vanquished warrior - umd history · vanquished warrior: reconsidering al smith’s 1928 new york...

New York History Winter 2017 © 2017 by Fenimore Art Museum

90

Vanquished Warrior: Reconsidering Al Smith’s 1928 New York Defeat

Robert Chiles, University of Maryland

In 1928, New York Governor Alfred E. Smith not only lost the presiden-tial election in a landslide, he also lost his home state by a slim margin—

a particularly heartbreaking end to a political career that had included four statewide triumphs in the preceding ten years. Historians have reflexively ascribed this outcome to traditional upstate/downstate divides—especially anti-Catholic and anti-urban voting by rural New Yorkers. It is a story, we have been told, about regional political identity. Yet closer scrutiny of state-wide voting patterns undercuts such explanations.1

County-level voting trends from the 1920s reveal that Smith’s 1928 defeat in New York State was not the result of a surge in anti-Catholic rural voting. Instead, the man Franklin D. Roosevelt dubbed “the Happy Warrior” was thwarted by an inability to garner the sort of overwhelm-ing support in New York City that had allowed him to overcome upstate Republican strength in the past—particularly in 1924, when he was reelect-ed governor despite a Republican presidential landslide in the Empire State. Furthermore, voting patterns in New York City—particularly in the boroughs of Manhattan and Queens, where Smith’s performance was markedly weaker than during his gubernatorial bids—suggest that Smith’s inability to retain the allegiance of progressive New York City Republicans played an important role in his 1928 defeat.

From the national and presidential perspective, Al Smith’s 1928 sweep of New York City, especially his large margins in Brooklyn and the Bronx, was unprecedented for a Democratic nominee and augured a new voting pattern with the potential to yield regular Democratic statewide plurali-

1. Research for this essay was funded, in part, by a New York State Library Cunningham Research Residency and by a New York State Archives Partnership Trust Hackman Research Residency. The author would like to thank Leslie Chiles, John Buenker, William Leuchtenburg, Tom Pegram, David Sicilia, Laurie Kozakiewicz, Tod Ottman, Thomas Beal, and the anonymous peer reviewer for their insights and encouragement.

Chiles Reconsidering Al Smith’s 1928 New York Defeat 91

ties. Yet Smith’s success in the five boroughs was obviously not personally unprecedented, for he had always carried New York City by spectacular margins. Therefore, historians have assumed that his defeat in New York State in 1928 was delivered largely by upstate voters, many of whom had never supported the Happy Warrior, and others of whom evidently considered the notion of having a Roman Catholic Tammany man from Manhattan’s Lower East Side move onto Pennsylvania Avenue less toler-able than that of having such a character reside on Eagle Street. “Upstate nativists and antisaloon advocates came out in droves to keep the wet Catholic out of the White House,” affirmed Terry Golway in a recent his-tory of Tammany Hall; while Smith biographer Robert Slayton has con-cluded: “In New York State, outside the city . . . voters could not accept the vision of this kind of man in the White House, despite his record as their governor.”2

Fig. 1: 1928 two-party presidential vote Upstate and in New York City.

A closer inspection of statewide voting statistics complicates this nar-rative. Smith lost New York State in 1928 by just over 103,000 votes, 51 percent to 49 percent. He carried New York City by a margin of nearly 454,000, and lost outside of the city by over 557,000. All of which seems to comport with the argument that it was “upstate” (along with on Long Island) where Smith was defeated.3 Yet Al Smith had won four statewide

2. Terry Golway, Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics (New York: Liveright, 2014), 265; Robert A. Slayton, Empire Statesman: The Rise and Redemption of Al Smith (New York: Free Press, 2001), 322.

3. For purposes of simplicity, this article will employ the term “upstate” consistently, although with admitted geographical imprecision, to refer to all portions of New York State beyond the five counties

Smith 38%

Hoover 62%

1928 Presidential Vote, Upstate

Smith 62%

Hoover 38%

1928 Presidential Vote, New York City

92 ■ NEW YORK HISTORY

races in his career, never having carried the upstate vote. The difference in 1928 was that his success in New York City was not enough to overcome his deficit north of the Bronx and east of Queens.

Trends and Precedents

Al Smith had lost New York State once before—in 1920, when his first attempt at gubernatorial reelection was narrowly thwarted by Judge Nathan Miller of Syracuse in a result that historians have always attributed to national politics and the concomitant increase in upstate turnout and Republican presidential enthusiasm.4 In that election, Smith won New York City by nearly 320,000 and lost outside the five boroughs by 396,700. This election was much closer than the 1928 presidential contest—the mar-gin of defeat in 1920 was a little more than half that of 1928. Yet Smith’s percentage outside of New York City was nearly the same (in fact it was slightly stronger in 1928). It was in the city that Smith’s performance was noticeably weaker in the later election—62 percent of the two-party vote in 1928, rather than 65 percent in 1920.5

A plausible hypothesis is that Smith’s defeat in 1928 despite his slightly stronger percentage of the upstate vote was attributable to an invigorated anti-Smith turnout—thus magnifying the impact of the upstate margin in terms of real votes despite its smaller percentage figure. Yet that is not what happened, for New York City’s proportion of the total state vote was remarkably stable throughout the 1920s—always between 42 percent and 44 percent of all Empire State ballots. Indeed, as figure two reveals, New York City’s turnout in 1928 actually swelled to a greater degree than that of the rest of the state, which supports the larger argument made by many historians that urban ethnic voters nationwide enthusiastically rushed to the polls for Smith in 1928.6 Nevertheless, New York City’s bloated pro-

which constitute the City of New York; this will include Nassau and Suffolk Counties on Long Island. Edgar Eugene Robinson, The Presidential Vote, 1896–1932 (Stanford University, CA: Stanford University Press, 1934), 275–280.

4. Slayton, Empire Statesman, 148–149; Oscar Handlin, Al Smith and His America (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1958), 72; Elisabeth Israels Perry, Belle Moskowitz: Feminine Politics and the Exercise of Power in the Age of Alfred E. Smith (Boston: Northeastern University, 1992), 140; Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (New York: Vintage, 1974), 111.

5. James Malcolm, ed., The New York Red Book: An Illustrated Legislative Manual of the State (Albany, NY: J.B. Lyon, 1928), 371.

6. E.g.: Samuel J. Eldersveld, “The Influence of Metropolitan Party Pluralities In Presidential Elections Since 1920: A Study of Twelve Key Cities,” American Political Science Review 43:6 (December,


portion of the presidential-year turnout defies the notion that the upstate anti-Smith vote was more zealous than down-state Democrats.7

Fig. 2: New York City percentage of New York State turnout, 1920–1928

Smith’s 1928 New York defeat is better understood when contextual-ized among his other 1920s performances. The Happy Warrior’s victories in 1922, 1924, and 1926, were facilitated by two factors. One was his ability in the non-presidential or “off-year” elections to attract considerable por-tions of the upstate vote. In both 1922 and 1926, Smith cracked 40 percent outside of New York City; indeed, in 1922, running against an incumbent Republican from Onondaga County, he carried 47 percent upstate. The second, more orthodox explanation for Smith’s winning streak is his tre-mendous margins in New York City during his three 1920s victories: in

1949): 1189–1206; V. O. Key, Jr., “A Theory of Critical Elections,” Journal of Politics 17:1 (February, 1955): 3–18; Duncan MacRae, Jr., and James A. Meldrum, “Critical Elections in Illinois: 1888–1958,” American Political Science Review 54:3 (September, 1960): 669–683; Gerald Pomper, “Classification of Presidential Elections,” Journal of Politics 29:3 (August, 1967): 535–566; Carl N. Degler, “American Political Parties and the Rise of the City: An Interpretation,” Journal of American History 51:1 (June, 1964): 41–59; John M. Allswang, A House for All Peoples: Ethnic Politics in Chicago, 1890–1936 (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky, 1971), 47–52; Samuel Lubell, The Future of American Politics (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1951), 36; James L. Sundquist, Dynamics of the Party System: Alignment and Realignment of Political Parties in the United States (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1973), 178; Morton Keller, America’s Three Regimes: A New Political History (New York: Oxford, 2007), 197.

7. Malcolm, Red Book, 1928, 371–374; Robinson, The Presidential Vote, 1896–1932, 275–280.

41.5

42

42.5

43

43.5

44

44.5

1920 1922 1924 1926 1928

New York City Percentage of State Turnout, 1920–1928


1922, 1924, and 1926, Smith carried 73 percent, 69 percent, and 70 percent of the city’s two-party gubernatorial vote. In 1922 and 1926, this urban strength combined with Smith’s relative success outside the city to produce statewide landslides. In the presidential year 1924, however, Smith did not enjoy the same support upstate. As figure three shows, that election more closely resembled 1920 beyond the five boroughs, with Smith carrying only 39 percent of the vote outside of New York City in 1924—a mere two points better than during his 1920 defeat.8

Fig. 3: Smith’s percentage of the Upstate vote, 1920–1928.

Therefore a clear and unsurprising pattern is revealed by tracking vot-ing outside of New York City: Smith performed relatively well in off-year elections, and was beaten more soundly in presidential years. The reason that Smith was able to win in the presidential year 1924, despite receiving a percentage of the upstate vote comparable to the poor tallies of 1920 and 1928, was his triumphal performance in New York City—a victory made all the more remarkable by the abysmal showing of Democratic presiden-tial nominee John W. Davis.

8. “Race Hot Up-State,” New York Times, November 3, 1926, 1; Robinson, The Presidential Vote, 1896–1932, 275–280; Malcolm, Red Book, 1928, 371–374.

35

37

39

41

43

45

47

49

1920 1922 1924 1926 1928

Smith Percentage of the Upstate Vote, 1920–1928


Fig. 4: New York City three-party percentages for governor and president, 1924.

Fig. 5: Smith’s Upstate and City percentages in the presidential years 1920, 1924, and 1928.

While Smith’s 1924 two-party percentage in New York City was slightly lower than during the off-year contests, this decline was not nearly as dramatic as it had been in 1920 and would be again in 1928. Since the usual presidential-year Democratic slump in New York City was not as pronounced in 1924, Smith was able to weather the quadrennial upstate Republican rout. In fact, as figure five demonstrates, Smith’s percentage of the upstate vote was strikingly consistent across the presidential years; and since the upstate/city turnout proportions were also relatively stable throughout this period, it is apparent that it was Smith’s inability to offset

Smith (Dem.)67%

Roosevelt (Rep.)30%

Thomas (Soc.)3%

1924 Gubernatorial Race, New York City

Davis (Dem.) 35%

Coolidge (Rep.) 45%

LaFollette (Prog.) 20%

1924 Presidential Race,New York City

30

35

40

45

50

55

60

65

70

75

80

1920 1924 1928

Smith Percentage of the Upstate and New York City Votes, 1920–1928, Presidential Years Only

NYC

Upstate

Smith (Dem.)67%

Roosevelt (Rep.)30%

Thomas (Soc.)3%

1924 Gubernatorial Race, New York City

Davis (Dem.) 35%

Coolidge (Rep.) 45%

LaFollette (Prog.) 20%

1924 Presidential Race,New York City

30

35

40

45

50

55

60

65

70

75

80

1920 1924 1928

Smith Percentage of the Upstate and New York City Votes, 1920–1928, Presidential Years Only

NYC

Upstate


the upstate Republican vote with an especially strong city performance in the manner of 1924 that most undermined his Empire State efforts in 1928.

Down-state Disappointment?

Unlike in 1922 and 1926, when his political base was slightly more bal-anced, Governor Smith achieved his counter-current reelection in 1924 thanks to a career-record New York City plurality of 518,966 votes over Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. In 1928, Smith carried the city by a margin of 453,817 over Herbert Hoover. Meanwhile, as Smith’s strength was eroding in New York City, elsewhere in the state Republican totals had improved: Hoover bested Smith by 557,298 outside of the city—by far the governor’s worst upstate defeat in terms of raw votes. Yet this figure is misleading, for its size resulted from inflated statewide turnout: Smith’s proportion of the upstate vote had not diminished significantly since 1924, and as figure six shows, the Republican upstate plurality, when weighted against the number of ballots cast statewide, was unremarkable. Instead, it was the Democrat’s relatively anemic New York City margin—a weakness exac-erbated when considered against increased turnout—that cost Smith his home state.

Fig. 6: Smith’s margins in New York City as a percentage of total state turnout, and the Republican candidates’ margins outside New York City as a percentage of turnout, 1920–1928.

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

1920 1922 1924 1926 1928

Smith and Republican Margins as a Percentage of Statewide Ballots Cast, 1920–1928

Smith Margin, NYC

GOP Margin, "Upstate"


These figures become more decipherable at the borough level. Smith’s 1928 plurality in Manhattan was 130,831. This was far lower than the stunning 201,940-vote margin he had racked up in 1924. His presiden-tial plurality of 26,135 in Queens was particularly disappointing; it was 32,000 votes shy of his largest plurality for that county (achieved in 1926), and it was well short of the 60,000-vote margin ambitious Democrats had anticipated. On Staten Island, Smith’s 1924 plurality had been over 9,100; in 1928, it was 3,950.9 Smith lost New York State by 103,481 votes in 1928; had he merely equaled his best margins in New York, Queens, and Richmond counties, he would have gained more than 107,000.

Yet Smith’s New York City performance was not uniformly disappoint-ing. The Democrat’s largest pluralities were in Brooklyn (158,771) and the Bronx (134,130).10 These were the widest margins Smith had ever achieved in either jurisdiction. Meanwhile in New York County, while Smith’s mar-gins in many Tammany strongholds had declined from 1924, his percent-ages remained relatively strong, and in the heavily Italian second assembly district, his margin was actually improved over 1924.11 More tellingly, in all of the Manhattan assembly districts that had elected Republicans to the state legislature in 1927, Smith’s margins had collapsed.12 There was a similar story in Queens: Smith’s margins in assembly districts one and two, bordering Brooklyn, were improved from 1924; those in the more Republican districts farther east on Long Island were reduced by thousands of votes.13 In the four Queens districts that had not elected any Republican Assemblymen from 1922 to 1928, Smith’s margin increased from an aver-age of around 9,300 to an average of nearly 10,000—a 7.5 percent improve-ment; in the two Republican districts, his average margin dropped from a

9. Malcolm, Red Book, 1928, 373; Robinson, The Presidential Vote, 1896–1932, 277–278; “City Gives Smith 430,000 Majority,” New York Times, November 7, 1928, 1, 7.

10. Robinson, The Presidential Vote, 1896–1932, 275.11. “Tammany in Doubt on State Patronage,” New York Times, November 9, 1928, 2; David Burner,

The Politics of Provincialism: The Democratic Party in Transition, 1918–1932 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968), 253–254.

12. “Governor—N. Y. City,” New York Times, November 5, 1924, 2; “The City Vote,” New York Times, November 6, 1924, 6; “How Harlem Voted Yesterday,” New York Amsterdam News, November 7, 1928, 2; “President,” New York Times, November 7, 1928, 3; Robert Moses, Manual for the Use of the Legislature of the State of New York, 1928 (Albany: J. B. Lyon, 1928), 595–604; 605–609; Malcolm, Red Book, 1928, 424–425.

13. “Governor—N. Y. City,” 2; “The City Vote,” 6; “President,” 3; Moses, Manual for the Use of the Legislature of the State of New York 1928, 595–604; 605–609; Malcolm, Red Book, 1928, 424–425.


win of over 2,100 to a defeat of nearly 7,200—a decline of more than 400 percent.14

For his part, Socialist presidential nominee Norman Thomas responded to the 1928 outcome with optimism (and charges of Tammany fraud)—expressing “elation” with his own party’s “material increase” over their 1924 results in New York City and declaring the Democratic party “done for on a national scale.”15 Yet despite Smith’s mildly depressed Lower East Side margins and the post-mortems of cocksure Socialists, the Democrat’s real weakness was not on his left flank. The 63,000 city votes that went to third-party nominees (mostly Thomas) in 1928 were of little transformative significance, considering that Socialist gubernatorial nominees (includ-ing Thomas himself) had achieved comparable totals in 1924 and 1926.16 Indeed, Thomas’s gubernatorial percentage in New York City in 1924 had been around 3 percent; the entire third-party take in the city’s 1928 presidential contest was 3.24 percent. So the bulk of these votes were likely established Socialists rather than partisan defectors; and while every one of them would obviously have been helpful to Smith’s electoral calculus, the Democrat’s more plausible potential pickups were the independents and progressive Republicans who had previously supported him for governor.

Across the metropolis, Al Smith ran much stronger in 1928 than John W. Davis had in 1924; but Davis had lost the city and state miserably.17 So Smith managed to reshape presidential politics in New York, just as he did nationally—helping transform the Democratic Party into a dominant force in urban America; but this so-called “Al Smith Revolution” was not marked enough to achieve presidential-level victory as a Democrat in New York State. In order to recast presidential politics, Smith needed to best

14. The Republican Districts in Queens were Assembly Districts four and six. “The City Vote,” 6; “President,” 3; Moses, Manual for the Use of the Legislature of the State of New York 1928, 605–609. The assembly-level results for Queens County published in the New York Times in 1928 are about 1,000 votes off for both Smith and Hoover from the official final tallies published later in Robinson’s The Presidential Vote. Happily, the discrepancy was well-balanced by candidate, but because of this, only rounded figures are provided in this instance.

15. “Socialists Elated over Gains in City,” New York Times, November 8, 1928, 10.16. “City Gives Smith 430,000 Majority,” 1; James Malcolm, ed., The New York Red Book: An

Illustrated Legislative Manual of the State (Albany, NY: J.B. Lyon, 1932), 374; “Governor—N. Y. City,” 2; Malcolm, The New York State Red Book, 1928, 380.

17. In fact, the 1920 Democratic nominee, James M. Cox, had lost all five counties of New York City by even wider margins than Davis. In 1920, Republican Warren G. Harding’s plurality was 8,471 in Richmond, 59,064 in Queens, 60,309 in Bronx; 139,764 in New York, and 173,080 in Kings. Alice V. McGillivray and Richard M. Scammon, America at the Polls, 1920–1956: Harding to Eisenhower, A Handbook of Presidential Election Statistics (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly, 1994), 543–544.


Fig. 7: “Governor an ‘early bird’—Mr. and Mrs. Smith voted at Public School No. 3, Oliver and Henry Street,” National Photo Company Collection, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.


Davis and earlier Democrats in New York and other great cities in a con-vincing fashion by cobbling together a discernible and durable new elector-al coalition. He did. But in order to win New York State, Smith needed to build upon his own, already strong majorities—and at that task the Happy Warrior failed.

In the aftermath of the election, the New York Times identified anec-dotal trends which confirm these quantitative presuppositions. “Governor Smith carried his old home district in Oliver Street [on the Lower East Side] by 610 to 66, but lost the election district in which his current resi-dence, the Hotel Biltmore, is located [in Midtown] by 404 to 223.” Hoover had carried “the ‘silk stocking’ districts,” while Smith had run strong with his working-class base. The home precincts of Charles Evans Hughes and John D. Rockefeller, Jr., voted Republican; those of Tammany stal-warts like Mayor Jimmy Walker, Senator Robert F. Wagner, and the late Chieftain “Silent Charlie” Murphy went Democratic.18 In fact, Smith’s first election living in Midtown had been in 1926, when he won his fourth term as governor. The comparison between the 1926 and 1928 results in the gov-ernor’s old and new neighborhoods furnishes an instructive microcosm of the broader quantitative story: In 1926, Smith lost the Biltmore district by only 77 votes, while carrying Oliver Street by a plurality of 420.19 By 1928, his Midtown loss was more pronounced, as was his victory on the Lower East Side.

These results are more meaningful in their broader context. It is true that Smith outran the Democratic gubernatorial nominee, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in New York City, and thus Roosevelt’s victory is appropriately credited to his ability to outperform Smith upstate. But this was not the case with the rest of the Democratic ticket: Herbert Lehman, running for lieutenant governor, Royal Copeland, running for reelection to the United States Senate, and Morris Tremaine, running for reelection as state con-troller, each bested Smith within the city.20 All three of these Democrats were victorious.

18. “City Gives Smith 430,000 Majority,” 7. Although it is noteworthy that Tammany chieftain George W. Olvany was unable to secure his home precinct for the Democratic ticket.

19. “Smith Wins in Oliver Street, Loses New Biltmore District,” New York Times, November 3, 1926, 2.

20. “City Gives Smith 430,000 Majority,” 1; “State Ticket Leads Smith in City Vote,” New York Times, November 8, 1928, 18.


The Al Smith Revolution in New York State Politics

To be sure, Al Smith had already done a great deal as governor to alter Empire State politics. While the Smith years are rightly remembered as a decade of revolutionary policy transformation for New York, his incum-bency was equally transformative of the state’s political life.21 From 1920 to 1928, major-party voter registration in New York State increased by over 1.44 million. Of this growth, more than one million of the new reg-istrants—over 71 percent—became Democrats. Democrats accounted for approximately 34 percent of two-party registration in 1920; by 1928, major-party registration in New York was 47 percent Democratic.22

Fig. 8: New York State two-party registration in 1920 and 1928.

New York City became unprecedentedly Democratic during the Smith years. The party’s grasp of the city’s political life remained in some ways tenuous at the beginning of the Smith era: While New York City sent overwhelmingly Democratic delegations to Albany, and while city-level politics had been dominated (although not monopolized) by Tammany Hall in Manhattan and by similar Democratic machines in the other boroughs for decades, the Republican presidential sweeps of the city in 1920 and 1924 were not aberrant. While Woodrow Wilson had carried the Bronx in its first presidential election as a county in 1916, he failed to achieve a Democratic majority there—a feat not reached until Al Smith

21. On Smith and policy, see: Handlin, Al Smith, 90–111; Slayton, Empire Statesman, 125–233; Perry, Belle Moskowitz, 122–183; Robert Moses, A Tribute to Governor Smith (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1962); Paula Eldot, Governor Alfred E. Smith: The Politician as Reformer (New York: Garland, 1983).

22. Malcolm, The New York State Red Book, 1928, 375–378; Malcolm, Red Book, 1932, 388–392.

Dem.34%

GOP66%

Major-Party Registration in New York, 1920

Dem. 47%GOP

53%

Major-Party Registration in New York, 1928


in 1928. Since the partisan realignment of 1896, Brooklyn had only voted Democratic in the two Woodrow Wilson elections, and in neither case did the Democrat carry a pure majority there, either. Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island had been more consistently Democratic since 1900, but in these three boroughs too, the trend since 1916 had been of Democratic decline, with Republicans carrying all three jurisdictions in 1920 and 1924, and with Wilson ceding Queens to Charles Evans Hughes in 1916.23

Nor was this simply ballot-splitting by disaffected urban Democrats in an age when that party’s national apparatus was still often dominated by southern and agrarian interests. In 1920, Brooklyn’s two-party registered electorate was 59 percent Republican, while Manhattan was 55 percent GOP. Bronx, Queens, and Richmond Counties were 51, 51, and 56 percent Democratic, respectively—so that Republicans accounted for 55 percent of all two-party registration in New York City in 1920. From 1920 to 1928, Democratic and Republican registration in New York City increased by a combined 692,345. The Democratic proportion of this growth was 106 percent: in New York County, the Democrats accounted for 187 percent of two-party registration growth; the figure was 115 percent in Kings County; 102 percent in Bronx County; 84 percent in Richmond County; and 72 per-cent in Queens County. The result of these increases was that by 1928 New York City’s two-party registration was 68 percent Democratic.24

Indeed, the Smith years had produced an astounding transformation in the state’s partisan balance, but ultimately the governor himself would not fully reap the fruits of his political labors. In 1928, Smith ran 7 percent ahead of Democratic registration statewide; yet the nominee underper-formed compared to Democratic registration in eight counties: Delaware, Otsego, and Schoharie upstate, and all five counties of New York City. Smith ran 6 percent below Democratic registration in the Bronx, 7 percent below in Brooklyn, 5 percent below in Manhattan, 14 percent in Queens, and 22 percent on Staten Island. In 1924 this had not been the case: Smith had run 142,289 votes ahead of Democratic registration—the difference was nearly 34,000 votes greater than his total statewide margin and had clearly insured his reelection. It is true that there were less of these non-

23. Robinson, The Presidential Vote, 1896–1932, 275, 277–278.24. John J. Lyons, Manual for the Use of the Legislature of the State of New York, 1921 (Albany, NY: J.B.

Lyon, 1921), 759–760; Malcolm, Red Book, 1928, 375–378; Malcolm, Red Book, 1932, 388–392.


Democrats to go around by 1928, since Democratic registration in the city had increased by more than 470,000 in those four years. So an oversatura-tion of registered Democrats in 1928 might well have rendered expecta-tions for substantial independent and progressive-Republican Smith sup-port unrealistic. Nevertheless, had Smith merely equaled Democratic regis-tration in the five boroughs, he would have pulled to within 6,029 votes of Herbert Hoover statewide.

This was not an unreasonable expectation, despite the apparent glut of Democrats in New York City, because in fact one jurisdiction outpaced all five metropolitan counties in Democratic growth: Albany County, which had added 13,213 registered two-party voters between 1920 and 1928, but 27,827 Democrats in the same period—so that Democrats accounted for an astounding 211 percent of two-party enrollment growth. Thus, Albany County, which had been 28 percent Democratic in 1920, was 58 percent Democratic by 1928. Similarly, in Franklin County, Democrats accounted for 88.5 percent of two-party enrollment growth during the same peri-od, outpacing Staten Island and Queens. In both Albany and Franklin Counties, Smith was able to capitalize on this political shift—not only did he carry both in 1928 (he carried neither in 1920), but he still ran ahead of Democratic enrollment in both jurisdictions in that election: his vote total was 33 percent above Democratic enrollment in Albany County and 31.5 percent higher in Franklin County.25

While Republican registration in New York City did decline in this period, it is apparent that much more of the Democratic surge in the late 1920s was a result of new registrations—a pattern which political scientists have noted nationally.26 Moreover, there were still a number of indepen-dent or progressive Republican voters remaining who had not been part of the Democratic registration boom of the 1920s. Had Smith merely received the registered Democratic vote in 1928 in New York City and managed to reach only 4.25 percent of his non-Democratic New York City total from 1924, he would have won the state outright.

25. Malcolm, Red Book, 1932, 388–392; Robinson, The Presidential Vote, 1896–1932, 275–276.26. Kristi Andersen, “Generation, Partisan Shift, and Realignment: A Glance Back to the New Deal,”

in Norman H. Nie, Sidney Verba, and John R. Petrocik, The Changing American Voter (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1976), 74–95, 77; see also John R. Petrocik, Party Coalitions: Realignment and the Decline of the New Deal Party System (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1981), 55.


Republican Rejoinder

While all of this elucidates how Al Smith lost New York State, it does not explain why voters behaved as they did. Although individual political motivations are complex, a review of the Republican pitch to New Yorkers lends insight into the latter question. Beyond the notorious ethnocultural war waged against Smith over religion, prohibition, and urbanism, the GOP’s formal Empire State campaign was a three-fronted offensive seek-ing to laud the status quo, establish Hoover’s progressive credentials, and question the relevance of Smith’s gubernatorial experience to national affairs.

The status quo argument was corroborated by the period’s reputed prosperity—especially among upper- and middle-class voters who seemed materially to benefit from Republican “New Era” economics.27 Empire State Republicans were bolstered further by the reputation of their presi-dential nominee who, unlike most of Al Smith’s state-level foes, enjoyed a progressive reputation of his own.28 Indeed, while Smith ran to Hoover’s left in the national campaign on issues like water power development, labor relations, immigration, and farm relief, many élite observers dis-missed such differences as negligible, again providing an opening for pro-gressive New York Republicans to stand pat and vote Hoover.29

Hoover himself traveled to New York City to deliver his most famous address of the campaign at Madison Square Garden on October 22.30 With its acrid denunciation of Smith’s progressive schemes for farm relief and government development of hydroelectric sites as “state socialism,” Hoover’s New York speech drew opprobrium from some progressive

27. Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to FDR (New York: Vintage, 1955), 300; William E. Leuchtenburg, The Perils of Prosperity: 1914–32 (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1958), 237; Burner, The Politics of Provincialism, 179–180.

28. Burner, The Politics of Provincialism, 194–197; Joan Hoff Wilson, Herbert Hoover: Forgotten Progressive (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1975), 132

29. On Smith’s progressivism, see, e.g.: Alfred E. Smith, Campaign Addresses of Governor Alfred E. Smith, Democratic Candidate for President 1928 (Washington, DC: Democratic National Committee, 1929), 1–26.

On élite political opinion, see, e.g.: Walter Lippmann, “Hoover and Smith: An Impartial Consideration of the Candidates For the American Presidential Office,” Vanity Fair, September, 1928, 39–40, 40; Editorial, “As Like as Two Peas,” The Nation, 127, August 8, 1928, 122, in John L. Shover, ed., Politics of the Nineteen Twenties (Waltham, MA: Ginn-Blaisdell, 1970), 186–189, 186; William E. Leuchtenburg, Herbert Hoover (New York: Henry Holt, 2009), 74.

30. Herbert Hoover, The New Day: Campaign Speeches of Herbert Hoover, 1928 (Stanford University, CA: Stanford University, 1928), 148–149.


western Republicans, led by Nebraska’s George W. Norris, who raged that Hoover had “slapped every progressive-minded man and woman in America in the face,” and promptly endorsed Smith.31 Yet while this became the most memorable response to Hoover’s oration, it should be noted that the speaker himself was mindful that in New York and else-where, he needed support not only from laissez faire conservatives but also from more progressive-minded Republicans. Thus he tied his notions not only to Calvin Coolidge, but also to Theodore Roosevelt. Hoover argued that the progressive New Yorker had been an “enemy of government operation of business, while insisting on regulation.”32 Reinforcing this potent reference, Hoover was flanked on the platform by Roosevelt’s son Theodore, Jr., and by Elihu Root, TR’s Secretary of State.33

Root’s presence mattered profoundly, for although he personally had remained a loyal partisan, the former New York Senator represented the sort of open-minded Empire State Republican that Hoover needed to shepherd back into the party fold after a decade of outreach by Governor Smith. Root had been the field marshal in the progressive fight for gov-ernment efficiency through systematic reorganization of the state bureau-cracy at the New York Constitutional Convention of 1915, where he had befriended then-Assemblyman Al Smith; and had entered the fray again as one of Smith’s Republican allies when the Democrat successfully battled for such reforms in 1925.34 But in 1928, the lifelong Republican deemed Hoover “far the most competent” contender for the presidency.35 Beyond the Madison Square Garden appearance, Root’s role in the Hoover cam-paign was minimal, and he openly questioned his party’s position on prohi-bition.36 Nevertheless, his fidelity to the party cause was of symbolic value in retaining New York progressives for the GOP.

31. “Norris Supports Smith; Strikes at Hoover on Power,” New York World, October 25, 1928, 1; “Declares Norris Will Shift to Smith,” New York Times, October 24, 1928, 1, 14.

32. “Al’s Home Folk Hail Hoover,” Chicago Tribune, October 23, 1928, 1, 9.33. “Al’s Home Folk Hail Hoover,” 9.34. Richard W. Leopold, Elihu Root and the Conservative Tradition (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co.,

1954), 93; Elihu Root, “Invisible Government,” in Addresses on Government and Citizenship (Freeport, New York: Books for Libraries Press, 1969), 191–206; Root, “A Study of the Proposed Constitution,” in ibid., 213–225; Draft of Letter to the Editor, Elihu Root and Henry Stimson, Alfred E. Smith Papers, New York State Library, Albany, NY, Box 2, Folder 25; Press Release, Democratic Publicity Committee, 1925, Smith Papers, Box 2, Folder 25.

35. “Elihu Root to Cast Vote for Hoover,” Baltimore Sun, September 28, 1928, 1.36. “The Liquor Question,” Washington Post, October 1, 1928, 6.


A more energetic contribution to the Republican effort came from an even more widely respected New York progressive: Charles Evans Hughes, the former Governor, Supreme Court justice, and Secretary of State. Although Hughes had rebuffed party leaders’ attempts to induce him to run for Senate to strengthen the state ticket, it was announced in late summer that he would be stumping for Hoover, his fellow Republican and former cabinet comrade.37 Hughes proved an invaluable addition to the Hoover forces in New York State, not only by virtue of his prestigious résumé, but also because of his place on the ideological spectrum of New York Republicanism. As governor from 1907 to 1910, he had earned a ster-ling reputation among New York progressives.38 During the Smith admin-istration, Hughes had joined Elihu Root and Henry Stimson as a staunch Republican ally of the governor’s progressive executive reorganization scheme, and had chaired the commission tasked with finalizing the pro-gram.39 But “in spite of his affection for ‘Al’ Smith,” Hughes, compelled by “his high esteem for Hoover and his lifelong habit of resting his confidence in the Republican Party,” emerged to speak against his one-time reformist ally.40

In late October, Hughes began making the case. Smith’s gubernatorial record, while laudable, had not prepared him for the presidency; Hoover was therefore the more qualified candidate. Moreover, Hoover’s experience in national affairs and his sober temperament would ensure the continu-ance of Republican prosperity.41 While Hughes joined Hoover in criticiz-ing Smith’s more grandiose proposals as socialistic—“the most gigantic program of Government in business ever proposed,” he warned—he also assiduously explained that Hoover’s opposition to such proposals was grounded in his own progressive sensibilities.42 From Chicago, Hughes assured a national audience that Hoover was “the leading progressive of

37. “Seek to Get Hoover to Speak in East,” New York Times, August 10, 1928, 4; “Hughes will Stump for Hoover Ticket, Chiefly in New York,” New York Times, September 4, 1928, 1.

38. David M. Ellis, James A. Frost, Harold C. Syrett, and Harry J. Carman, A Short History of New York State (Ithaca, NY: Cornell, 1957), 385–387; “Hughes in Message Calls for Reforms,” New York Times, January 6, 1910, 3. Robert F. Wesser, Charles Evans Hughes: Politics and Reform in New York, 1905–1910 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell, 1967), 342-347.

39. Merlo J. Pusey, Charles Evans Hughes, vol. 2 (New York: MacMillan, 1951), 623–624; Handlin, Al Smith, 96.

40. Pusey, Charles Evans Hughes, 629.41. “Hughes in First Speech Calls Hoover Best Fitted to Fill the Presidency,” New York Times,

October 24, 1928, 1, 3.42. “Hughes Defines ‘State Socialism,’ Contradicts Smith,” New York Times, October 27, 1928, 1, 10.


Fig. 9: “Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes and Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover,” 1924, National Photo Company Collection, Library of Congress.


our day,” and explained in Buffalo that “Mr. Hoover is a liberal and is opposed to State Socialism.”43 Hoover, Hughes would assert in the clos-ing days of the campaign, was in fact an “apostle of cooperation . . . . an architect, a builder, an engineer of progress.”44 Meanwhile, Smith lacked “real issues,” imperiled prosperity, and had become “obsessed” by “delu-sions of grandeur”: “Upon what meat doth this our Democratic Caesar feed that he is grown so great?”45 Conservative New York Republicans, like Governor Nathan Miller and Lieutenant Governor Seymour Lowman, had unleashed similar attacks on Smith in the past, and New Yorkers had roundly rejected their appeals; but now the argument that Smith sought autocratic centralization and dangerous experimentation was being articu-lated by a respected reformer on behalf of a candidate widely viewed as both a progressive and an engineer of prosperity.46

Each of Smith’s successful campaigns for the governorship had boiled down to a progressive appeal against the state’s conservative Republican establishment, and in these contests many progressive-minded Republicans had sided with the Democrat.47 Even when Smith lost in the Republican tidal wave of 1920, he had retained the allegiance of many such Republicans.48 For the first time, therefore, New York Republicans in 1928 had effectively distinguished between the progressive Republicanism of Hoover, Hughes, Root, and Roosevelt, and the more popular, potentially radical and even demagogic progressivism of Governor Smith. The con-trast of the two rivals’ receptions in New York City was revealing. When Hoover came to Madison Square Garden in October, the Republican

43. “Hughes Condemns Smith’s Criticisms of Economy Record,” New York Times, October 25, 1928, 1, 14; “Hughes Defines ‘State Socialism,’ Contradicts Smith,” 1.

44. “Hughes Sees Peril in a Smith Victory,” New York Times, November 2, 1928, 1, 14.45. “Hughes Sees Peril in a Smith Victory,” 14; “Hughes Says Smith Lacks Real Issues,” New York

Times, November 6, 1928, 17.46. E.g.: “Governor Cheered, Lowman is Hissed in Budget Debate,” New York Times, March 8, 1925,

1, 23; “Debate Between Governor Smith and Former Governor Miller on State Bond Issue, Held at Carnegie Hall, July 9, 1925, 8:15 O’clock P.M.,” Smith Papers, Box 28, Folder 295, 38–39.

47. E.g.: Alfred E. Smith, Campaign Speech at Brooklyn, October 26, 1920, Smith Papers, Box 26, Folder 255; “Smith Denounces Miller as Servant of ‘Big Interests,’” New York Times, October 6, 1922, 1; Alfred E. Smith, “For Release in the Morning Papers of Monday March 15 1926, George B. Graves, Secretary to the Governor” March 13, 1926, Smith Papers, Box 22, Folder 226, 2; “Address of Governor Alfred E. Smith at Vielmeister Hall, Stapleton, S.I., on Tuesday evening, Oct. 26, 1926,” Smith Papers, Box 29, Folder 301, 12.

48. “City’s Vote Goes to Harding and Smith,” New York Times, November 3, 1920, 1; “Smith Defeated by About 74,000,” New York Times, November 4, 1920, 1; “Miller Lead, 64,014, 107 Dists. to Come,” New York Times, November 5, 1920, 2; Caro, The Power Broker, 111.


eschewed “the street parades” and “red fire” that had added an element of spectacle to other appearances, opting instead for a “businesslike” visit and deliberating with state party leaders in a “conference of war” at the Waldorf Astoria.49 On the other hand, Smith’s homecoming involved a frenzy of popular democracy: the candidate’s triumphal parade drew an estimated two million revelers who lined the sidewalks of New York to greet their governor.50 The two campaigns might each have claimed the mantle of “progressivism,” but their progressive appeals were fashioned for distinctive constituencies.

Other challenges contributed to Smith’s disappointing margins in New York City. George W. Olvany, who succeeded Charles Francis Murphy as Grand Sachem of Tammany Hall after Murphy’s death in April 1924, lacked his predecessor’s executive talent; and internal turmoil fueled rum-blings of mutual frustration between Smith’s boosters and some Tammany operatives, including speculation that the nominee had been “knifed” by his own machine.51 In Queens, a sprawling sewer scandal had forced the county Democratic boss, Maurice E. Connolly, to resign as Borough President earlier in 1928, and Olvany and Tammany sought to frustrate Connolly’s hand-picked successor in the Democratic primary.52 Olvany’s gambit on a “clean government” ticket in Queens prompted fears that Tammany sought to control the Democratic organization across the East River; Brooklyn Democratic boss John H. McCooey sided with the Queens regulars against Tammany; the Connolly machine prevailed in the pri-mary; and ultimately a Republican was elected Borough President by 3,680 votes.53 While Queens did vote for Smith, swirling resentments and pro-

49. “Hoover Prepares New York Speech,” Atlanta Constitution, October 21, 1928, 9A; “Hoover Cuts Out New York Parade,” Washington Post, October 21, 1928, M4; “Hoover in New York,” Los Angeles Times, October 22, 1928, 1.

50. “Gov. Smith Stirs Brooklyn Crowd of 45,000 to Frenzy; Day Parade Wild Tribute,” New York World, November 3, 1928, 1; Ernest K. Lindley, “Smith Gets Biggest Ovation Of His Campaign At Garden; Sees Victory as Fight Ends,” New York World, November 4, 1928, 1; William Weer, “2,000,000 Cheer Smith In City,” Brooklyn Eagle, November 2, 1928, 1.

51. In the aftermath of the election, Tammany came under attack for failing to “roll up” an invin-cible margin for Smith in New York City; these charges were met with “resentment” and the retort that Smith’s margin, compared with Calvin Coolidge’s Republican margin in the city of 137,000 in 1924, rep-resented a turnover of over 600,000. “Tammany in Doubt on State Patronage,” 2; Christopher M. Finan, Alfred E. Smith: The Happy Warrior (New York: Hill and Wang, 2002), 228.

52. “Olvany Endorses Hallinan in Queens,” New York Times, September 13, 1928, 16; “Patten Wins Easily, Routing Tammany; Mrs. Pratt Winner,” New York Times, September 19, 1928, 1.

53. “20 Fights Feature Tuesday’s Primary,” New York Times, September 16, 1928, 31; “Latest Tabulation of the Election Returns in the City, State and Nation,” New York Times, November 8, 1928, 13.


vincial rivalries surely undermined the Democratic effort to set a record margin in the borough, where strong coordination would have been essen-tial to counteract traditional presidential preferences—and thus Smith’s plurality was nearly 40,000 votes less than those of Roosevelt and Copeland, and 25,000 votes behind the Democratic slates for State Senate and State Assembly.54 Nor was the Queens sewer fiasco the only Democratic folly in the city. Astonishingly, when Smith delivered one of his final campaign speeches, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on November 2, it was almost entirely on state issues and focused on attacking local Republicans and bol-stering the gubernatorial aspirations of Franklin Roosevelt.55

The shockingly second-rate Democratic effort in New York City prob-ably diminished Smith’s vote among his core constituencies in Gotham’s working-class wards, and helps explain his falling short of Democratic reg-istration numbers in the city (especially when contrasted with the fresher and evidently more effective O’Connell machine in Albany, which deliv-ered Smith a record vote).56 But ultimately such frustrations were slight in comparison to Smith’s disappointing results in the Republican districts of Queens and Manhattan, where the bungling of Democratic politicos was simply an added excuse to return to traditional partisan preferences. Most significantly in such places, the Republican campaign had offered prosper-ity, progress, and a “Great Humanitarian.” Whatever the reasons, Smith’s victory in New York City, while impressive by Democratic presidential standards, was not up to the Governor’s own personal par; and this down-state disappointment begat state-level defeat.

■

Late in the evening of Smith’s loss, his more successful Empire State ticket-mates appeared crestfallen, despite their own triumphs. “Any state-ment from me on the state election would be silly,” barked an exhausted Governor-elect Franklin Roosevelt. “My own election is clouded by the

54. “Latest Tabulation of the Election Returns in the City, State and Nation,” 13.55. “Text of Smith Speech on New York Issues,” Washington Post, November 3, 1928, 4; Walter

Chamblin, “Smith Takes Stump for State Ticket in Brooklyn Speech,” Atlanta Constitution, November 3, 1928, 1; “Stenographic Report of Gov. Smith’s Speech on State Issues in Brooklyn Last Night,” New York Times, November 3, 1928, 8.

56. On Dan O’Connell and Albany politics, see: William Kennedy, O Albany! Improbable City of Political Wizards, Fearless Ethnics, Spectacular Aristocrats, Splendid Nobodies, and Underrated Scoundrels (New York: Penguin, 1983), 271–303.


defeat of Governor Smith. I am deeply disappointed.” Senator Royal Copeland, who after early returns was the only Democrat assured of statewide victory, solemnly remarked that “there is no fun being elected alone.”57 Herbert Lehman and his wife, resigned to apparent defeat, had retired to bed late on election night, leaving only a brief statement, not for the press but to their children: “Don’t wake us. Daddy has been beaten, but he doesn’t feel badly.” At eleven the next morning he was aroused by a ringing telephone, through which his brother-in-law reported that Lehman had been elected Lieutenant Governor by a margin of 14,000—the product of the sort of overwhelming New York City victory Smith had been unable to muster.58

The traditional narrative of Alfred E. Smith’s 1928 presidential defeat in New York State, where he had secured four triumphs in five statewide campaigns, holds that the governor’s urban strength was overwhelmed by voters beyond the five boroughs who were presumably stirred to ethnocul-tural angst over the prospect of their brown-derby-sporting chief executive moving into the White House. While much of that certainly occurred, the evidence presented here complicates the story, suggesting that the Democrat’s 1928 defeat in New York State was not the result of an unprec-edented surge in anti-Smith rural voting. While by Democratic presiden-tial standards Smith performed historically well in New York City, ulti-mately the Happy Warrior was thwarted by an inability to garner the sort of overpowering support there that had allowed him to overcome upstate Republican strength in the past—particularly in 1924. It was Smith’s disap-pointment in New York City which left the governor vulnerable to a heart-breaking home-state defeat.

57. “Roosevelt is Victor by a Slim Plurality; Copeland Also Wins,” New York Times, November 7, 1928, 1, 2.

58. Allan Nevins, Herbert H. Lehman and his Era (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1963), 106.

vanquished warrior - umd history · vanquished warrior: reconsidering al smith’s 1928 new york...

Documents