Pacheco, Romualdo, 1831-1899

José Antonio Romualdo Pacheco (October 31, 1831 – January 23, 1899) was a California statesman and diplomat. He is best known as the only Hispanic to serve as Governor of California since statehood and as the first Latino to represent a state in the U.S. Congress. 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.

Born in Santa Barbara, California, he was educated by private tutors in Honolulu, Hawaii before beginning an apprenticeship aboard a trading vessel. Pacheco was a wealthy businessman and rancher by 1848 when he accepted U.S. citizenship, which he was granted by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. He subsequently worked on his parents’ estates north of Los Angeles, in San Luis Obispo County, becoming an expert horseman, and dabbled a year later in the mining business during the California Gold Rush. Interested in protecting the rights of Southern California landowners, his stepfather, John Wilson, was San Luis Obispo County’s first treasurer and served on the county’s first board of supervisors in 1852. Pacheco entered the political arena, serving as a superior court judge for San Luis Obispo County from 1853 to 1857 and then as a state senator until 1862. Initially a Democrat, Pacheco ran for re-election as a Union Party candidate in 1861 because of his deep disdain for slavery and his disapproval of the secession crisis; Pacheco was one of the first prominent Hispanic Americans to speak out against African-American slavery.

In 1863 Pacheco joined the Republican Party, and California Governor Leland Stanford appointed him to fill a vacancy for state treasurer; he won election for a full term later that year. Also in 1863, Governor Stanford commissioned Pacheco as a brigadier general in the California state militia to command Hispanic troops in the First Brigade of California’s “Native Cavalry.” In 1867 Pacheco lost a re-election bid for state treasurer; however, he returned to the state senate in 1869. At the Republican state convention in 1871, Pacheco was nominated for lieutenant governor under the winning ticket headed by Newton Booth. When Booth accepted an appointment to the U.S. Senate, Pacheco became governor of California in 1875, serving from February to December. The first Hispanic American and the first native Californian to serve as governor, Pacheco focused on building new government facilities and services and on mediating between Spanish-speaking Californians of Mexican descent and settlers from the Eastern United States and elsewhere.

In 1876, Pacheco entered a race for a U.S. House seat representing a large southern portion of the state that was mostly on the frontier; he ultimately defeated incumbent Peter D. Wigginton by just one vote. Wigginton contested the election, eventually forcing Pacheco to leave in 1878 when the House Committee on Elections refused Pacheco's certificate of election. Returning to California, he went into business until winning a House seat again in September 1879. He was reelected in 1880. After leaving Congress, Pacheco lived on a cattle ranch in the northern Mexican state of Coahuila for five years until he was appointed as U.S. Minister to various countries in Central America in 1890. He returned to California in 1893, and died in Oakland at the home of his brother-in-law in 1899.