A wire-puller is a politician who moves the strings or wires by which dupes are worked.
1826. Mr. McDuffie said he was perfectly aware who was the skulking manager who moved the wires.—Mass. Spy, April 12.
1835. He is the wire-worker, the very mover and organ of all those high-handed and lawless measures.—‘Col. Crockett’s Tour,’ p. 172 (Phila.).
1839. [The credit of Mr. Rives’s mission] actually belonged to the wire-workers of his mission, resident, and advising at the White House in Washington.—Robert Mayo, ‘Political Sketches,’ p. 83 (Balt.).
1840. He is transported from place to place, Halls of Science, Town Halls, Lecture Rooms, Repositories, Theatres, and Public Buildings, Squares, Wharfs, and Cemeteries, until he almost covets a snug property in one of the last, where he would doubtless lie very quiet and easy, unless there happened to be a “wire-worker,” or committee-man, in the next grave.—‘Arcturus,’ i. 14 (N.Y.).
1842. I tell the wire-workers of that party that they are raising a storm of indignation amongst the people, that will in its whirlwind course blow them like chaff into the fire of the people’s wrath.—Mr. Kennedy of Indiana, House of Repr., April 28: Cong. Globe, p. 319, App.
1847. Neither by demonstrations here, nor by figuring and wire-pulling at home, am I engaged to the support of this bill.—Mr. Wick of Indiana, the same, Jan. 26: id., p. 262.
1848. Already [Philadelphia] is filled with wire-pullers, public opinion manufacturers, embryo cabinet officers, future ambassadors, and the whole brood of political makeshifts.—N.Y. Mirror, June 5 (Bartlett).
1860. The Southern States never send puppets to Conventions to be managed by “wire-workers.”—Richmond Enquirer, May 11, p. 2/2.
1860. A scheme of partisan plotting and wire-pulling that would disgrace the most unprincipled tide-waiter in the country.—Yale Lit. Mag., xxv. 188 (March).
1861. [Mr. Slidell is] one of those men, who, unknown almost to the outer world, organises and sustains a faction, and exalts it into the position of a party—what is here called a “wire-puller.”—W. H. Russell, ‘My Diary, North and South,’ May 24.
1864. You pull wires, and play puppets, and veil your selfish purposes behind sacred names, and lie to the people whom you make your dupes.—J. G. Holland, ‘Letters to the Joneses,’ p. 274.
1910. [A policeman] arrested a saloonkeeper for serving drinks on Sunday. Before he could reach the station-house with his prisoner the wires were pulled and the prisoner was allowed to go. But the policeman was brought up for trial on charges of having been in a saloon in uniform while on duty. He was fined ten days’ pay. “Hereafter,” he said, “I let the saloons alone.”—N.Y. Evening Post, March 31.
