Decades before Burris, a Phila. showdown

The U.S. Senate's refusal yesterday to seat Roland Burris of Illinois calls to mind an 80-year-old case involving the ruthless boss of Philadelphia's Republican machine.

William S. Vare, whose family controlled politics in the city for the first third of the 20th century, won election to the Senate in 1926 but never got to take his seat because of widespread suspicion that he had stolen it.

"I was stopped at the threshold of the chamber as though I were some common thief," Vare said.

His convoluted saga dragged on for more than two years, delayed by his illness, court challenges, and the more leisurely schedule of congressional sessions in the 1920s. Ultimately, the Senate voted to bar him.

That case and the current one involving Barack Obama's vacant seat hinge on the Senate's right to determine the qualifications of its own members. Senators are weighing whether to admit Burris, a Democrat, because he was appointed by a governor facing federal corruption charges.

No one is accusing Burris of wrongdoing, but some Democrats have said any appointment by Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich would be tainted.

Senators have weighed hundreds of questions of qualifications of would-be members during the last two centuries, said associate Senate historian Don Ritchie. The cases are "all over the map," he said, including allegations of bribery of the state legislatures that once picked senators, to the post-Civil War period, when some former Southern senators demanded their seats back as if their states had never seceded from the Union.

In early 1927, Pennsylvania Gov. Gifford Pinchot, a reformist who had lost to Vare in the GOP Senate primary, refused to certify the election, writing in the formal credential letter that the victory was "partly bought and partly stolen." Vare only "appears to have been chosen" by the people, Pinchot wrote.

A special Senate committee was already investigating the sums spent by Vare, Pinchot, and Sen. George Wharton Pepper (R., Pa.) in the primary - a total of $3 million, or $36 million in today's dollars. A coalition of Republican progressives and Democrats argued that the extravagant spending tainted the integrity of the Senate and that no one should be able to buy a seat.

Then in the fall of that year, the losing Democratic candidate, William Wilson, filed a petition charging Vare with vote fraud, calling the election "a grotesque and fantastic travesty." The special committee expanded its investigation, seeking ballot boxes, voter lists and tally sheets from the state.

A few days after the governor refused to certify Vare's election, Pinchot's term expired. His successor, however, did say that Vare had been elected fairly, so the Senate was left to sort out the issues.

While the special Senate committee found pervasive fraud, including thousands of phony voter registrations in Philadelphia, the regular committee on Privileges and Elections found the evidence was inconclusive. Even if questionable votes were subtracted, the second committee found, Vare would have defeated the Democrat, Wilson.

On Dec. 6, 1929, the Senate debated both committee reports and heard from Vare, who had suffered a stroke and was supported by a physician as he spoke on the floor. By a vote of 58-22, the Senate denied him a seat.

Although the Vare name might be most familiar today as an avenue in South Philadelphia, it once was synonymous with power in the city. Three Vare brothers, George, Edward and William, owned a contracting company and then built a political machine that historians say distributed patronage, collected bribes, and shook down utilities.

"The Vares made Tammany Hall look like pikers by comparison," said historian Randall Miller of St. Joseph's University, referring to the legendary New York City machine. "There was no subtlety in their abuse of power to aggrandize themselves and their friends. They were just egregious."