A lawyer from Topeka, Harvey was elected Lieutenant Governor of Kansas in 1896 on the Populist ticket along with John W. Leedy and served from 1897 to 1899. In 1900 Harvey was again a candidate for lieutenant governor, on a Populist/Democratic/Free Silver Republican fusion ticket with John W. Breidenthal for governor; Breidenthal lost to incumbent governor William E. Stanley by 164,793 votes to 181,893. In 1904 Harvey was the Democratic Party candidate for US representative from the First District of Kansas; he lost to the Republican Party candidate, future vice president Charles Curtis. In 1914 he lost again to Curtis, in the Republican US Senate primary.
Legal career
Harvey was the president of the Topeka Bar Association 1922-3. Following the conviction of Industrial Workers of the World organizer Harold Fiske under the Kansas Criminal Syndicalism act in late 1923, Harvey was hired to handle the appeal to the Kansas Supreme Court and later to the United States Supreme Court. Harvey, working with his son Randal C. Harvey and Charles L. Carroll, obtained the 1927 Fiske v. Kansas decision freeing Fiske and establishing that state laws must conform to federal freedom of speech rights. Another prominent case was the two bribery trials, on separate cases, of Governor Jonathan M. Davis in 1925, in which Harvey, fellow Populist Frank Doster, and John Addington obtained acquittals on all charges.
Other activities
In May 1898 Harvey joined the 22nd Kansas Infantry as a major; the regiment did not see action and was mustered out in November 1898. During his brief time in the service Harvey served in part as a military lawyer, defending a surgeon in his regiment against a charge of grave-robbing. He was active in the National Association of Spanish–American War Veterans, serving as Inspector General in 1903. In 1903 Harvey was one of the leaders of rescue efforts during severe flooding in Topeka, and wrote a short account of his experiences. Harvey also wrote short stories, a collection with the title Tales and Trails of Wakarusa was published in 1917.
