The provincial and municipal elections occurred on August 1. There were in the field three major political parties, namely, the Conservatives, the Liberals and the Historical Liberals. The latter two were formed by a split which had occurred in the Liberal party. The principal faction was led by Jose Miguel Gomez, who claimed to be representative of the original and only simon pure Liberals, and who regarded the other faction as an illegitimate schism. The followers of Gomez accordingly called themselves the Historical Liberal Party, but were popularly known as the Miguelistas. The other faction was led by Alfredo Zayas and called itself simply the Liberal Party, being popularly known as the Zayistas. There was another insignificant faction which had been known as the National Independent Party but which now merged itself with the Zayistas. The third party was of course the Conservative.
The result of the elections of August 1 was the polling of 269,132 votes or about 60 per cent. of the registration. The Conservatives elected their candidates for Governor in the three provinces of Pinar del Rio, Matanzas and Santa Clara. In the municipalities of the island the Conservatives elected twenty-eight mayors, the Miguelistas thirty-five and the Zayistas eighteen. The elections were conducted quietly and legally, no serious charges of intimidation or fraud were made, and the results were loyally accepted by men of all parties.
The campaign for the Presidential election was then continued with much zeal. The results of the election of August 1 were taken deeply to heart by the various Liberal leaders as demonstrating to them that the split in their party would be fatal to them in the national election unless it were healed or at least some sort of a modus vivendi were established. Accordingly Jose Miguel Gomez and Alfredo Zayas "got together" and[{290}] agreed upon a compromise of their claims. It was altogether apparent that Gomez was on the whole the stronger of the two candidates. Also he was the older of the two men. Therefore it was agreed that he should have the first chance at the Presidency of Cuba. He should be the candidate at the coming election of 1908, but if he was successful in being elected he should not seek a second term but at the end of his first should step aside and give his support to Zayas as his successor. With this understanding the party was reunited for the purposes of the campaign. Gomez was made the candidate for the Presidency and Zayas was nominated for the Vice-Presidency. The Conservatives nominated for the Presidency General Mario G. Menocal and for the Vice-Presidency Doctor Rafael Montoro.
The campaign was conducted with much spirit and earnestness but generally in a dignified and law abiding manner. The chief stock in trade of the Liberals was abuse of the former administration of Estrada Palma, and of General Menocal as the inheritor of its traditions and policies. There were also many intemperate attacks upon Doctor Montoro because of his former association with the Autonomist party and the brief Autonomist Government during the later part of the War of Independence. How insincere this criticism of Dr. Montoro was appeared a little later when that statesman was appointed to a very important office under the Gomez administration.
The election occurred on November 14, under the general supervision of the American Government of Intervention, and was conducted in a peaceful and legal manner, giving no cause for serious complaints on either side. The result of the polling was a decisive victory for the Liberal party. Of the 331,455 votes the Liberals[{291}] polled 201,199 and the Conservatives 130,256, there being thus a Liberal majority of 70,943. The Liberals carried all six provinces of the island, obtaining their largest majorities in Havana, Santa Clara and Oriente. Gomez and Zayas were assured of the entire electoral vote, though under the law of proportional representation for minorities the Conservatives elected thirty-two members of Congress to the Liberals' fifty-one.
Various reasons were assigned for this decisive defeat of General Menocal. One was, that the Liberals were in the public eye as coming men. It was said that as their leaders had never been tried as directors of the Republic, it was time to give them an opportunity to show what they could do. The policy which the Liberals had outlined in advance was very attractive to certain classes of the population. They promised to abolish the law which General Wood had made, prohibiting cock-fighting. They even harked back to "Jack" Cade for inspiration, and promised that when they came into power there should be no necessity for men to work as hard as they had been doing. In token of these two promises they adopted as their pictorial emblem in the campaign a plow standing idle in a weed-grown field without plowman or oxen, and with a fighting cock perched upon its beam. Their campaign cry might therefore appropriately have been "Cockfighting and Idleness!" It is not agreeable to recall that such issues appealed to so large a proportion of the citizens of Cuba that upon them the election of 1908 was won.
Much of the stock in trade of the Liberal campaign consisted also in denunciation of General Menocal. The Liberals declared that he was representative of the class and the régime that had practically been dismissed by the United States government in the Second Intervention,[{292}] namely, the "silk-stocking" or intellectual class, which did not sympathize with the people and with the real cause of popular liberty. It was also pointed out as though it were an opprobrious fact that General Menocal had associated with himself as Vice-Presidential candidate Dr. Rafael Montoro, to whose character and ability not even the Liberals ventured to take exception, but who had been an Autonomist. When this reputed reason for his defeat was mentioned to General Menocal he declared that he was willing to accept it, though he did not believe it to be the true one; adding that after having been associated with Dr. Montoro during the campaign and having intimately exchanged ideas with him, he regarded him, Autonomist though he had been, as one of the best men Cuba had ever produced, and would more gladly be defeated with him than be victorious with the companion of his opponent.
The various provincial and municipal officers who had been elected on August 1 took office and the new provincial laws went into effect on October 1, 1908. Because of the persistent failure of the Cuban Congress hitherto to enact new municipal legislation these were the first local officials chosen by the people since the municipal elections which were held under the first American Government of Intervention of 1901. Since 1901 all vacancies occurring in municipal offices had been filled either by the votes of the municipal councils themselves or by appointment of the national government. This was because no provision had been made for their election by the people. Naturally this state of affairs gave great dissatisfaction and repeated demands were made by the Liberals for the removal of the holdover officials. It was also contended by the Liberals that the election of members of the provincial councils in 1905 had been[{293}] illegal. Under the old law provincial governors and councilmen were elected for four years and half of the council was renewed every two years. Thus half of the council was elected in 1903 and these members took their seats in 1904, and half were again elected in 1905 and took their seats in 1906. The contention of the Liberals was that this latter half, of 1905-1906, were illegal. On April 6, 1908, the terms of councilmen elected in 1903 and seated in 1904 expired, leaving in office only those who had been elected in 1905 and seated in 1906, whom the Liberals affected to regard as having been illegally elected, and who in any case were not sufficient for a legal quorum. The Liberals demanded therefore that all seats be declared vacant and that the powers of the provincial assemblies be vested for the time in the Provisional Government of Intervention. This was done, and the provincial governors were also required to resign. These latter vacancies were filled temporarily by the appointment of United States army officers, who served until October 1, 1908, when they were succeeded by men elected by the Cuban people.
There was undoubtedly great need for a thorough revision of the laws of Cuba. Those existing at this time were for the most part a legacy of the old Spanish government and it was quite obvious that laws which had been enacted by a despotic government for the control of a subject colony were not suited for a free and independent republic. They were certainly not in harmony with the constitution which had been adopted. It was an anomalous state of affairs that after the adoption of the constitution Cuban municipalities should continue to be governed under the Spanish provincial and municipal code of 1878. This code gave the Central Government not only intimate supervision over but practical control[{294}] of all municipal affairs, even to the smallest details, and naturally was very unsatisfactory to the people who were desirous of local home rule as well as of national independence. In fact the efforts of the national authorities to enforce these laws were regarded with displeasure and actually caused strong local antagonism to the national government.