published in
The Wasp depicting Langdon's raids on the city's gambling dens, March 24, 1906 In November 1905, city voters elected Langdon as
district attorney of San Francisco, and in 1907 re-elected him to a second term. A popular district attorney, Langdon was nominated by the
Independence League as its choice for
governor in the
1906 elections. Langdon's presence as a strong
third party candidacy won over 14 percent of the vote, proving to be a
spoiler vote in a tight race between
Democrat Theodore A. Bell and
Republican James Gillett. In 1907, one year after the aftermath of the
San Francisco earthquake, Langdon carried out the successful prosecutions both of Mayor
Eugene Schmitz and political machine operator
Abe Ruef for bribery and extortion, along with special assistants
Francis J. Heney,
Hiram Johnson and
Matt Sullivan. After his tenure as district attorney, Langdon entered banking, serving with several banks around
Modesto and managing the property his wife had inherited from her first husband. He was elected president of the board, serving in the latter position until 1915 and the former until 1917. In 1915, he reentered law when Governor
Hiram Johnson appointed Langdon a judge of the Superior Court of
Stanislaus County. In December 1918, Governor
William Stephens appointed Langdon presiding judge of the newly minted First District, Second Division, of the
California Court of Appeal. In 1920, Langdon was elected to a full term. In November 1926, Langdon won election to a 12-year term as an associate justice of the
Supreme Court of California, where he served the next nineteen years until his death in 1939. Langdon filled the unexpired term of
William P. Lawlor, who died in office in July 1926, and whose seat was filled for three months by the appointment of
Jeremiah F. Sullivan. From 1930 until 1939, treatise author
Bernard E. Witkin served as Langdon's law clerk. In October 1939, the vacancy in Langdon's seat was filled by Governor
Culbert Olson with the appointment of
Phil S. Gibson. Among Langdon's notable opinions is his 1930 dissent in the denial of a commuted sentence of convicted double murderer Ernest A. Dias. The majority of the court upheld the death penalty, but in dissent Langdon urged the governor to grant executive clemency on the basis of Dias' mental incompetence at the time of the killings. ==Personal life==