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The National Municipal Review https://books.google.com/books?pg=PA39&id=c9IQAAAAYAAJ blandly observed after the November 1917 elections that "There was very little of general interest in the Cleveland election. The present mayor was re-elected on a preferential vote" which it gave as follows: cleveland-1917.jpg


True, Mayor Davis, a Republican, was re-elected. But I would hardly say the election lacked general interest. Charles E. Ruthenberg, the Socialist candidate, finished third with about one-fifth of the vote. Had the major party votes been more fragmented--with, say, an "independent Republican" to challenge Davis and an "independent Democrat" to challenge Stinchcoomb--one could conceive of Ruthenberg actually winning.

Why would this have been of considerable importance? Because Ruthenberg wasn't just any Socialist. A stalwart of the left wing of the SP, he had already been convicted before the election under the Espionage Act for denouncing the "imperialist war." In 1919, he would make a further name for himself by boldly standing up to the police in the Cleveland "May Day Riot" and later that year he would help to found the American Communist Party--which he was to lead until his death in 1927. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._E._Ruthenberg

I doubt that Ruthenberg would be allowed to actually become Mayor, however briefly, if he were elected. (His Espionage Act conviction was upheld by the Supreme Court in January 1918) But his election (a day before the Bolshevik Revolution!) would certainly be an embarrassment to the Wilson administration... (This would also be true about a possible victory by Morris Hillquit in New York https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_mayoral_election,_1917 but Ruthenberg was well to the left of Hillquit...)
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