Elections on the 24s, Part Two
The Election of 1924 was a blowout, but the campaign for the Democratic nomination was a horror show that showed how ugly American political life was at the time
When 1924 began, the White House was occupied a very popular incumbent, Calvin Coolidge. “Silent Cal” as he was frequently labeled for his laconic manner was a former Republican governor of Massachusetts, who had assumed the Presidency in 1923 after the death of Warren Harding.
Coolidge was popular for a few reasons:
The economy was doing very well, so that reflects well on the President.
Coolidge had a sterling reputation for honesty and details of corruption during Harding’s time in office were starting to come out.
Coolidge built up something of a folk hero status because he spoke mostly in pithy New England aphorisms.
Coolidge decided to run for President in his own right. He faced two challengers from the left-leaning Progressive wing of the party: Senator Hiram Johnson of California and Senator Robert La Follette of Wisconsin. There were just 17 primaries for Republicans in 1924 and Coolidge won 15 of them, including a defeat of Johnson in California. Johnson dropped out of the race. La Follette won a primary in Wisconsin and opted to try a third party run as the Progressive Party candidate.
The Democratic Party had a situation that was much more complicated. There were four main candidates: Oscar Underwood, senator from Alabama: Al Smith, governor of New York; former Treasury Secretary William McAdoo of California (at the time he was Woodrow Wilson’s son-in-law (although he would lose that title in February of 1924 when Wilson passed away and you can’t be a son-in-law to a deceased person); and Ambassador John W. Davis of West Virginia, who was actually an extraordinarily wealthy and influential Wall Street attorney.
There were two big political hot button issues at the time. One was Prohibition. McAdoo, the leading candidate was a big supporter of Prohibition. Smith, considered the principal rival to McAdoo, opposed Prohibition. Underwood and Davis were more or less in favor of Prohibition, but didn’t focus on it.
The other big issue in 1924 was the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan had made a resurgence in the 1920s and it was becoming an imposing political force. McAdoo welcomed the Klan’s support, although he was not a member. Smith, as a Catholic, wanted nothing do with the Klan. Underwood hated the Klan also because he believed they made the South look bad. But the Klan was no longer just a Southern group. It was popular nationwide. The Indiana state government of the time was heavily Klan-dominated. In 1924, it was generally considered to be okay to espouse white supremacy and still be a viable presidential candidate. (It helped that the political figures who liked the Klan didn’t go for the whole hood and white robe outfit. They just dressed normally. And supported the Klan. However, they were still the Klan. They were awful human beings.)
There were just 12 primaries that actually assigned delegates and McAdoo swept them. However, McAdoo had a long way to go to get the nomination as the Democrats required its nominee to win 2/3 of the votes. The 2/3 requirement served effectively as a Southern veto against anti-slavery candidates prior to the Civil War and the party kept it through 1932.) And there was a substantial portion of the party that wanted nothing to do with McAdoo, who was associated with both the Klan AND Woodrow Wilson, whose popularity after World War II plummeted.
The Democratic National Convention of 1924 convened at Madison Square Garden in New York on June 24, 1924. The mood was contentious. Underwood tried to get an anti-Klan plank into the party platform. After hours of pro-Klan demonstrations in the arena, the plank was not adopted.
The convention plunged on. It took until June 30 before voting on the nomination for President started. McAdoo got the most votes, but he was nowhere near 2/3 as he had just 39% of the vote. Smith was second at 22%.
The delegates kept voting. Ballot after ballot. Day after day. There was little movement. Delegates were getting tossed out of their hotels and had to find alternate accommodations. If you think the election of Kevin McCarthy as Speaker took a while, the Democratic nomination was another thing. McAdoo and Smith were getting the most votes, but not near 2/3 of it. McAdoo proposed accepting a majority winner if delegates could choose freely. Smith did not agree to it.
Compounding the misery of the delegates and the general embarrassment over the deadlock, the 1924 Democratic Convention was the first one to be broadcast on radio. And people heard pretty much all of it. Every roll call, done in alphabetical order, started with Alabama and most of America learned that that state’s governor was William Brandon, who led off the roll call EVERY TIME.
A compromise candidate arose in Senator Samuel Ralston of Indiana. But, do you remember me mentioning a few paragraphs above who controlled Indiana government. Yes, that would be the Klan. Ralston was unacceptable to Smith supporters. Ralston would also be dead fairly soon as he was in poor health.
Around Ballot 100, McAdoo and Smith realized that neither of them could win1 and they needed to find a compromise candidate. That turned out to be the man who was usually getting just enough votes to prevent a 2/3 majority. That was John W. Davis of West Virginia.
Davis’ most recent government job was Ambassador to the U.K. He had also been Solicitor General in the Wilson Administration for several years. But he was not a charismatic figure by any means. But he was acceptable and he was not a Klan supporter. Davis is easily the most conservative Democratic nominee for President in the 20th Century.
William Jennings Bryan’s younger brother, Governor of Nebraska, Charles W. Bryan won the vice presidential nomination. Kansas governor Jonathan M. Davis received a few votes for the V.P. slot, probably by people who wanted an all Davis ticket and to confuse people.2
Davis did not have much in the way of a campaign strategy. His campaign manager, was, by all accounts of the time, totally incompetent. The Democrats nationwide viewed Davis’ candidacy as doomed. The best that they could hope for was that La Follette would win enough electoral votes to force a contingent election in the House.
However, La Follette’s campaign was chaotic (probably not helped by La Follette’s poor health as he would pass away early in 1925). La Follette could only win his home state of Wisconsin. Davis won only in the old Confederacy and the state of Oklahoma. Everywhere else, Coolidge won. Coolidge had 54% of the popular vote and 382 electoral votes. Davis won a paltry 28.8% of the popular vote, the worst showing by a Democratic nominee ever.3 Davis finished in third place in eleven states. La Follette accounted for most of the other votes.
Coolidge’s second term was marked by what doctors believe was a severe case of clinical depression brought on by the death of his younger son, Calvin, Jr, who died from a staph infection. Coolidge bravely played the part of President, but he was not an effective leader for much of his full term.
Davis went back to work for Wall Street firms. He argued numerous cases before the Supreme Court (over 150). One of his last cases was in 1952 when he argued for the State of South Carolina in the school desegregation cases that included Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. 4 Davis rarely, if ever, lost before the Supreme Court. But he lost this case. The time of John W. Davis had finally passed. He would pass away in 1955 at the age of 81.
As for the Klan, 1924 was the highpoint for that version of the KKK, which has come and gone throughout American history, but never ever seems to fully leave. In 1925, the Grand Dragon of the Indiana Klan, David C. Stephenson was convicted of second degree murder, kidnapping, and rape. I will not go into the details, but you can find some here. Needless to say, being convicted of crimes like this does not do much to burnish one’s reputation.
But what of some of the other figures in the crazy 1924 campaign? Al Smith would get the nomination in 1928, the first Catholic nominee by a major party. He was routed by Herbert Hoover. Smith then saw his protégé, Franklin Roosevelt, become president, and got jealous, although he supported the U.S. entry into World War II.
Oscar Underwood opted not to run for reelection in 1926 because he knew the Klan hated him. Hugo Black took his seat and held it until Roosevelt put him on the Supreme Court. Black was a Klan member, although he said he just did it to get ahead in politics. Underwood died in 1929.
Calvin Coolidge died on January 5, 1933 which meant that he never got to see Roosevelt’s New Deal in action, which likely would have killed him anyway out of shock to his free market sensibilities. William McAdoo eventually became a senator for California in 1933, but resigned in 1938 after losing a primary. He passed away in 1941. McAdoo was married three times and his last wife did not pass away until 2005.
So what will 2024 bring us in election hijinks? Probably not 103 ballots at a nominating convention as those events have turned into informercials for the parties. Will there be a four-way election that ends up in the House? Probably not that either. As the Republicans and Democrats have become more polarized, there is the usual discussion of a moderate party. History has shown that it’s hard to get people passionate over being moderate. “What do we want? CHANGE! When? EVENTUALLY AND IN INCREMENTAL FASHION!”
I just hope that today’s Klan doesn’t get to pick the winner in 2024.
I didn’t say that either guy was really bright.
Governor Davis of Kansas was, wait for it, Klan supported. He was also very corrupt. He lost his reelection bid in 1925 and was arrested for bribery the day after leaving office.
The previous low was 29.5% by Stephen Douglas in the 1860 election. Southern Democrats had split off and nominated a separate candidate, John Breckinridge, who got 18.1%. Douglas is usually considered the official Democratic Party nominee and he was on the ballot in both the North and South. He only won two states: Missouri and New Jersey. The latter had district voting and Lincoln won 4 of the 7 electoral votes in that state despite finishing second.
There were multiple cases in the Brown decision and they were all merged together. Davis argued in a South Carolina case called Briggs vs. Elliott.
You can't be the son-in-law to a dead person?