Hutchinson v. Brown

BEATTY, C. J. This is an original proceeding by mandamus to compel the secretary oí state to file a certificate of nomination presented by E. L. Hutchinson, and F. L. Gregory, claiming to be chairman and secretary of the People’s Party state convention, and to compel him to strike from the files of his office another certificate of nomination presented by D. T. Fowler as chairman, and Carlton H. Johnson as secretary of a People’s Party convention, which is alleged to have been an illegal and pretended assemblage, not entitled to assume the name or exercise the powers of the People’s Party.

There is no dispute as to the facts of the case, and those which we deem material may be very briefly stated.

The People’s Party is a regular political organization, which at the general election of 1896 polled more than three per cent of the vote of the state. For more than two years it has had regularly chosen and organized state, and county, central committees and a state executive committee which exercises full powers when the state central committee is not in session. In May, 1898, the executive committee regularly issued a call for a state convention, to be held at Sacramento on the 12th of July, and made an apportionment of delegates to the different counties.' Pursuant to this call the convention met and was duly organized on the day named, all but fourteen of the, counties of the state being represented by delegates. Among other preliminary steps in the organization of the convention was the appointment of a conference committee “to counsel with other political reform forces with a viow of political union.” This committee, after consultation with a committee of Democrats and another committee of Silver-Bepublicans, agreed upon a plan of fusion which was reported to the convention and has been fully carried out, though it was never formally adopted. The plan of fusion was in brief to divide the state and district offices among the three parties according to a qertain schedule of apportionment. To effect this object the People’s Party convention was to nominate a full ticket, but the nominees for those offices allotted to the Democrats and Silver-Bepublicans were to place their resignations at the disposal of the conference committee, with the understanding that if the other party conventions thereafter to be held should conform their action to the plan of fusion, then such nominees [191]should be withdrawn and the nominees of the Democrats and Silver-Republicans substituted. Before this plan was reported to the convention James G. Maguire—a Democrat—had been nominated for governor, and although that was an office allotted to the Democrats in the plan of fusion, it was excepted from the arrangement for withdrawing candidates in favor of the nominees of the other parties. In other words, Judge Maguire was to be the Populist candidate for governor, whatever happened, provided only he would accept the nomination.