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Governorship of Franklin D. Roosevelt January 1, 1929 –December 31, 1932 | |
Franklin D. Roosevelt | |
Party | Democratic |
Election | 1928,1930 |
Seat | Executive Mansion |
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Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected and re-elected governor of New York in 1928 and 1930. He served from January 1, 1929, until shortly after his election as President of the United States in 1932. His term as governor provided him with a high-visibility position in which to prove himself as well as provide a major base from which to launch a bid for the presidency.
After several years out of politics following his defeat for vice president in the 1920 presidential election, by 1928, Roosevelt believed he had recovered sufficiently to resume his political career. He had been careful to maintain his contacts in the Democratic Party. In 1924, he had attended the 1924 Democratic National Convention and made a presidential nomination speech for the then-governor of New York, Al Smith. Although Smith was not nominated, he ran again in 1928, and Roosevelt again supported him. This time, he became the Democratic candidate, and he urged Roosevelt to run for governor of New York.
Governor Alfred E. Smith had unsuccessfully contended for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1924. [1] With Smith appearing likely win to reelection in 1926, and to obtain the presidential nomination in 1928, New York state's Democratic leaders began consideration in early 1926 of potential candidates to succeed Smith. [2] The first choice was William Stormont Hackett, the Mayor of Albany, who informed supporters that he planned to make the 1928 race. [2] After Hackett died in a March 1926 accident, party leaders next considered Edwin Corning, the state Democratic Party chairman, who ran successfully for lieutenant governor in 1926. [2] Corning declined the 1928 race because he was in increasingly poor health, and retired from business and political life after leaving the lieutenant governor's office in December 1928. [2] In mid-1928, Peter G. Ten Eyck, Townsend Scudder, and George R. Lunn were also considered, but did not attract wide support. [3]
With one month before the November 1928 election, Democrats had not yet chosen anyone to replace Smith, who needed a strong gubernatorial candidate to help him win the state's 47 electoral votes, and Smith decided to support Roosevelt. Although Roosevelt was the ideal complement to Smith as a prominent rural, upstate Protestant without strong views on Prohibition who had supported Woodrow Wilson, he was very reluctant to run. Roosevelt was not sure he would win, and wished to continue his physical therapy at Warm Springs. Close aide Louis Howe urged him to wait; as Herbert Hoover would surely defeat Smith and likely serve two terms as president, being elected governor in 1932 would be better timing for the 1936 presidential election. After failing to persuade Roosevelt through many phone calls and telegrams from late September, on October 2, Smith finally got him to agree to run if nominated; the state convention did so the next day. [4] Roosevelt had to make his peace with Tammany Hall to obtain its support, which he did with some reluctance.
In the November election, Smith was heavily defeated nationwide by Republican candidate Herbert Hoover, and narrowly lost New York, but Roosevelt was elected governor by a margin of 25,608 votes out of more than 4 million votes cast, [5] defeating the Republican gubernatorial nominee, New York Attorney General Albert Ottinger. [6]
Roosevelt came to office in 1929 as a reform Democrat, but with no overall plan. He tackled official corruption by dismissing Smith's cronies [7] and renamed the New York Public Service Commission. He addressed New York's growing need for power through the development of hydroelectricity on the St. Lawrence River. [8] [9] He reformed the state's prison administration and built a new state prison at Attica. [10] He had a long feud with Robert Moses, the state's most powerful public servant, whom he removed as Secretary of State but kept on as Parks Commissioner and head of urban planning. [11] Moses was replaced with the Bronx's Democratic Boss Edward J. Flynn. [12] When the Wall Street crash in October 1929 ushered in the Great Depression, Roosevelt started a relief system that later became the model for the New Deal's Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA). Roosevelt followed President Herbert Hoover's advice and asked the state legislature for $20 million in relief funds, which he spent mainly on public works in the hope of stimulating demand and providing employment. [13] Aid to the unemployed, he said, "must be extended by Government, not as a matter of charity, but as a matter of social duty." [14] In his first term, Roosevelt famously said, "The United States Constitution has proved itself the most marvelously elastic compilation of rules of government ever written." [15] He was referring to the belief he had that the federal government would need to use more power in order to bring the country out of the Depression.
The main weakness of the Roosevelt administration was the blatant corruption of the Tammany Hall machine in New York City, where the mayor, Jimmy Walker, was the puppet of Tammany boss John F. Curry, and where corruption of all kinds was rife. [16] Roosevelt had made his name as an opponent of Tammany, but he needed the machine's goodwill to be re-elected in 1930 and for a possible future presidential bid. In response to various allegations of public corruption among the judiciary, police force, the city government, and organized crime, Roosevelt began the Seabury Commission investigations in 1930. The state probe uncovered extensive fiscal improprieties, [17] and many public officials were removed from office. [18]
On September 28, 1930, the Republican state convention nominated former U.S. Attorney Charles H. Tuttle for the governorship and State Senator Caleb H. Baumes for lieutenant governor. With Tuttle losing Republican support because he was regarded as insufficiently "dry" on the Prohibition question (he favored prohibiting the sale and transportation of alcohol but thought it was a state issue, not federal), and the electoral tide turning towards Democrats as voters largely blamed Republicans for the Great Depression, Roosevelt and Lieutenant Governor Herbert H. Lehman won landslide reelections in November, leaving Roosevelt well-positioned to run for president in 1932.
Roosevelt's second term in Albany was focused on measures to counter the effects of the Depression, such as the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration which eventually provided unemployment assistance to 10 percent of New York's families. [19] In 1930, Roosevelt passed through the legislature a bill creating old-age insurance for New Yorkers over 70 years of age. [20] Governor Roosevelt also supported reforestation with the Hewitt Amendment in 1931, which gave birth to New York's State Forest system. [21] In August 1932, Roosevelt forced Tammany's hand on the corruption issue by convening a public hearing on the question of removing Walker as mayor. Walker resigned on September 1, following a State Supreme Court ruling upholding the governor's authority to remove him for cause.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, also known as FDR, was the 32nd president of the United States, serving from 1933 until his death in 1945. The longest-serving U.S. president, he is the only president to have served more than two terms. His initial two terms were centered on combating the Great Depression, while his third and fourth saw him shift his focus to America's involvement in World War II.
Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 8, 1932. Against the backdrop of the Great Depression, incumbent Republican President Herbert Hoover was defeated in a landslide by Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, the governor of New York and the vice presidential nominee of the 1920 presidential election. Roosevelt was the first Democrat in 80 years to simultaneously win an outright majority of the electoral college and popular vote, a feat last accomplished by Franklin Pierce in 1852, as well as the first Democrat in 56 years to win a majority of the popular vote, which was last achieved by Samuel J. Tilden in 1876. Roosevelt was the last sitting governor to be elected president until Bill Clinton in 1992. Hoover became the first incumbent president to lose an election to another term since William Howard Taft in 1912, the last to do so until Gerald Ford lost 44 years later, and the last elected incumbent president to do so until Jimmy Carter lost 48 years later. The election marked the effective end of the Fourth Party System, which had been dominated by Republicans. It was the first time since 1916 that a Democrat was elected president.
James John Walker, known colloquially as Beau James, was mayor of New York City from 1926 to 1932. A flamboyant politician, he was a liberal Democrat and part of the powerful Tammany Hall machine. He was forced to resign during a corruption scandal in which he accepted large sums of money in exchange for municipal contracts.
The New Deal coalition was an American political coalition that supported the Democratic Party beginning in 1932. The coalition is named after President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal programs, and the follow-up Democratic presidents. It was composed of voting blocs who supported them. The coalition included labor unions, blue-collar workers, big city machines, racial and religious minorities, white Southerners, and intellectuals. Besides voters the coalition included powerful interest groups: Democratic Party organizations in most states, city machines, labor unions, some third parties, universities, and foundations. It was largely opposed by the Republican Party, the business community, and rich Protestants. In creating his coalition, Roosevelt was at first eager to include liberal Republicans and some radical third parties, even if it meant downplaying the "Democratic" name. By the 1940s, the Republican and third-party allies had mostly been defeated. In 1948, the Democratic Party stood alone and won both the White House and both Congressional houses with a mandate, surviving the splits that created two splinter parties.
Alfred Emanuel Smith was the 42nd governor of New York, serving from 1919 to 1920 and again from 1923 to 1928. He was the Democratic Party's presidential nominee in the 1928 presidential election, losing to Herbert Hoover of the Republican Party in a landslide.
Tammany Hall, also known as the Society of St. Tammany, the Sons of St. Tammany, or the Columbian Order, was an American political organization founded in 1786 and incorporated on May 12, 1789, as the Tammany Society. It became the main local political machine of the Democratic Party and played a major role in controlling New York City and New York state politics. It helped immigrants, most notably the Irish, rise in American politics from the 1850s into the 1960s. Tammany usually controlled Democratic nominations and political patronage in Manhattan for over 100 years following the mayoral victory of Fernando Wood in 1854, and used its patronage resources to build a loyal, well-rewarded core of district and precinct leaders; after 1850, the vast majority were Irish Catholics due to mass immigration from Ireland during and after the Irish Famine of the late 1840s.
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