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José Antonio Romualdo Pacheco (October 31, 1831January 23, 1899) was a Californio statesman and diplomat. He is best known as the only Hispanic person to serve as governor of California since the American Conquest of California, and as the first Latino to represent a state in the U.S. Congress. A Republican, Pacheco was elected and appointed to various state, federal, and diplomatic offices throughout his more than thirty-year career, including serving as a California State Treasurer, California State Senator, and three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. He was elected California Lieutenant Governor in 1871, then became governor when elected governor Newton Booth ran successfully for election to the U.S. Senate in 1875. Pacheco served the remainder of Booth's term as governor, becoming the 12th governor of California, but did not run for election to that office. Pacheco was the first U.S. governor of California to be born in California.
His mother, María Ramona Carrillo de Pacheco, was a sister-in-law of General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo and a daughter of María Ygnacia López de Carrillo, the grantee of Rancho Cabeza de Santa Rosa. After the death of his father, Romualdo's mother married Captain John D. Wilson, a Scotland, who sent Pacheco to Honolulu, Hawaii, for his education.
At age twelve, Pacheco began an apprenticeship aboard a trade ship. The Mexican–American War broke out two years later, and he was briefly held by American forces during the Conquest of California while on one trip in July 1846, as he brought cargo to Yerba Buena (modern day San Francisco). The ship he was on was searched, and he made an oath of allegiance to the United States and was released.
In 1853, at age 22, Pacheco successfully sought the position of Judge in San Luis Obispo County. Pacheco was election to the State Senate in 1857, succeeded his cousin Pablo de la Guerra. At 27 years old, he was the youngest member of the legislature. He was re-elected two times, serving until 1863. During the American Civil War Pacheco was appointed the rank of brigadier general by Governor Leland Stanford and directed to disarm military companies in the Los Angeles area that were not loyal to the Union.
Pacheco served as State Treasurer from 1863 to 1867, then returned to the State Senate until he was elected Lieutenant Governor in 1871. He served as Lieutenant Governor of California under Newton Booth until Booth was elected to the United States Senate in 1873 and took office in 1875. Pacheco then served as Governor from February 27 to December 9, 1875, when Lieutenant Governor William Irwin, winner in the September elections that year, was inaugurated. Pacheco, having been denied the Republican nomination for Governor, instead ran for Lieutenant Governor on the People's Independent ticket alongside John Bidwell.
After his brief tenure as governor, Pacheco ran for a U.S. House seat in 1876, defeating incumbent Peter D. Wigginton by just one vote . California Secretary of State Thomas Beck refused to certify the election due to the revelation that two votes cast for Wigginton in Monterey County were not counted. Pacheco contested this and brought the case all the way to the Supreme Court of California, where it was found that the tally clerk had indeed removed two votes after California’s Board of Elections had adjourned. However, the court found that this was done to account for a clerical error in the vote totals, legitimizing Pacheco’s win in the election.
He was sworn into office on October 17th, 1877, in spite of the efforts made to block his taking of the oath of office on the basis of Wigginton’s contestation made by the Democrat-controlled Congress. The House Committee on Elections found on January 31st, 1878 that while the State Supreme Court’s ruling regarding the two votes removed for Wigginton in Monterey was valid, they argued that because of irregularities in ballots outside of Monterey County, dozens of votes for both candidates were invalid. State law gave precinct judges the authority to throw out ballots for having extraneous markings. They also claimed that many ballots were cast by voters who were not residents of the state or districts. The committee ruled that Wigginton won by a 4 vote margin. The full house concurred in a partisan vote of 136 to 125, thus removing Pacheco from his seat of February 7th, 1878.
Pacheco ran again in 1878, winning with 40% of the votes, which was more than either the Democrat Wallace Leach or the independent candidate James Ayers. His win was due in large part to his ability to appeal to “the Spanish Vote” by campaigning in both English and Spanish. He was reelected in 1880, winning with 46% of the vote, narrowly defeating Leach by 191 votes.
During his first term, he was a member of three standing committees: Public Lands, Private Land Claims, and Public Expenditures. Romualdo preferred working in these smaller committees to speaking in front of the entire house. He focused his legislative efforts on improving the harbors and railroads in his district. Because the House of Representatives was controlled by Democrats at the time, he failed to get his legislation through Congress.
Because of his experience in the field, when the GOP took control of the House, they named Pacheco Chairman of the Committee on Private Land Claims.
In 1882, he broke from his silence on national issues when he argued in favor of The Chinese Exclusion Act, citing concerns that Chinese immigrants who worked in mines and on railroads in California were stealing the jobs of White Americans and degrading the morality of Chinese cities. The bill was passed as Pacheco joined the 60 Republicans as well as all the Californian representatives in voting in the affirmative.
He returned to California in 1893, and he died in Oakland, at the home of his brother-in-law, in 1899. He is buried in Mountain View Cemetery.
He was the last Hispanic Republican elected to represent California in the U.S. Congress until Mike Garcia was elected to represent the 25th district in a special election in May 2020, Sacramento Bee "Republican flips California congressional seat. What does that mean for November?" (2020) although Frank Coombs, whose mother was Mexican, was a Republican U.S. representative from California from 1901 to 1903, and Mexican-American U.S. Representative Matthew G. Martínez switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party on July 27, 2000 and served in Congress as a Republican until his term concluded on January 3, 2001.
Romualdo Pacheco was the last Latino governor in the United States until Bill Richardson, who served as governor of New Mexico from 2002 to 2011.
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