George Pardee - Biography

Biography

Pardee was born on July 25, 1857, in San Francisco, California, the only child of Enoch H. Pardee and Mary Pardee. The Pardee family was well known in the San Francisco Bay Area. His father was a prominent oculist in San Francisco and Oakland. Enoch's stature within the community helped him get elected to the California State Assembly in the early 1870s, and later as the Mayor of Oakland for a single term from 1876 to 1878.

Raised in the Pardee Home in Oakland, George Pardee closely followed in his father's medical background. He attended the nearby University of California, Berkeley, then studied medicine at the Cooper Medical College in San Francisco. In 1885, Pardee traveled abroad to receive his medical degree at the University of Leipzig in the German Empire. After his return from Germany, Pardee joined his father's medical practice, specializing in eye and ear diseases.

Like his father, Enoch, Pardee also developed an early interest in politics. By the early 1890s, Pardee had become an active member of the Republican Party, and was elected to the Oakland Board of Health and the Oakland City Council. In 1893, following a successful election, Pardee became the 29th Mayor of Oakland, serving a single two-year term until 1895. During his mayoralship, Pardee began a public battle with the Southern Pacific Railroad's ownership of the Port of Oakland. At one point, Pardee kicked down a piece of the port's fence erected by the Southern Pacific out of anger.

During the San Francisco plague of 1900–1904, Pardee's quick rise in East Bay politics was noticed by the state Republican leadership prior to the 1902 general elections. Deeply embarrassed and financially hurt by the denials of an ongoing bubonic plague outbreak in San Francisco's Chinatown by Governor Henry Gage, Republicans withdrew their support of Gage during the state convention. The party, divided by Railroad Republicans with the backing of the Southern Pacific Railroad and Reform Republicans of the growing Progressive movement, nominated Pardee, due to his municipal and medical background, as a compromise candidate. Despite clashes in the past with their interests, Southern Pacific Republicans believed Pardee the better candidate against the Democratic contender Franklin K. Lane, a San Francisco City Attorney and an ardent anti-Southern Pacific campaigner.

In the 1902 general elections, Pardee faced a four-way race between the Democrats' Lane, Socialist Gideon Brower and Prohibitionist Theodore Kanouse. Pardee barely edged over Lane, winning the governorship with a plurality of 0.9%. Less than 3,000 votes separated the two leading candidates.