"In the Sunday Post Colonel Saylor read an excellent biography of himself, coupled with a declaration that he was a candidate for Judge of the Court of Appeals in the Seventh District, and was said to have the backing of the Republican State organization. Though, when Mr. Searcy Chilton was called up and asked, he stated; 'The organization has adopted an unbreakable policy of hands off in the district, and local races.'"
In due course, Colonel Saylor and John Cornwall were each nominated and entered upon an active campaign of the twenty-seven counties of the district.
In the beginning of the campaign it looked as though Colonel Saylor would be overwhelmingly elected. While nine-tenths of the lawyers favored Cornwall's election, Mrs. Rosamond Clay Saylor was making an active canvass and lining up the women in her husband's behalf; Luigi Poggi and several other miners were organizing Saylor clubs among the miners; and a majority of the American Legion, of course, favored the election of one of their charter members.
Slowly sentiment began to shift in favor of Cornwall. Some of the members of the Legion insisted that Colonel Saylor as a candidate was using his connection with their organization too strongly. He made an egregious blunder in an address to the Clear Creek miners and when his speech was reported he lost many votes.
Some of the lawyers in the face of his almost certain election, knowing that after his qualification, he would even scores with them, charged that he was unfit for the place; and that the politicians of the State would no longer permit a good lawyer to be elected Judge of that court.
Colonel Craddock, a retired lawyer of the local bar at Pineville, and eighty-three years old, published a statement in opposition to Saylor's candidacy. He said in part;
"Though an old man I am not a worshiper of ancientism. I think I can give to present-day men credit where credit is due. But when you are old and experience has taught you that no one is infallible and that every one at times is weak and therefore you should judge your neighbor compassionately, it has also given you the power to discriminate between the false and the true and to see through the shams of life with accurate insight.
"Exercising this faculty which comes with the loss of others, as the sense of touch is developed in the blind, and guided by it, though a Republican, I am forced to oppose the candidacy of J. C. Saylor as Judge of the Court of Appeals and advocate that of his opponent John Cornwall, a Democrat.
"In the election of a Judge, the standard of measurement of the conscientious voter should be one of fitness only.
"Shall not the Judge do right? And how can he do right if he is a crook?