Whiskey Men As Big City Mayors

Foreword:  Involvement in the liquor trade frequently led pre-Prohibition “whiskey men” into the political arena.  Their profits fueled investments and philanthropic giving that often brought them wide public attention.  Many also had an interest in politics and participated actively in elections.  For three such men their careers led them to becoming the mayors of large cities — Cleveland, San Francisco and Denver.  In office, however, their experiences differed, sometimes widely. 

Born on Christmas Day 1825 in Tuscarawas County, Ohio, Stephen Buhrer was the son of farm folks who had immigrated from Germany.  Buhrer did not attend school and was educated mainly in Sunday school and by any education he could pick up after a long day’s work.  Buhrer learned the trade of coopering (making barrels) and did various jobs including work in breweries and slaughter houses.

After years of employment at such pursuits to little advantage, Buhrer decided to make Cleveland his home and turned his attention to the business of rectifying and purifying whiskey.  He had a definite talent for the liquor trade and became a well-known wholesale distributor of alcoholic beverages.  He eventually owned the Eagle Distilleries Company. 

 

At age 29 Buhrer had only been a resident of Cleveland for eleven years, when in 1855 he was elected a member of the City Council.  He also served on that body in 1863 and 1865, during the Civil War.  Eligible to be conscripted into the Union Army he was not drafted because of bad health.  Nonetheless Buhrer was a stalwarchampion of the Union and Federal government. After his three terms with the Council, he was elected Democratic mayor of Cleveland in 1867 serving in that post until 1870.  

Recognized as progressive, Mayor Buhrer was the driving force for creating a viaduct to connect the east and west sides of Cleveland.  A photo here shows him at a construction site.  Replacing an outmoded facility, a new Cleveland House of Correction & Workhouse was built during his two terms in office.  Turning down an opportunity to run a third time for mayor, Buhrer later was elected to a fourth term on the City Council. He died in Cleveland on December 8, 1907, just short of his 83rd birthday. 

Described by a biographer as a man of “active temperament and speculative turn,” Edward B. Pond, shown left, followed a career path that involved substantial twists and turns until he engaged in the liquor trade in San Francisco and was propelled into the job of that city’s mayor.  Accord to a biographer, despite the bitterness of politics in his day: “Mayor Pond’s name was unsmirched and in the midst of the frictions…he has without obsequiousness or compromise of his integrity, retained the confidence of all factions.” 

Born in Jefferson County, New York, in 1833, and given a good education by an affluent family, the young Pond caught “gold rush fever” and in 1854, five years after the strike at Sutter’s Mill, he saddled up and started from New York for California.  Interrupted by winter snows in the Rockies he laid up until spring in Salt Lake City, arriving on the West Coast in 1855, settling in Butte County in north central California.

Pond’s mining efforts apparently were not fruitful and he took up mercantile pursuits.  In 1868, partnering with two locals, he opened a wholesale and retail liquor house at 325 Front Street in San Francisco. The liquor business flourished, developing a clientele up and down the West Coast.   Pond, however, increasingly was investing in other enterprises.   Still restless at the age of 43,  after eight years at the helm of his liquor house Pond sold out and semi-retired.  In today’s dollar his net worth was estimated in the range of $2.1 million.

Said to have had a lifelong interest in politics, in 1882 Pond was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, apparently served with diligence, and was re-elected in 1884.  In the Fall of 1886, leaving his supervisor’s seat, he ran for mayor as a Democrat and was elected “not on strict party lines, but a large and complimentary vote from all parties,” says a biographer.  Two years later Pond was easily re-elected.  

Los Angeles City Hall

Some of his popularity may have come from his financial prowess. Upon taking office Pond inherited a city debt of $520,000, which was substantial for the time. As mayor he discovered that San Francisco gas and water companies had not been paying their share of taxes. He negotiated a settlement and turned the city’s deficit into a surplus.

Pond had one more political try — an 1890 run for Governor of California.  At the California Democratic State Convention, a San Francisco political boss backed Mayor Pond and he won the nomination. In the general election, however, he lost to the Republican candidate.  That appeared to end the whiskey man’s political ambitions. In 1910 Pond died at the age of 76.

While Buhrer and Pond served with distinction during their terms as mayors,  Wolfe Londoner had a different story. In 1899 liquor dealer Londoner, with the help of two Western desperadoes, won the mayoralty race in Denver by a narrow margin.  How this Manhattan-born son of Jewish immigrants got to this place and what happened afterwards is the stuff of fictional characters in novels. 

Often in poverty, the youthful Londoner bounced around America from coast to coast until settling in Leadville, Colorado, about 1860.  There he managed a general store, one selling liquor.  Only about 21 when he arrived in town Londoner early began his political career there.  A gifted orator, he spent four years variously as the elected Leadville county clerk and recorder, county treasurer and county commissioner.  

Having saved his money, in 1865 Londoner moved to Denver and opened a grocery and liquor store.  Successful, in 1887 he built his own four story building. It was a large establishment with well stocked shelves and a whiskey-tasting bar. The upper floors allowed ample storage and allowed him to mix up his own liquor.  Using stocks received from Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Maryland, Londoner  created his own brands of whiskey, then bottled, labeled, and sold it.  Soon he was doing the equivalent today of $25,000,000 in sales annually.

Londoner came to public notice in Denver when he took time off from his liquor business to manage the construction of a new courthouse, right.  He was described by one author as “faithful and conscientious….He was proud that not a penny’s worth of graft occurred in the construction….”  The building quickly became the pride of Denver.   For the manner in which he had discharged his trust, Londoner wrote, city officials “drew up a resolution which was good enough to put on my grave when I die.”

With his stock high after completion of the courthouse Londoner decided to run for mayor.  He was a Republican, however, in a city that usually voted Democrat over the “free silver” issue.  As friends and supporters he could count on the local saloon and gambling proprietors, men who wielded considerable political influence in Denver.  They provided him with paid “volunteers.”  Among them were notorious Western gunslingers Bat Masterson and “Soapy” Smith.  

Led by those “bad boys,” Londoner’s supporters stuffed ballot boxes and traded drinks for votes at local saloons on election day.  As a result, Londoner became Denver’s 20th mayor by a whopping 77 votes.  Even before he could take office opponents were filing corruption charges against his campaign.  It took months before the legal challenges could make their way through the courts. While they were pending Londoner served more than a year as mayor, until forced by a court order to resign.  He was the only mayor in Denver’s history ever removed from office.  

Londoner seems not to have been daunted by his fall from power.  A skilled writer and wit, he subsequently devoted himself to the Denver Press Club and went back to selling groceries and liquor.  Managing his business to the end, in 1912 Londoner died at the age of 70.  A half century earlier when Wolfe Londoner first came to Colorado he had $1.50 in his pocket and knew not a soul.  When he took his leave he was extravagantly wealthy and known by virtually everyone.  

Note:  More complete vignettes on each of these three whiskey men may be found elsewhere on this blog:  Stephen Buhrer, April 3, 2018;  Edward B. Pond,  June 10, 2020, and Wolfe Londoner, November 26, 2017.  References for each article may be found there.