[2] Preliminary Legislative Report of Special Committee of Board of Aldermen, p. 6.
[3] An extended interview published in the New York Evening Mail, October 20 and 21, 1913.
CHAPTER XXXVI
GOVERNOR SULZER’S IMPEACHMENT AND TAMMANY’S DEFEAT
1913-1914
The campaign of retaliation against Governor Sulzer soon came to a climax.
On July 15, 1913, a committee called the Frawley Committee (headed by Senator Frawley) was appointed to inquire into Governor Sulzer’s receipts and expenditures of campaign funds. After taking testimony, that committee submitted its report with the finding that, following his campaign for Governor, Mr. Sulzer had omitted declaring in his campaign statement $19,000 of contributions to his campaign fund and had purchased, for his personal account, stocks with part of the moneys thus received.
The evidence, according to the committee’s report, showed that a total of $109,016 in cash or stock had been in Mr. Sulzer’s possession, and that this sum came from campaign contributions. Mr. Sulzer had used both cash and checks to purchase stocks; and as far as could be brought out by the records and testimony, his Wall Street transactions with three brokerage firms covered a total of $72,428.28, dating from January 1, 1912. It appeared that the greater part of these payments were made after he became a candidate for Governor and was elected to that office. Mr. Murphy and other Tammany leaders pointed out that while these very transactions had been going on, Mr. Sulzer had in his public speeches pretended that he was a poor man.
Mr. Sulzer’s own version was that if he had made a mistake in signing his campaign statement it was due to haste and carelessness and not to intent to deceive. “But,” he added,