When Clark wanted to become senator, he figured the easiest way to do it was to get out his checkbook. Literally. He bought the votes of the Montana state legislature for the 1898 election for about $140,000. Even for the Gilded Age, this was beyond the pale of acceptable corruption. When this came to light early in 1899, the Senate refused to seat Clark. That didn’t stop him though; acting with slightly less obviousness, he managed to get the state legislature to reelect him in 1900 and he served a single term in the Senate. As Clark said, “I never bought a man who wasn’t for sale.”
For reformers, William Clark was Exhibit A for the terrible depths to which the American political and corporate world had sunk. Mark Twain hated Clark with special vigor, writing:
“He is as rotten a human being as can be found anywhere under the flag; he is a shame to the American nation, and no one has helped to send him to the Senate who did not know that his proper place was the penitentiary, with a ball and chain on his legs. To my mind he is the most disgusting creature that the republic has produced since Tweed’s time.”
When Clark died in 1925, he was worth $150 million. Today, that would equal $3.482 billion. His Butte mansion is now a bed and breakfast.
This is the world the 5 Republican Supreme Court justices long to recreate through Citizens United and today’s decision to overturn the century-old anti-corruption laws Montana passed to keep this embarrassment from happening again.
(via slacktivist)
