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First Election Won with 'Goats' Support

By Keith Wilson, Jr.
Independence City Manager in 1984
Independence Examiner Centennial Edition May 1984 

At the end of the Great War, five citizens of Independence returned from France with the rank of captain: Harry S. Truman, Roger T. Sermon, Spencer Salisbury, Kenneth Bostian and Art Wilson, who was my grandfather.

Unlike the other captains, Captain Truman had neither personal resources nor an ongoing business to return to. Like many veterans of the current era, Harry Truman had difficulty in finding permanent employment. Besides his famous bankrupt haberdashery, Mr. Truman tried a wide variety of crafts, including the sale of life insurance and the sale of memberships in the Missouri Automobile Club.

In 1922, through the assistance of war buddy Eddie Jacobson and other of his Kansas City friends, Mr. Truman was offered the support of the Goat faction (Tom Pendergast's group) in seeking the Democratic nomination for eastern judge of Jackson County.

The Goat candidate for western judge already was locked up in the person of Henry F. McElroy, later the first city manager of Kansas City. With Goat support, Mr. Truman easily won the Democratic primary.

In 1922, there were not sufficient Republicans in the eastern portion of the county to necessitate a primary election. The Republican County Committee nominated the Republican candidate.

Faced with a returning war veteran filling the Democratic slot for eastern judge, the Republican Committee solicited the assistance of a Republican veteran holding the rank of captain, Cpt. Arthur L. Wilson, Engineer Corps, who had operated sawmills behind the 35th Division front in France to produce the necessary timbers and duckboards required for World War I trench warfare.

Captain Wilson returned to Independence in 1919 to continue the operation of the A.L. Wilson Lumber Co. at 120 5. Liberty Street. When contacted by the Republican Committee, Art responded that he would be willing to allow his name to be placed on the ballot; however, he firmly stated that since he was not a politician he would not campaign for the office. He, thereafter, left Independence for a month long fishing trip in Colorado.

Art Wilson lost the general election to Harry Truman by 2,764 votes.

I have in my personal collection of Truman memorabilia a piece of scrap paper in Mr. Truman's handwriting where he kept the vote count on all candidates in the general election of 1922.

Truman had 9,073 votes to Wilson's 6,319. First election won with 'Goats' support.