A change at the top
Seaside Rock 'n' Roll Riots, Chapter 2: The Seaside mayoral election of 1960
This is the second chapter in “Seaside’s Rock ‘N’ Roll Riots a look at the causes, events and implications of the Labor Day riots in Seaside, Oregon, in 1962, 1963 and 1964. Chapter 1 is here.
Maurice Pysher’s introduction to Seaside politics was inauspicious, with a misspelling of his name in the local newspaper, the Signal.
There will be at least two candidates for mayor of Seaside November 8, they wrote, incumbent Lester Raw and “Morris Pizer,” a retired Portland plumbing company employee.
Lester Raw contributed to Seaside throughout his life with a reputation “for honorable dealings, quiet determination and leadership,” Seaside’s Hugh McKenna Sr. said after Raw’s death at age 89 in 1999.
He rose from being a hotel clerk to an owner of multiple businesses as well as a political and civic leader.
"Seaside worked through being a mill town,” McKenna said. “At the time I was growing up, it was about half logging and half tourism," he said. "In the winter, most of the loggers didn't have work."
After Prohibition was repealed in 1933, the town soon had “more saloons than churches,” McKenna recalled. “And there were a lot of churches!”
With his brother Vernon, Lester Raw entered the “saloon” business.
Many of the city’s drinking establishments, along with the Seaside Arcade were either established or run by the brothers Vernon and Lester Raw, and they were men "of great integrity,” McKenna said.
They later successfully entered the hotel business, with ownership of the City Center and purchase of the former Seaside Hotel, a beachfront hotel at the northern corner of Broadway and the Turnaround — renaming it the “Seasider” and making it fancy enough for U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy to stay there in 1959 when he spoke to the national conference of the American Federation of Labor.
Curt Sagner’s father, also named Curt, was planning commissioner, a reserve police officer, and later a member of the City Council, remembered the Raw brothers as influential people who owned the City Center Hotel, the arcade and other properties downtown. remodeled it and renamed it the Seasider.
Lester Raw was a very “likable guy,” Sagner said, and influential in the community.
Pysher, an “outsider” from Portland who had lived in Seaside only a year-and-a-half, launched a campaign in which he attacked the mayor as getting a sweet deal on gambling and drinking revenues.
During his campaign, Pysher — pronounced “Pie-sher” — said he did not object to gambling continuing, but that if it did, he would insist on equal opportunities “for all who wanted to run such operations.”
Despite the relatively quiet year, law enforcement and a building tourism “crisis” were the key issues of the campaign. He aimed at incumbents and their allies, and what he saw as selective enforcement of the city’s laws.
While the Chamber of Commerce stressed “events, stunts and activities” like the Dahlia Parade, Petticoat Derby, Loggers’ Carnival and kite-flying contests, the easy availability of alcohol for teens — the drinking age was 21 — had been decried for the last few years.
The weekly Seaside Signal described spring break 1959 as “the roughest spring vacation in years. After having brought the vacation problem under control because of efforts during the past few years, the police found the situation worse this year than for many years in the past.”
During the weekend, 50 arrests were made, in addition to a number of juveniles “detained” and turned over to their parents.
“As usual a great deal of the trouble was caused not by students themselves but by the group of hangers-on which appears here at the same time of the students.”
Police ascribed most of the difficulty to a “minority of motel owners who persist in renting to unchaperoned juveniles,” the Signal reported.
Complaints poured in from residents and even people staying at the motels, they wrote.
The hands of law enforcement were tied, aggravated by laws governing juvenile detention and limiting jail hold times. The cases could not be handled at city court, but at juvenile court in Astoria.
Stormy weather
The 1960 tourist season began with the largest Memorial Day crowd in the city’s history, the Signal reported, but the weather for the summer season was pretty much a washout in Seaside as well as most of the Pacific Northwest.
The weather in the height of the tourist season in 1960 came with storm warnings affecting travel, with two weeks of bad or threatening weather at the height of the summer season.
A storm on the Sunday before Labor Day was particularly disastrous.
The 1960 Labor Day crowd was the smallest in years and many of those who did come to the area left Sunday amidst a storm accompanied by lightning and rain.
Police made 56 arrests during the holiday, mostly for drunkenness, possession of liquor by minors, reckless driving and shoplifting.
Pysher was considered a dark horse in the 1960 mayoral election, up against the popular incumbent.
But he found his opportunity by pitting retirees and local tradespeople against the influx of tourists, particularly young people.
The state commission on the riots attributed Pysher’s win to “emergence of a new power bloc in the community with needs wholly or partially divergent from those of the heretofore dominant tourist interests.
The first was the retirement community, most of whom were economically independent to the tourist trade. The percentage of the population age 65 or older had doubled since 1940 — at 20 percent, twice the state average. The second component included those workers who, like the retirees, were not dependent for their livelihood on tourism.
At the same time the population was aging, tourists were becoming younger. “The increasing dependence on youth tourism,” wrote Ken Polk in a 1965 state report analyzing the riots. “caused a power struggle within the community, which created a situation ripe for the alterations of community policy which might lead to riots.”
The challenge to the establishment was laid down by the appearance of Pysher, “whose absence of qualifications makes very clear that support for his candidacy originated in the antagonistic attitudes toward the established power structure that many people outside the structure might have felt,” Polk wrote.
Seaside’s economy was a vulnerability as well, as the traditional logging industries continues to falter. Crown Zellerbach, the region’s largest employer, curtailed operations for a two-week period in 1960 due to a soft lumber and plywood market.
Candidate Pysher
In an Oct. 6 candidate’s column, Pysher said he would work for “economy in city government cost” and “cooperation in any project that is for the benefit of all Seaside.”
The teen parties and drinking were hurting tourism, he said, and “tourists just quit coming.”
He proposed “a concentrated drive to redeem the the lost tourist good will and the vanished tourist dollars,” adding, “It can be done.”
He advocated a plan that would “give the out-of-town teenagers a decent place of entertainment of their own, supervised and controlled by our local teenagers.”
Pysher said he would oppose “any and all public financial projects that tend to benefit only a certain group, certain individuals or certain section of the city to the detriment of another.”
Why, he asked, are gambling operations in the city sometimes raided by the state — including those at the local Elks’ and Moose lodges — and never been bothered by city police?
He inferred that the Raw brothers were receiving special favors and profiting from what he saw as selective enforcement.
They operated “virtually all the city's amusement machines such as pinball games,” Pysher said.
The candidate took on the police chief Sid Smith not only for alleged selective enforcement, but for using the money to pay police force salaries. He objected to Chief Smith’s support for Mayor Raw.
Pysher said that “anyone actively involved in business is taking a big moral risk to accept the position of mayor because if he shows any signs of prosperity or progress in his personal business, he is surely to be accused of misusing his political power to further his own cause and feather his own nest, whether rue or not, this should make one wonder just why, after 12 years of being in power, the present administration is spending so much effort and money to hold this power longer.
”
“A big white-haired man of 68, he moved to Seaside only one-and-a-half years ago,” the Oregon Journal wrote. Pysher lived in Portland most of his life where he was sales manager and heating engineer for Standard Supply Company.
In Seaside he purchased a six-unit apartment house in which he lived and managed in semi-retirement while still acting also as Standard’s heating engineer.
In a “frank and honest” statement published days before the election, Pysher said if elected he would try to get a bill passed to limit future mayors to a single four-year term.
“This will eliminate the possibility of building up any powerful machine, using the power of mayor and political influence to further private advantages, or personal gain.”
“The time has come “to THINK, to CONSIDER, to ADMIT the known facts to do something for Seaside to stop pussy-footing and come out for the truth, fair play, and government by and for the people.”
He said he had refused all offered campaign funds because of strings attached that “would tie me to a policy of favoritism and that’s the one thing I want to fight.”
He pledged to institute “strict economy” and to bring the return of “sportsmen and tourists” while making “an effort to correct the teenage scandal.”
The candidates met again before the Chamber of Commerce, where Pysher stated he “would work to instill business principles in the city administration.”’
“If this were done, I am sure that terrific savings could be made.”
Raw was caught leaning.
In a 1960 candidate’s column in the Seaside Signal, Lester Raw countered that there is no easy road for a public official. “He must be willing to follow the hard road, the road of right decisions made in the interest of those whom he has chosen to serve.”
“There are those who would seek public office believing that it is better to be clever than to be wise; that the labors of officials and employees have not been fruitful; that all is not well at City Hall; that certain elements are taking over our city.”
Raw pointed to the city’s achievements: completion of the city airport, plans for retirement homes, timber industry “sustained” yield. “Our tourist crowds are increasing and we have enjoyed our biggest convention year. Our future is surely bright.”
In the Seaside Chamber of Commerce forum, he pointed to his long tenure, city improvements to bridges, water and sewage, and the acquisition of highway funds for improvements.
In seeking his fourth term, he said there is no substitute for experience and knowledge of city affairs.
He declared that a mayor “should not represent any selfish interest and that the only reward should be the satisfaction of rendering public service.”
He pointed to the need for tourist promotion and said he had done “everything possible” toward that end.
At a meeting of the Seaside Rotary, Mayor Raw denied that teenage visitors were more of a problem than adults.
He said that Seaside had the reputation of “being very strict with teenagers” and this policy has caused many “undesirable ones” to frequent other resorts. He said that the supervision of youths is a matter for professionals and he pointed out that years ago a teen club had been formed in a building he had donated.
In a campaign ad paid for by the Citizens for Raw for Mayor Committee, Lester Raw defended local youth from Pysher’s attacks.
“I believe that our youth are our greatest asset because they are our citizens and leaders of tomorrow,” Raw said. “Our country needs more highly trained juvenile workers to better handle the problems of our teenagers in a changing culture. let’s not run down all of our kids because of the 3 to 5 percent that cause all the trouble.”
In addressing Pysher, he said he believes that the mayor should be active in business and community affairs. “A person in this position will better know the heart-beats of our community. I do not believe that there is any substitute for experience of this regard.”
The week before the election, the Signal endorsed Raw, citing “rumors” which have been circulating during the past few weeks that are nothing more than malicious gossip without any foundation in fact. “Others are distortions of the truth, and entirely unfounded. He (Raw) has done everything possible to make public every item of city business and no business has been transacted in private. And all of it has been reported.”
Pysher appealed to voters as a newcomer designed to shake things up.
“This is the first time I ever ran for office,” Pysher told the Oregon Journal. “Frankly, my only experience was some knowledge of parliamentary rules and running sales meetings and being a member of the Lions Club.”
Schafer took Pysher’s lack of experience to task. “It is conceivable that a person with scant knowledge of the community, who has played no part in civic affairs, and who has taken no interest in city affairs, would make a successful mayor. But the odds are against it. We have always been of the opinion that an individual with ambitions to be mayor should first serve at least one term on the City Council. This would give him an opportunity to learn the complex process of maintaining a city government. At the same time it would permit him to make a record so that voters would know what they are looking for.”
There has been no favoritism, no deals, no finagling of any kind, editor Max Schafer wrote.
Pysher received 54% of the 1,937 votes cast, easily defeating the multiterm mayor at the polls.
The election brought out the heaviest vote in any city election in the history of the city, with 1,934 people going to polls, out of 2,431 registered votes. Pysher won by large majorities in each of the city’s six precincts.
Next: Chief’s firing leads to brouhaha
