Patrick Henry McCarthy (17 March 1863 – 1 July 1933) was the Union Labor Party Mayor of San Francisco from 8 January 1910 to 8 January 1912, succeeding Edward Robeson Taylor and preceding James Rolph.
Biography[]
Patrick Henry McCarthy was born in County Limerick, Ireland in 1863, and he emigrated to San Francisco in 1880 and became president of the Carpenters Local 22 union and then the AFL's Building Trades Council in 1896. McCarthy co-founded the Japanese and Korean Exclusion League that 2 years later was renamed to the "Asiatic Exclusion League", and he ruled his unions like an autocrat. He helped organize the Union Labor Party in opposition to Democrat James D. Phelan, who, in spite of having been elected with union support, sided with employers during a 1901 strike. McCarthy was elected Mayor in 1910, and he installed BTC officials throughout his administration, required city employees to become union members, raised the minimum wage from $2 to $3 a day, and required all city employees to be US citizens. His administration was largely scandal-free, but he lost re-election in 1912, and the ULP faded from the scene. He returned to the Republican Party and served as a delegate to the 1920 RNC. He died in 1933.