Richard Achilles Ballinger

Richard Achilles Ballinger ( born July 9, 1858 in Boone, 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 became his Bachelor of Arts and was admitted to the Bar of the State of Illinois in 1886. His first public office Ballinger from 1888, when he was elected to the City Council of Kankakee.

In 1886 Ballinger in the Washington Territory, where he was elected in 1894 to the Supreme Court Judge of Port Washington. In 1897 he resigned from this function. 1904 Ballinger was elected to succeed Thomas D. Hume Mayor of the city of Seattle. In the two years in which Ballinger officiated, the Republicans occurred against unions and the privatization of municipal enterprises.

It was Secretary of the Interior James Rudolph Garfield, who had been a good friend of Ballinger at Williams College, which is now U.S. President William Howard Taft proposed in 1909 to appoint Ballinger as his successor and thus the new Minister of the Interior of the United States. Ballinger acted in that capacity 1909 to 1911.

In those days there were constant in differences between Ballinger and Gifford Pinchot, in his Chairman of the United States Forest Service. So threw Pinchot Ballinger ago, he was corrupt, and would have sacrificed the interests of miners in Alaska private own interests. The case was heard even before both houses of Congress. Although Ballinger was acquitted of all charges, held public opinion to Pinchot. 1911 Ballinger had to resign and hand over the department to Walter L. Fisher. The so-called Pinchot - Ballinger controversy was one reason why President Taft in 1912 lost the presidential election to Woodrow Wilson.

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

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