1922 Jackson County Eastern District Judge Election

The 1922 Jackson County Eastern District Judge Election launched Harry S. Truman’s elected political career. Its contest was for an administrative county office, not a judgeship in the ordinary judicial sense, but the position carried influence over county employment, road work, and contracts. Truman’s candidacy joined his reputation as a veteran and local farmer’s son to the electoral reach of the Pendergast political organization; his narrow primary victory also depended on support from political allies outside that organization.

The Office and the Candidate

In late 1921, when Truman already understood that the Truman & Jacobson haberdashery was failing, Jim Pendergast brought his father, Michael Pendergast, to meet him at the shop on 12th Street. They asked Truman to run for eastern district judge of Jackson County, based in Independence. Under the Missouri system, the county court had three judges: one for the eastern, outlying part of the county, one for the western part centered on Kansas City, and a presiding judge. The eastern judge held one of three votes, which could matter in political bargaining as well as administration.

The court controlled county purse strings and had authority over road overseers, road gangs, county clerks, and hundreds of other employees. It also determined who received county contracts, including work on a road system in constant need of maintenance and repair. The office therefore offered practical power as well as political standing. The Pendergast organization had reason to value a candidate who could appeal to the country vote across towns including Grandview, Lee’s Summit, and Independence.

According to Pendergast family tradition, Jim Pendergast originated the idea. Michael Pendergast reportedly consented to the candidacy before meeting Truman, partly on the strength of what he had heard about Truman’s father, John Truman. The family’s account also makes clear that support had a condition: Truman must have no connection to the Ku Klux Klan or a similar anti-Catholic faction. Truman accepted the offer without hesitation. In a letter dated February 4, 1922, he told a friend, “They are trying to run me for Eastern Judge, out in Independence, and I guess they’ll do it before they are through.”

At a meeting of Michael Pendergast’s Tenth Ward Democratic Club, Truman sat quietly while Michael announced him as the candidate and cited his war record and family. Truman also brought qualities useful to a countywide campaign: he was a Baptist and a Mason, had a farming background, and could speak to farmers in a way an urban political organization could not easily imitate. Harry Vaughan later described Truman as “window-dressing” for Tom Pendergast: his reputation for honesty gave the organization a candidate it could present as broadly respectable.

Campaigning Across the County

Truman opened his campaign on March 8, 1922, two months short of his thirty-eighth birthday, at a rally for war veterans in an auditorium at Lee’s Summit. About 300 people gathered for speeches, free cigars, and music. The campaign presented him as the American Legion candidate, a framing the Lee’s Summit Journal praised as new and progressive. Members of his former Battery D were there in force, joined by a sprinkling of Pendergast supporters.

Former Colonel E. M. Stayton introduced Truman. Truman said he was willing to run, but stage fright made it difficult for him to say more. Years later, he recalled, “That first meeting was a flop for me,” and said he had been more frightened than when he first came under fire in 1918. The crowd nevertheless responded well. Ethel Lee Buxton, a former Red Cross entertainer in France, sang “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” and closed with “Mother Machree.”

Other appearances took Truman to Grandview and to a rough wooden platform outside the church at Hickman’s Mills. At both, he managed little beyond saying he was in the race and welcomed his friends’ support. At Hickman’s Mills, his introduction came from O. V. Slaughter, a farmer and president of the Grandview Bank who was known for his connections to public figures as well as his local standing. Slaughter’s most memorable line was, “I knew Harry Truman before he was born.” The appeal of the campaign thus rested not only on party organization but on Truman’s roots and relationships in the county.

The Klan Question and the Primary

The growing influence of the Ku Klux Klan became a direct test of Truman’s political judgment. Crosses had been burned near Lee’s Summit, Klan membership was increasing in Independence, and two of Truman’s opponents, Parent and Shaw, had Klan support. Edgar Hinde urged Truman to join, arguing that membership was good politics. A Klan organizer known as Jones told Hinde that Truman could secure the organization’s backing if he signed up.

Truman initially refused, but later gave Hinde ten dollars for membership and agreed to meet Jones privately at the Baltimore Hotel. Jones then made the condition explicit: Truman would receive no support unless he promised never to hire Catholics if elected. Truman ended the discussion. He pointed to his command of a largely Catholic battery in France and said he would give county jobs to whomever he saw fit. The ten dollars was apparently returned. This episode made the limits of his accommodation clear: he had accepted machine backing, but not a pledge to discriminate in county appointments.

A speech defending his support for Republican county marshal John Miles proved pivotal in the primary campaign. Truman described Miles as a comrade whose conduct under fire had earned his loyalty, recalling that Miles had held the line in France when French troops were falling back and that his batteries stood between the Germans and a successful counterattack. Truman said he had no apology to make for voting for his friend, adding that Miles was the only Republican he had ever voted for. For many listeners, the primary was decided at that moment.

The contest remained close through election day. Truman was privately disappointed by the effort the Pendergast people had made on his behalf. Cars bearing placards carried voters to the polls, and at Fairmont Junction, near the Kansas City line, an armed group of Joe Shannon’s supporters tried to take the ballot box before the Pendergast side could reach it. Two deputy marshals, sent on the orders of Truman’s Republican friend John Miles, confronted them. Guns were drawn. Shannon appeared and, with a deputy’s .45-caliber automatic pressed against his stomach, urged everyone to quiet down and go home. Had the ballot box been taken, Truman would probably have lost. Instead, he defeated Rabbit candidate Emmett Montgomery by just 279 votes, out of more than 11,000 cast among the five candidates. Shannon blamed Republicans for Truman’s victory, and the intervention by Miles’s men supports the importance of that cross-party assistance.

Taking Office

The fall election brought no comparable suspense: every Democrat won. On New Year’s Day, 1923, the new county court was seated at the courthouse. Truman joined presiding judge Elihu Hayes and western judge Henry McElroy. Hayes was a Rabbit whom Truman regarded as a fine old gentleman; McElroy was a close associate of Tom Pendergast. The election thus moved Truman from a campaign shaped by personal reputation, veteran loyalty, and an organized political endorsement into a county government where all three judges would exercise power over county administration.