Richard A. Ballinger

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Richard A. Ballinger (~ 1909)

Richard Achilles Ballinger (born July 9, 1858 in Boonesboro (Iowa) , Boone County , Iowa , † June 6, 1922 in Seattle , Washington ) was an American politician .

Life

Richard Ballinger was born the son of lawyer Richard H. Ballinger and his wife Mary E. Norton. He studied at Williams College in Massachusetts law , there gained his Bachelor of Arts and received in 1886 the license to practice law in the state of Illinois . Ballinger held his first public office in 1888, when he was elected to the Kankakee City Council.

In 1886 Ballinger moved to the Washington Territory , where he was elected Chief Justice in Jefferson County in 1894 . In 1897 he resigned from this position. In 1904 Ballinger was elected mayor of Seattle to succeed Thomas D. Humes . In the two years that Ballinger was in office, the Republican opposed unions and the privatization of municipal companies.

It was Interior Secretary James Rudolph Garfield , who had been a good friend of Ballinger's at Williams College, who in 1909 proposed to US President William Howard Taft that Ballinger be appointed as his successor and thus the new Secretary of the Interior of the United States . Ballinger served in this capacity from 1909 to 1911.

At that time there were repeated differences between Ballinger and Gifford Pinchot , chairman of the United States Forest Service . Pinchot accused Ballinger of being corrupt and sacrificing the interests of Alaskan miners for their own private interests. The case was even heard in both houses of Congress . Although Ballinger was acquitted of all charges, public opinion held on to Pinchot. Ballinger had to resign in 1911 and handed over the department to Walter L. Fisher . The so-called Pinchot – Ballinger controversy was one of the reasons why President Taft lost the 1912 presidential election to Woodrow Wilson .

Ballinger returned to Seattle. Here he opened his own law firm, which he ran until his death in 1922.

With his wife Julia A. Bradley, with whom he had been married since October 1886, he had two sons, Edward and Richard Ballinger.

Web links

Commons : Richard Achilles Ballinger  - Collection of images, videos and audio files