"The largest margin in the city's history" — Canfield, 1959

The mayoral election of 1959

The claim. The city history's account of Mayor E. F. "Gene" Canfield's election in 1959 — carried in this history's government file and spine at De Kever's strength — holds that he won "by the largest margin in the city's history," the capstone of a career that ran clerk-treasurer, councilman, and three terms as mayor. The career is documented whole in the government file. The margin is the claim, and the margin is a number, which makes it the kind of claim this section exists to test.

The record. The numbers around it survive in pieces. The government file prints the modern line's figures where the record gives them: the 1963 election at 7,561 to 5,815 — a margin of 1,746 votes, the largest the file itself documents — and the century's turn at 656 to 612 in 1899, a margin of 44. Canfield's own 1959 figure is not printed in the sources the government file read whole, and no table of Mishawaka mayoral margins, winner by winner, has ever been compiled from the returns in any record reached. A claim that one margin is the largest of a series cannot be tested against a series that does not exist in print.

The verdict. Untestable on the record reached — printed at De Kever's strength, as the government file prints it, with the settling sources named: the Mishawaka Enterprise's canvass reports and the St. Joseph County election records, from which a margin table for the whole mayoral line could be built in a single pass and this sentence either confirmed or retired. Until that table exists, the claim stands as the city history's characterization of a landslide everyone agrees happened — Canfield's dominance of his era is documented in the offices themselves — and not as a measured fact.

Sources:

1. William A. De Kever, Mishawaka: 1833–1983 — the claim as printed, carried at his strength in this history's government file and spine.
2. This history's government file — Canfield's career whole; the documented margins around the claim (1963: 7,561–5,815; 1899: 656–612).
3. Named as the settling sources, not compiled: the Mishawaka Enterprise's election canvasses and the St. Joseph County election records.