Senator Estudillo stated that he voted for the amendment against his better judgment.
"I don't believe in your amendment, Senator Wright," said Estudillo, turning to that gentleman. "I don't think it amounts to anything. I vote with you against my better judgment. I do not believe that this amendment will give The People what they want - an opportunity to vote directly for candidates for the United States Senate. My opinion is that we should pass a good bill or no bill at all. I shall, however, yield to Senator Wright, who is the recognized leader in this Direct Primary fight, and vote for his amendment."
And then the six machine members rejected the amendment.
There wasn't much left of the Direct Primary bill. The measure was, on February 16th, two weeks after the application of the committee's pruning knife, reported back to the Senate with all reference to election of United States Senators stricken from it, and the unconstitutional and impracticable majority vote required for the nomination of candidates for office, instead of the constitutional and practical plurality vote, as originally provided in the bill.
The fact should not be lost sight of that the two Senators on the Committee on Election Laws who led the fight against the Direct Primary bill, Leavitt and Wolfe, in the Committee on Public Morals led the fight against the Anti-Gambling bill. Nor should it be forgotten that two of their most docile followers in the Committee on Election Laws, Kennedy and Hare, are "Democrats." There was no partisanship shown in the ranks of the opponents of the Direct Primary bill; machine Democrats and machine Republicans united for its defeat. But when anti-machine Republican and anti-machine Democrats united for its passage, Wolfe and Leavitt were shocked beyond measure.
Machine Senators denounced the anti-machine Republicans as mongrels, enemies of the Republican party, and insisted that if the anti-machine Republicans persisted in continuing with the anti-machine Democrats to secure the passage of an effective Direct Primary law, the Republican party in California would go to smash.
The arrogant course of the machine members of the Election Laws Committee, had at least one good effect it drove the anti-machine Republicans and the anti machine Democrats together as a matter of self-defense. The anti-machine Republicans and Democrats saw the machine Democrats and Republicans united to defeat the passage of an effective Direct Primary measure. So the anti-machine Republicans and Democrats organized that they might successfully combat the organized machine Democrats and Republicans. For the first time in the history of the California Legislature, so far as the writer knows, the Senate divided on the only practical line of division for the enactment of good measures and the defeat of bad ones - with the anti-machine Senators on one side and the machine Senators on the other.
The "band-wagon" Senators of the Welch variety, and the doubtful
Senators, were left for the moment to herd by themselves.
The anti-machine forces held meetings - caucuses if you like - to decide upon the course to be pursued. They numbered at first twenty members, fifteen Republicans and five Democrats. The Republicans were Bell, Birdsall, Black, Boynton, Burnett, Cutten, Estudillo, Hurd, Price, Roseberry, Stetson, Strobridge, Thompson, Walker and Wright; the Democrats, Caminetti, Campbell, Cartwright, Miller and Holohan. George Van Smith, of the San Francisco Call, credited with being an expert on Direct Primary legislation, was admitted to the deliberations of the twenty.
Senator Price, however, became alarmed at the irregularity of anti-machine Republicans meeting with anti machine Democrats, gathered his virtuous partisan skirts about him and fled in dismay.