Isaac Laquedem

Vice President Hillary Clinton: take two

In my delight at how the constitution's workings could result in Mitt Romney being elected president with Hillary Clinton as his vice president, I overlooked the change that the 12th amendment brought about.  The 12th Amendment, adopted in Thomas Jefferson's term, was a response to the awkwardness that developed in 1796, when the electoral college put John Adams in first place and his bitter opponent Thomas Jefferson in second place, resulting in Adams becoming president and Jefferson being his ostracized vice president.  The 12th amendment changed the procedure somewhat: instead of the House of Representatives selecting two of the top three finishers in the presidential race to be the president and vice president, the House selects the president (still with one vote per state) from among the top three in the presidential race, and the Senate selects the vice president from among the top two in the vice-presidential race.  There's still an opportunity for constitutional mirth, but it's a little more complicated than I had described.

Let us continue to suppose that the Republican convention nominates Donald J. Trump and that he selects, say, Ted Cruz to be his running mate.  (I think his best choice is Jeb Bush, but that's an analysis for another day.)  The party's old guard puts together a third party and runs Mitt Romney, with (let's say) John Kasich as his running mate.  The Democrats nominate Hillary Clinton, who picks Sherrod Brown, a second-term Senator from Ohio, as her running mate.

The election comes.  The Clinton-Brown ticket receives the most electoral votes, but not the 270 required for election.  Trump and Cruz finish second.  Romney and Kasich finish third, winning a few states.  The day after the November election, the candidates will know that the House will choose the president from among Secretary Clinton and Messrs. Trump and Romney, and the Senate will choose between Senators Cruz and Brown. Let's suppose that the Senate flips to the Democrats but the House remains Republican.

The nation will know that on January 3,  the new House will select Mitt Romney as the president (I can't imagine the Republican majority lucidly voting for Mr. Trump), and the Senate will select Senator Brown as Mr. Romney's vice president.  But wait -- the House and Senate don't select from the top finishers in the popular vote; they select from the top finishers in the electoral vote, and the electoral vote doesn't actually happen until mid-December.  The important point is that the House and Senate cannot elect a dark horse candidate; they must choose from among the top three presidential candidates and the top two vice presidential candidates.

The Democratic leadership might have the interesting idea (I would in their place) to request the Democratic electors to swap their votes: to ask that in December when they meet in their state capitals to cast their votes, they should cast their Presidential votes for Senator Brown, and their Vice Presidential votes for Secretary Clinton.  She will now be one of the top two finishers in the Veepstakes, and the Democratic Senate will elect her over Senator Cruz.

Ladies and gentlemen:  I again give you Hillary Rodham Clinton, the first woman vice president of the United States.

Hillary Clinton, Vice President of the United States, but not why you think

Let us suppose that the Republicans nominate Donald Trump, as now seems likely, and the Democrats nominate Hillary Clinton, as also seems likely.  (Note to Senator Sanders' supporters: I said "likely," not "certain.")  A group of mainstream Republicans organizes a third-party campaign for, perhaps, Mitt Romney.  Without the official party organization behind him, Mr. Romney appears on the ballots of only some states, and wins a few of them.  Let's imagine that Mr. Romney wins enough electoral votes to deprive both Secretary Clinton and Mr. Trump of 270 electoral votes, the number they need to win. We might place Secretary Clinton with about 250 electoral votes, Mr. Trump with 220 electoral votes, and Mr. Romney with 68 electoral votes.

As all political aficionadi know by now, the election will then be thrown to the House of Representatives, which under the constitution must choose the next president from among the top three recipients of electoral votes.  The field will now consist of only Clinton, Trump, and Romney.  Each state gets one vote -- Delaware counts as much as California -- and each state's delegation must vote, if at all, only for Clinton, Trump, or Romney.  At present, 33 states have Republican majorities in the House, 14 have Democratic majorities, and 3 are tied.  We know that Secretary Clinton will get exactly 14 votes.  If a majority of the Republican states vote for Mr. Romney, then he will receive at least 17 votes and become the next president. The joke is that the second-highest finisher becomes the vice president, and if Mr. Romney receives 20 or more votes, then Secretary Clinton's 14 votes will put her ahead of Mr. Trump.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Hillary Rodham Clinton, the first female vice president of the United States.

Richard See and Paul Gold, the accidental millionaires of downtown Portland

            In 1903 Richard See, age 19, came to America from Frankfurt, settling in New York, where he became a hat buyer for a large department store. Three years later a Russian emigrant arrived in Portland to pursue the American dream. He took the surname of “Gold,” though not because of the legend that American streets were paved with gold. In 1908 his wife Rose and their four small children joined him. A fifth child was born here in 1910 in a house on now-vanished SW Baker Street. Joe and Rose Gold gave their children plain American names – Jack, Paul, Sam, Sarah, and Dave – and raised them in the Jewish and Italian quarter of South Portland, where Joe Gold was a junk dealer.

            In 1921 Meier & Frank lured Richard See to leave New York for Portland, and placed him in charge of the millinery department. Meier & Frank’s hat sales soared when Mr. See carried out his promise to, in his words, “make at least ten trips a year to New York, to give the women of Portland the new styles as fast as they originate.”

            Around 1927 Paul Gold opened his first millinery store with his younger brother Dave. A gregarious man, Paul readily accumulated friends in Portland’s retail community, including Richard See, who was still buying and selling hats at Meier & Frank. In 1941 another friend, a shopkeeper in the Goodnough (sometimes spelled "Goodnaugh") Building at 5^th and Yamhill, told Paul that his landlord was raising the rent and he didn’t know if he and the other Goodnough tenants could pay the increase. By coincidence, at about the same time Mr. See, who was planning for retirement, told Mr. Gold that he had saved some money and didn’t think that government bonds paid a high enough return. Perhaps, if Paul invested some of his money for him, Paul could do better?

            Mr. Gold did do better. “Paul saw what would grow,” his rabbi said when Mr. Gold died in 1981, and so he did, starting with the Goodnough. According to legend, Mr. Gold (pictured at right, foreground) approached the worried Goodnough tenants and promised that if they would pay him three months’ rent in advance, he would buy the building and not raise their rent for two years. The tenants pungled up, Mr. See wrote a check, and soon the Goodnough Building had become the first acquisition of the new firm of See, Gold & Associates. A few months later they bought a second building, the Kraemer Building at SW 2^nd and Washington.

            Pleased with their purchases, Messrs. See and Gold bought more, and eventually gave up the hat business to focus on buying downtown property. In 1944 they were able to buy the Hotel Oregon, at Broadway and Stark, for the amount of the unpaid property taxes. In 1945 they bought the Portland Garage, a parking structure at 5th and Taylor, later acquiring the rest of the block.  They acquired so much real estate that by 1956 the society page of the Palm Springs newspaper could describe them as “realtors from Portland, Oregon.”

            They became famous for never making counteroffers. If you quoted them a price for your building, they would say only “yes” or “no.” Would-be sellers learned to name their best price first. See, Gold & Associates continued to buy downtown property – like potato chips, no one can stop with just one – sometimes trading up, rarely selling. One exception was when they sold the block at 5^th and Taylor to Georgia-Pacific for an office tower, a deviation that Mr. Gold rationalized to his partners by pointing out that the property across the street that See, Gold & Associates owned would go up in value when G-P built its skyscraper.

            Messrs. See and Gold transacted their business from offices in the New Fliedner Building at 10^th and Washington. (It was called the New Fliedner Building because it had replaced the original Fliedner Building in 1907.) Mr. Gold could often be found at a corner table at Danny’s Delicatessen at 5^th and Yamhill across from the Farmers Market, where thick pastrami sandwiches fueled negotiations. In between acquiring buildings See, Gold & Associates found time for other ventures, including buying and operating the Pacific Department Store and Powers Furniture Company. Mr. Gold also flirted with the restaurant business, investing in one of Portland’s first Japanese restaurants and operating a downtown bar called the Harvester.

            Richard See died in 1979 and Paul Gold died in 1981. In their 40 years in business, they had owned buildings, separately or together, on every downtown avenue from 1^st to 11^th and on every downtown street from Salmon to Stark.  Last week the final property was sold, bringing to a quiet close a remarkable 75-year story of Portland real estate history.

            Messrs. See and Gold owed their success to Portland’s postwar growth – the streets of downtown Portland turned out to be paved with gold after all – but also to the happy accident of both being in the hat business. Had Mr. See bought shoes, or had Mr. Gold sold suits, they might never have joined forces to become rich together. Sometimes clothes really do make the man.

Twelve years

Monday marked 12 years since my first blog post.  It's been a lot of fun.  Much as I think I'm close to running out of material, the political world continues to create more.

The GOP recruits the underrepresented

In the aftermath of the candidates' March 3 Detroit donnybrook debate, Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus called for the party to implement an affirmative action plan.  "We started the race with 15 presidential candidates," Priebus said, "including governors, senators, two businesspeople, and a professional.  We even had a black dude and some womenfolk -- okay, one woman -- in the race.  But an important segment of the party is woefully underrepresented.  Only six adults started, and we're now down to just one, or two if Dr. Carson is still running."  Priebus observed that historically adult-minded voters had provided all of the GOP's funding and nearly 2/3 of its voting support.  "People want to vote for people who look and act like they do," Priebus said, "but we've got only one candidate catering to the emotionally mature.  We're kicking butt in the 5-10 segment, but high approval ratings from preschoolers won't translate into votes until 2032, when Chelsea Clinton leaves office.  We can't wait 16 years to bring the grownup demographic back under the big tent."  Priebus said the RNC would announce its affirmative action plan by April 1.

Priebus also announced that in the remaining Republican debates, the candidates will have to keep their hands in their pockets.