Some elections are won by a hair, or two votes

By the time you read this, the exciting anxiety of election night has come and gone. TV commentators are probably catching up on lost sleep and, fingers crossed, a winner has been decided in every race on the ballot.

Polling in several states indicate races may be close, with winners claiming razor-thin or landslide victories. Still other races will be too close to call for days, even weeks (remember the Minnesota race that wasn’t settled for nine months after the election?)

But this isn’t the first time races have been won by a hair. Here’s one example, reaching back to 1924 Texas history.

My Grandfather Joe H. Boggs was running for a second term as state representative of the 91st Legislative District. This district included Tom Green (county seat - San Angelo in West Texas) along with Sterling, Irion, Regan, Howard and Glasscock Counties.

The Semi-Weekly Halletsville Herald, reporting on the Friday after the previous Saturday’s election on August 23, 1924, indicated after counting and recounting votes (because the results were so close), my grandfather was leading his challenger -- Penrose B. Metcalfe -- 3241 to 3239, a difference of a mere two votes.

Mr. Metcalfe, the son of pioneer cattle rancher and former state representative C.B. Metcalfe, was seeking political office to follow in his father’s footsteps.

As the story was handed down to me (my grandfather died in 1929, so I never knew him), campaigning for state office in 1924 was done mainly face-to-face. Rural West Texas wasn’t electrified until several years later and the first telephone line was built between Sterling City and San Angelo in 1897, although few had telephones.

It was already warm that August morning, when my father and his sister accompanied their father on a campaign trek down the sun-parched dirt roads into the northernmost areas of the 91st District. There, while my dad and aunt handed out campaign cards, my grandfather visited with townspeople, kissed babies and shook hands before traveling back south from Garden City.

An open car made it easy for my grandfather to wave to and greet constituents, and according to my father, at peak speeds of about 30-35 miles an hour, this early convertible was a wonderful way to travel in hot, dry West Texas…until it wasn’t.

‘As we neared Sterling City,” my dad recalled, “it started raining…at first, just a few sprinkles, but Daddy noticed the roiling clouds ahead, the beginning of what was certain to become a big storm.”

Sterling City lies about 43 miles north of San Angelo on Highway 87, so my grandfather decided the three of them would make an unplanned stop for an overnight stay at the only hotel in Sterling City.

That evening, the hotel’s mostly gentlemen guests enjoyed a hearty meal at a community table and after dinner, as was the custom, adjourned to the hotel lobby, where they lit their pipes and cigars and continued their discussions of cattle and mohair prices, politics and area events of the day.

“While the hotel guests were enjoying their tobacco, my sister and I ‘worked the room,’ handing out Daddy’s campaign cards,” my father told me. “We also politely asked them to vote for our dad.”

Later, after the State Election Commission confirmed the accuracy of the narrow margin and declared my grandfather the winner, he confided to his children that they had made the difference between his victory or possible defeat. “Daddy said our unplanned stop in Sterling City and his fine children's campaign efforts on his behalf that night made the difference, generating the two votes that made him the election’s winner.”

By the time his term in the House was completed, a committee had formed, asking my grandfather to run for governor of Texas, but he wouldn’t formally announce his candidacy until he had made a trip to Temple for a visit with physicians at the then-fledgling Scott & White Hospital. Their news wasn’t good. My grandfather was suffering from an advanced case of prostatic cancer, and his physicians advised him to return home and get his affairs in order, as he had only a year to live. In June, true to the doctors’ dire prognosis, my grandfather died. He was 54.

Penrose Metcalfe, my grandfather’s challenger in that two-vote victory, won the 91st District seat in the Texas House of Representatives that next term and later served in the Texas Senate.