Robert Madison

Candidate Biography:

Birth 5 Dec 1888 California
Married.
Child.
Death 26 Aug 1957 Sonoma

1930: Early Primary Candidate for BOE (Withdrew)
1938: Mayor, City of Santa Rosa

• NOTABLE NO VOTE (Federal Suffrage): Madison was one of two Legislators (both Assemblymembers) who voted against SJR 1x1 (1919), adopting the Ninteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which gave women the right to vote.
• WWI: Madison was called up for Army service during WWI but requested an exemption based on having a wife and child; ‘‘l could secure my exemption on the ground that I am a state official, but I do not care to resort to that. If my exemption claim on the other ground is not approved, why, I will go to the front, that’s all. I am willing to go if my country thinks I should, though I am frank enough to say that I prefer not to leave mv family."
• SUFFRAGE: Madison explained his vote "In voting against the resolution to adopt the National Women Suffrage Amendment. I did so, not with any idea of expressing myself as being opposed to the equal right of suffrage for women, but I voted against the resolution in order to express my disapproval of what I deemed to have been an unnecessary call of the Legislature of California at this time and for this purpose an unnecessary expense by which the people of the State of California gained nothing."