Republican, for the State Senate. Right or wrong - the reader may judge
which - the farmers of the two counties credited the defeat of the
Reciprocal Demurrage bill not to the Republican Party, but to the
Republican machine, or better described perhaps as the
Republican-Democratic machine, that dominates the State, a machine
which the people of California are just now engaged in smashing.

Being good Republicans, the people of Mr. Lynch's district gave Mr. Taft
a plurality of more than 1,700; remembering the defeat of the Reciprocal
Demurrage bill, they gave Mr. Campbell, Democratic candidate for the
Senate, a plurality of 416. The fact that a United States Senator was to
be elected didn't influence the Republicans of San Luis Obispo County at
all. They elected a Democrat to the State Senate because they knew him
to be free from machine domination - a machine maintained for the
purpose of defeating good measures, such as the Reciprocal Demurrage
bill, and furthering the passage of bad ones.

But the influence of Lynch's vote against the Reciprocal Demurrage bill
was not confined to San Luis Obispo and San Benito Counties. It spread
over into the adjoining Twenty-ninth District, which takes in Santa Cruz
and San Mateo Counties. These counties are also intensely Republican.
They gave Taft a plurality of 2,799. But they gave the Democratic
candidate for the State Senate, James B. Holohan, a plurality of 677.
Holohan ran 3,476 votes ahead of his ticket in a district where only
9,483 votes were cast for State Senator. Holohan was known to be free of
machine influences. He could be counted upon to vote for a Reciprocal
Demurrage bill without first consulting the Southern Pacific's political
agent, Jere Burke. And the Republican whose place he took in the Senate
had voted against the Reciprocal Demurrage bill of 1907.