Election of 1928: Hoover, Smith, and the Beginning of the End for Republican Dominance

Election Results:
Hoover and Curtis: 21.43 million popular votes, 444 electoral votes.
Smith and Robinson: 15 million popular votes, 87 electoral votes.

Summary:
With the popular Calvin Coolidge’s somewhat surprising decision to step down, the Republican Party needed to maintain its formula of nominating candidates that would continue prosperity. Secretary of Commerce (to both Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge) Herbert Hoover threw his hat in the ring and swept through early primaries in states like California, Oregon, New Jersey, and Michigan. Hoover faced little opposition to his candidacy, mostly because his qualifications and the party’s need for unanimity created a perfect storm. It also helped that Hoover received Secretary of Treasury Andrew Mellon’s endorsement, which brought with it the Pennsylvania delegation.

The Democratic Party, in contrast, was much maligned in the post-Wilson 1920s. Much like the Republican Party of the 1910s, the Democrats were torn apart by divisions between their northern progressive wing and their southern conservative wing. In an effort to bring these two factions together, the party nominated New York governor Al Smith as their presidential candidate and Senate Minority Leader Joseph Robinson of Arkansas as their vice president. Smith, a Catholic liberal who was against Prohibition, had little in common with Robinson, a conservative Protestant who was in favor of temperance. In fact, during the nominating process, groups like the Ku Klux Klan were active in pushing against Smith’s nomination and they distributed literature making the connection between Smith’s Catholicism and a Smith presidency as a surrogate for the pope to rule America. Nevertheless, the Democrats went full speed into a national campaign to defeat Hoover.

The Republican Party utilized the decade of prosperity under their rule to trump up Hoover’s role as Commerce Secretary. His slogan, “A Car in Every Garage and a Chicken in Every Pot,” was meant to instill confidence in continued prosperity under another term of Republican rule. Hoover campaigned on decreased taxes, opposition to farm subsidies, and a maintenance of Prohibition on moral grounds. His campaigning, however, was limited to several radio addresses where his campaign staff carefully laid out the Republican agenda. The Democratic campaign, however, was not about issues but about Al Smith. Their platform of public works, federal funds to farmers and education, and an end to Prohibition was overshadowed by Al Smith’s Catholicism, or “romanism,” and his thick New York accent, which did not play well on the new, important medium of radio. The Democratic campaign slogan, “Better Times with Al,” did little to slow the Republican campaign machine.

Hoover benefitted from continued support from progressives, women, and the wealthy upper middle class. However, these groups would start to move toward the Democratic Party in 1932 and Franklin Roosevelt owed much to Al Smith. Smith, despite being destroyed politically, moved groups like blacks, labor unions, and urban voters away from the former progressive Republicans to the newly progressive Democratic Party (or at least, the party outside the Solid South). However, Hoover won forty states to Smith’s ten, including several states in the South that would normally have gone to the Democrats. Hoover’s massive success carried over for about a year until the Republicans faced their most difficult challenge since the Civil War: The Great Depression.