Existing comment:
Charles Evans Hughes Gubernatorial Campaign Poster, 1906
The investigations of 1905 made Hughes a popular public figure who was widely seen as tough, smart and incorruptible. Urged on by President Theodore Roosevelt, among others, in 1906 Huges ran as the Republican candidate for Governor of New York against publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst. After a short but intense campaign, Hughes won by a comfortable margin.
Near the end of the campaign, a frustrated Hearst complained about "that animated feather duster who is parading around the state..." which, naturally, directed public attention to Hughes' beard. Two days before the election, a Washington Herald columnist described it in detail:
... the most noticeable and striking feature of the Hughes make-up is the whiskers. They are auburn-colored, red some people might call them, and grow in a great untrimmed bunch, all over the broad, "skinny" face. [When] Mr. Hughes is talking... his big square jaw waggles, so to speak, and carries his mop of whiskers up and down and side-ways, and cross-wise, as rapidly as a sewing machine shuttle. The whiskers are everywhere at once... flitting lightly and bobbing about as if propelled by machinery.
A single photograph of a serious-looking Hughes, taken by Pirie MacDonald, was used extensively for campaign publicity. It had also been frequently published during the gas and insurance inquiries, thus making it the first widely disseminated image of Hughes. Because of its broad availability it was also copied by others, such as John Farnum, whose cartoon depicts the new governor towering triumphantly over the State House in Albany. |