where he collected works by Rodin and Renoir.
    But they did have one other thing in common: They were family. Marcus Daly’s wife’s sister, Miriam Evans, married W. A. Clark’s brother Ross. Huguette said she was fond of her Aunt Miriam. And after both men were dead, their widows lived in the same exclusive apartment building in New York City.
    W.A. was nominated to be the Montana Territory’s delegate to Congress in 1888 but was defeated when Daly, though a Democrat, told his miners to support the Republican candidate. Clark’s campaign was afflicted with what today would be called gaffes: criticizing an Irish newspaperman as a traitor, putting on a huge feast for Daly’s mostly Catholic miners on a Friday but serving them steak instead of fish. He lost handily.
    “The conspiracy was a gigantic one,” W.A. wrote to an ally, “well planned, and well carried out, even though it did involve the violation of some of the most sacred confidences.… The day of retribution may come when treason may be considered odious.… For the time being, I retire politically.”
    Two years later, in 1890, he was elected to be the first U.S. senator from Montana—or so it seemed. As the Founding Fathers prescribed,senators were chosen not by the people but by their elected state legislators. Unfortunately for W.A., he was not elected by Montana’s only legislature. Democrats and Republicans both claimed the majority that year and caucused in separate halls, electing two different men to fill the open Senate seat. In Washington, the Senate seated the Republican, and W.A. was still without his title.
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    The first political battle W.A. won was not for office. Montana had become a U.S. territory on May 26, 1864, and the forty-first state on November 8, 1889. The question was where to put its capital. In 1894, Clark’s political forces won a raucous battle over Daly’s supporters when Helena, rather than the Daly-backed Anaconda, was selected as the capital. That night, the Clark partisans celebrated by taking on the role of horses, pulling W.A. in his carriage through the streets of Helena. W.A. repaid the honor by buying drinks for the whole town.
    In Montana in the 1890s, as in the United States in the 2010s, the laws were loose enough to allow men of means to spend unlimited sums of money, either personally or through their companies, to put candidates into office. Bribery was forbidden, but virtually any “campaign expense” was allowed.
    According to W.A., although he may have put $250,000 into the capital fight, his opponent Daly had spent $1 million. And although Daly never held public office, he wielded enormous power in Montana through his Anaconda Copper Mining Company. Clark claimed that he saw men in a voting line getting paid $5 apiece for their votes, and in some Anaconda precincts twice as many people voted as were registered.
    The Montana legislature attempted to rein in both men. After the fight over the capital, an anti-bribery law forbade any candidate to spend more than $1,000 on his own campaign or anyone to give more than $1,000 to a political committee in any county. The law was little regarded and poorly enforced.
    In public, W.A. spoke often about integrity. He attributed his career in business to it. “The most essential elements of success in life are a purpose, increasing industry, temperate habits, scrupulous regard forone’s word … courteous manners, a generous regard for the rights of others, and, above all, integrity which admits of no qualification or variation.”
    Another quotation often ascribed to him is more direct: “I never bought a man who wasn’t for sale.” Although there seems to be