Victor Aloysius Meyers

In 1919 Meyers was given a two-year contract to lead the house band at the Rose Room in Seattle's Hotel Butler.

The band made further series of recordings for Brunswick the following year, and toured nationally before settling in Seattle, where he played on the radio.

In 1927 his band first got a residency at the Trianon Ballroom in the Belltown/Denny Regrade area north of downtown[2] Seattle's leading dance venue of the time, well known for its flouting of Prohibition.

[5] By 1932, Meyers had left the Butler Hotel and was holding forth at his own Club Victor back up in the Regrade,[2] often nearly broke, and continuing to get in trouble with the authorities enforcing the Prohibition laws.

That year was a local election year, and assistant city editor Doug Welch and some other newspapermen at the Seattle Times decided to urge Meyers to enter the city's nonpartisan spring 1932 mayoral race against business candidate John F. Dore (a trial lawyer) and a field of "fatuous has-beens and never-wases".

[6] The Times trumpeted Meyers entry into the race with an eight-column page one headline, and gave him daily coverage.

He gained the Democratic nomination in the September primary, thereby becoming the running mate to Clarence D. Martin; both went on to win in November in conjunction with Franklin D. Roosevelt's landslide victory in the presidential election.

[6] He became known as a leader of the left wing of the state Democratic Party, often putting him at odds with the more centrist Governor Martin, but getting on well with rising star Albert D. Rosellini.

When, in the midst of the Great Depression, the left-wing Unemployed Citizens' League marched to Olympia, Washington to confront Governor Martin, Meyers opened his home to the marchers.

Meyers summarized events beginning with the Spanish Expeditions in 1543 to the first territorial governor, Isaac Stevens, in 1853, before adding in-depth state history from 1853 to 1959.

Territorial and State Governors' influences and contributions during periods in office serve as the basis of historical documentation with details pertaining to legislation and the citizenry.

The former Trianon Ballroom, now an office building.