The Transylvanian election when the future Hungarian Prime Minister beat the Romanian Prime Minister

Transylvania is truly a land of magic and wonders with its cloudy peaks, bears and wolves, magnificent fortresses and castles (one owned by Dracula himself back in the day) and rich cultural heritage. Here, it happened that the future Hungarian prime minister beat the future Romanian prime minister in an election that was unfortunately filled with tragedies in 1906.

The Hungarian opposition wins the elections

1905 and 1906 were strange years in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In Hungary, the governing party lost the 1905 general elections, but Emperor Franz Joseph did not nominate a prime minister from the victorious parties. Instead, he began a long and tiresome political crisis by appointing an officer as prime minister. He calculated well. The Hungarian pro-independence opposition rejecting the 1867 compromise became exhausted in the political struggle and gave up their programme.

Following the April 1906 compromise between Emperor Franz Joseph and the Party of Independence and ’48, the strongest opposition party, a new general election was held in the Kingdom of Hungary between 29 April and 8 May. Since the Hungarian electoral system had only districts, those parties had a representative in the Hungarian Parliament who could win a district. Interestingly, a candidate could run for multiple districts.

Pál Teleki was Hungary’s prime minister between 1920-1921 and 1939-1941. In 1906, he was just 27 years old, a jurist who prepared to become one of Hungary’s greatest experts in geography (creating the famous “Red Map of Hungary”). Being an aristocrat meant he had to participate in political life and Géza, his father was the MP of their district (Nagysomkút, Șomcuta Mare in Transylvania) before. In 1906, Géza ran for Nagybánya (today Baia Mare), so his son’s task was to win the “old” district of the family.

He already did that before. In 1905, when the pro-independence opposition won almost everywhere in the country, he managed to win in Nagysomkút. As an opposition candidate, he did not even have an opponent. But 1906 was different.

Teleki got a Romanian opponent

Alexandru Vaida-Voevod, one of the prominent politicians of the Romanian National Party, a political community representing the interests of the millions of Romanians living in the Hungarian Kingdom, ran for that electoral district.

Vaida-Voevod campaigned in Romanian, but Teleki also gave speeches in that language which he learnt from the local boys he played with when he was a minor.

The Romanian politician performed relatively well. We cannot discuss universal suffrage, so only approximately 4,000 people could vote in the district in 1906. More than 3,000 took part: Teleki received 1,706 while Vaida-Voevod had 1,342 votes.

The problem was that many soldiers were commanded in the district to “keep up order”. When officers arrested one of the supporters of Vaida-Voevod, some locals in Karulya attacked voters being carried on carts to Nagysomkút to vote for Teleki. Both the attackers and the attacked were ethnic Romanians. Two died, four injured.