Roosevelt and Smith Accept Election Defeat
One hundred years ago today … Governor Al Smith and Secretary of the Navy Franklin Delano Roosevelt, two New York Democrats who had lost their respective November 2 elections, exchanged resigned letters accepting their defeats.
Note: See several previous NY1920 posts referring to Smith here. See NY1920 posts about Roosevelt campaigning in Brooklyn here and his involvement with the US's disastrous treatment of Haiti here.
Smith had lost his re-election attempt to Nathan Miller, while Roosevelt had lost a bid for the Vice-Presidency to Calvin Coolidge, as the running mate of Ohio Governor James Cox.
![Smith, left, with 1920 presidential candidate James M. Cox, almost certainly 1920. Bain News Service, Publisher. Cox & Al. Smith. [Between and 1915 and Ca. 1920] Photograph. Library of Congress.](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5bc96864c2ff6137d020199c/1604907253727-4BQNTP1Z6USHWQ0OMVU1/al%2Bsmith%2Band%2BCox.jpg)
Smith, left, with 1920 presidential candidate James M. Cox, almost certainly 1920. Bain News Service, Publisher. Cox & Al. Smith. [Between and 1915 and Ca. 1920] Photograph. Library of Congress.
On November 8, Smith wrote to FDR. "Maybe it is for the best," he mused. "The people of this country, in no uncertain terms, gave responsibility to the Republican Party." Smith suggested that the incoming Republicans should "not be handicapped in even the slightest degree" (Golway, Frank and Al, 112).
Roosevelt received this letter on November 9, but had, apparently, already sent off his own message to Smith with almost identical language: "Now that the smoke has cleared away it all seems in many ways for the best." Roosevelt wrote. Then he made a prediction that the two of them would "in all probability not run for state office again."
(1920) Franklin D. Roosevelt. District of Columbia United States Washington D.C. Washington D.C, 1920. April 9. Library of Congress.
The prediction would prove to be wrong, quite wrong. Smith ran for Governor in 1922, won, and served three more terms. He was the Democratic Party nominee for President in 1928, losing to Herbert Hoover. Roosevelt succeeded Smith as Governor in 1928, served until 1932, when he ran for President, as did Smith. Beating Smith in the primary, FDR then defeated Hoover for the Presidency. He was re-elected to three times, dying in the office in 1945.
Terry Golway's books, below, detail the intertwined careers of the two men. A 2016 podcast from The Takeaway leans heavily on his work.
References/ Further reading
Golway, Terry. Frank and Al. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2014.
Golway, Terry. Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics. New York: Liveright, 2014.
WRITTEN BY JONATHAN GOLDMAN, NOVEMBER 9, 2020.
TAGS: politics, Tammany Hall, Democrats, Republicans, letters, correspondence, elections