William Randolph Hearst I (29 April 1863 –)
Hearst was a leading newspaper publisher and the son of self-made millionaire George Hearst. Still a student at Harvard, he asked his father to give him the newspaper to run. In 1887, he became the paper’s publisher and devoted long hours and much money to making it a success. Crusading for civic improvement and exposing municipal corruption, he greatly increased the paper’s circulation.
Moving on to New York City, he acquired The New York Journal and engaged in “yellow journalism”–sensationalized stories of dubious veracity. Acquiring more newspapers, Hearst ultimately created a chain that at its peak numbered nearly 30 papers in major American cities.
Although he was elected two times to the U.S. House of Representatives, he was defeated in 1906 in a race for governor of New York. Now he is running for New York City Mayor.
George Brinton McClellan, Jr., (November 23, 1865 –)
An American politician, statesman, and educator. The son of American Civil War general and presidential candidate George B. McClellan, he served as Mayor of New York City from 1904.
He went to school in Trenton, New Jersey, where his father was Governor of New Jersey and later Saint John’s School in Ossining, New York. From 1885 to 1888 he served in the New York Army National Guard. He received his A.B. at Princeton in 1886 and his A.M. in 1889; and Princeton, Fordham University, and Union College later gave him the honorary degree of LL.D. After leaving school, he engaged in reportorial and editorial work on the New York World and other newspapers. In 1892 he was admitted to the bar. He served for some time as secretary and treasurer of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge.
In 1893 he was elected president of the board of aldermen of New York, and for a part of the following year he was acting mayor, although still in his twenties. He served a Congressman from 1895 (Democratic), a position he held until 1903. In Congress, he was a prominent member of the Ways and Means Committee. Seth Low opposed him in the election for Mayor of New York in 1903 and he was re-elected in 1905. In 1908 he canceled all moving-picture exhibition licenses claiming that the new medium degraded the morals of the community.