He played the violin and conducted the orchestra at the Columbia Theatre on Powell Street in San Francisco.

Despite opposition from a reform candidate backed by a fusion party, he was reelected in 1903 and 1905, each time by wide majorities.

[2][3] In 1903, Schmitz received the votes of the state legislature's Union Labor minority in the Senate election.

On the day of the earthquake, Wednesday, April 18, 1906, he invited a cross-section of the city's most prominent businessmen, politicians and civic leaders, but none of the members of the Board of Supervisors, to form the Committee of Fifty to help him manage the crisis.

The bribery scandal was one of the many San Francisco graft trials, which included Schmitz, Tirey L. Ford, and attorney Abe Ruef, who were receiving bribes.