
George Pardee (25 July 1857-1 September 1941) was the Republican Governor of California from 7 January 1903 to 9 January 1907, succeeding Henry Gage and preceding James Gillett.
Biography[]
George Pardee was born in San Francisco, California in 1857, the son of Enoch H. Pardee. He worked for his father's medical practice before becoming an active Republican during the 1890s. He served on the Oakland Board of Health and City Council before serving as Mayor from 1893 to 1895, and he battled with the Southern Pacific Railroad's ownership of the Port of Oakland. In 1902, both railroad and progressive Republicans chose Pardee as a compromise candidate for Governor of California, running against Franklin Knight Lane, a Democrat and an anti-Southern Pacific contender. Pardee won by a narrow margin of .9%, and he did not fully acknowledge the presence of plague in San Francisco, just as his predecessor Henry Gage had done. Pardee became a progressive ally of Theodore Roosevelt due to his support for environmental conservation, his distrust of corporate monopolies, and his support for irrigation projects and waterworks in the Central Valley. In 1906, he coordinated the responses to the San Francisco earthquake, leading to him becoming immensely popular, but the railroad Republicans stripped him of renomination in 1906. He went on to co-found the state Bull Moose Party in 1912, and he remained active in Oakland politics until his death in 1941.