Trivia Question #1

Yesterday we are starting our Monday McCall Madness Trivia Contest! Every Monday we will send an email with a trivia question related to Tom McCall. We will take the folks that answer the question correctly, put their names in a hat and draw one on Thursday 3/7 and they will win a cool Tom McCall Related item! We just sent out our first email a few hours ago. If you were not on our email list this is your chance to chime in. Subscribe to our email list by filling in the form on the right of your screen and feel free to email us the answer at oregonapic@gmail.com

This week's winner will get an Elect McCall Bumper Sticker from his successful 1964 campaign for Oregon Secretary of State

The prize for this week!

The Question: Tom McCall was no the first McCall in his family to be an elected governor of a state. His grandfather, Samuel McCall was elected governor of what U.S. State?

Just send us the answer at: oregonapic@gmail.com and don't forget to sign up on our email list to get the question next week! You can subscribe by filling out the form to the right of this post.

McCall March Madness!

 

McCall March Madness starts Monday, March 4th!  To celebrate Oregon's Tom McCall we will be giving away one Tom McCall item every Monday in March! It might be a bumper sticker, book, photo or other Tom McCall related item. All you have to do is subscribe to our email list and answer the Tom McCall Trivia question when it is sent out that Monday. A random winner will be selected from the folks that answered the question correctly.

This contest is thanks to the generosity of the Oregon American Political Item Collectors and friends. To subscribe to our email list simply fill out the form that reads "Subscribe to our mailing list" and be sure to look for an email on Monday with the trivia question.

Political Items in Prineville

If you like to go exploring and have the time to visit Prineville, Oregon, you should go check it out. I recently visited the A.R. Bowman Museum (Crook County Historical Society). It is housed in two floors of an old bank in downtown Prineville, a few blocks from the county courthouse. Like most county centric museums there are lots of items from the 'early days' of the town and their pioneer roots (a very common theme in Oregon). There were photos of the old baseball teams, teachers, ranch hands, prominient buisnesspersons and what-have you. There was even, for fans of political items, some of those tucked away in this museum that you had to really look to find.

Here are the items I noticed.

1) William McKinely bootjack.

Most of us are probably thinking....what is a bootjack??  It is a device invented to help remove your boots. This bootjack was used in William McKinely's successful 1896 campaign for President according to the caption provided with it.

Tom McCall Memorial Program

Really neat program that a friend was able to find for me while he was shopping for books.

Look at some of the names that were able to speak at this event.

More McCall Items Turn Up

At the recent Oregon APIC Meeting we heard from Lincoln County Commissioner Bill Hall about his upcoming novel called McCallandia. The novel is about Tom McCall becoming President of the United States.

Our members and guests brought in their McCall related items and some even had items for trade and sale. I was able to trade a duplicate McCall poster for some items I did not have yet. One of the items was the above bumper sticker from McCall's 1978 comeback campaign.

I traded this 1970 McCall bumper sticker for another 1970 McCall bumper sticker.

The Nixon-Hatfield Ticket

Possible 1968 GOP ticket buttons

Richard Nixon. Everyone knows the good, the bad and the ugly about him and his administration and how that is related to Watergate. Most Oregonians though are unaware that for a few days leading up to the 1968 Republican National Convention Nixon and top aides actually placed Oregon Senator Mark Hatifeld on a short list of eight people to be considered for the nomination of Vice President on the Republican ticket.

In the weeks and sometimes months before a political convention you can find some of the best 'fantasy ticket' items produced. A fantasy ticket or hypothetical ticket item is a political item bearing a ticket of a possible or favored party ticket prior to the selection of nominees from that party. Some fantasy tickets are highly plausible others are mostly just dream tickets. In 2004 a dream ticket of many was a Kerry-McCain ticket. McCain and Kerry were fellow Vietnam veterans and U.S. Senators that had been friends for many years. McCain teased the media for a few days saying he would seriously think about it if an offer was made from the Democratic Party. Of course, no offer ever did come from the party.

Reading Into It: Biographies of Oregon Governors

At a recent Oregon Chapter APIC meeting this last year we had the great fortune to welcome Bob Straub biographer Charles Johnson and have a sit down chat with him about his book and subject matter. He signed copies of his book and talked about the dual McCall-Straub dynamic that was prevalent in most state politics in the late 60s and 70s.

The recent winter weather was a good chance to sit back down and take a second look at a couple of the other biographies on Oregon governors. Here are the ones that you can find out there (Mind you it is a small list):

Tom McCall Dress from 1970

Dress Found on Ebay this week

Sometimes us Oregon political junkies have to wait and wait...and wait for an interesting Oregon item to find its way to ebay. If you are a regular searcher of Oregon related political figures then you have probably seen this item. It is a paper dress from his re-election campaign in 1970. Paper clothing items were cheap and very popular in the 1960s. It was seen as sort of a fashion novelty and lots of campaigns used them in an attempt to boost their vote getting abilities.

Tom McCall's Grandads Not Hughes Fans

From Tom Huston Collection

APIC Member Tom Huston recently posted a picture of this book by a Thomas W. Lawson. Oregonians may recognize that name, as Dorothy Lawson McCall's father. He was a rather wealthy man in the era of the Rockefellers and Astors at the start of the 20th Century. He used his wealth to buy a home for his daughter and her husband to raise their kids in Eastern Oregon. One of those kids was future Oregon Governor Tom McCall. Young Tom would travel often between Oregon and Massachusetts to spend time at Thomas Lawson's home and the family ranch in Eastern Oregon. His other grandfather, Samuel W. McCall, happened to be Governor of the Bay State in 1916.