13 Senatorial Fiasco WITH STATEHOOD ACHIEVED, Utah immediately set about choosing two senators to represent the new state in Washington, D.C. When the Republican - dominated legislature, elected the previous November in anticipation of a formal declaration of statehood, convened in Salt Lake City in January, 1896, one of its first orders of business was the selection by the State Senate of Utah's two United States senators. The Tribune behaved sensibly with regard to its old bugbear of church meddling in politics. True, the newspaper was not satisfied with both senators but its objections ran against the gentile elected rather than the Mormon. The procedure for electing senators at this time may be briefly summarized: First, the parties held conventions and nominated one or more candidates to give the voters some idea of whom they might be supporting for senator, but the conventions were not required to make nominations. It was generally understood, and accepted, that the party winning a majority of the state legislature was entitled to the U.S. Senate seats. Just before the legislature convened, or shortly thereafter, the parties would hold caucuses to seek unanimous agreement on whom the legislative members of the party would support for senator. To refuse to accept a party caucus decision was a serious partisan "sin" excusable only for some overriding objection on the part of the defector. The majority party caucus, in effect, elected the sen-
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