100 years ago in The Saratogian
Thursday, Sept. 5, 1918. “After the smoke of the political battle between the Kavanaugh and Whitney factions of the Republican party in the county rolls away, it is becoming more apparent just what the net result of the primary means,” The Saratogian reports.
The result, according to today’s front-page article, is nothing short of the final defeat of the faction loyal to state senator George H. Whitney and the “decided victory” of the faction led by former sheriff Frederick Kavanaugh.
The rivalry between Whitney and Kavanaugh dates back to 1912, when both men wanted to succeed retiring senator Edgar T. Brackett. The elder statesman negotiated a pact allowing Whitney to get the Republican nomination unchallenged, on the understanding that he would yield to Kavanaugh after two terms. Whitney broke the deal and ran again in 1916 with the votes of Washington County despite Kavanaugh’s popularity in Saratoga County.
Whitney has been made a lame duck by the redrawing of his district to favor Schenectady County. As of next year, Saratoga County’s state assemblyman will control the flow of state patronage into the county. Clarence C. Smith, a Kavanaugh man, won the Republican assembly primary last Tuesday. He’ll face Democratic nominee Kathryn Starbuck, the first woman to win a majorparty nomination in Saratoga County, in the general election.
If Smith wins in November, “all the casual appointees, the fire wardens, the state road assignments, and other patronage, that the Whitney forces have used so advantageously in the past three years, will be named by Mr. Smith and not the Whitney faction.”
Kavanaugh candidates won most of this week’s primaries, but Whitney will control the county Republican committee thanks to a weighted system that assigns votes to each committeeman based on Republican turnout in his voting district in the 1916 gubernatorial direction. Whitney’s chairmanship of the county committee will be “an empty honor,” the reporter claims.
As far as patronage is concerned, one Republican says, “The Kavanaugh people have the oyster and the Whitney people, the shell.”
Whitney would have been in a “very uncomfortable position” even had his side won the primaries, according to a source in his camp. In desperation, Whitney had let county judge Lawrence B. McKelvey pick his county ticket, and McKelvey failed (or refused) to name anyone from Whitney’s home town of Mechanicville.
Most observers feel that Whitney will land on his feet. The same anonymous source tells The Saratogian that “Whitney is now looking for his own job as assistant chairman of the drug commission, and if he gets that, he feels he will have what he wanted, whereas McKelvey has failed.”