FDR - Jean Edward Smith [131]
Franklin went back to New York toward the end of April 1924. The presidential campaign was heating up, and Al Smith, fresh from his overwhelming reelection as governor, was angling for the Democratic nomination. His principal opponent was Woodrow Wilson’s son-in-law (and former secretary of the Treasury) William Gibbs McAdoo. McAdoo was dry, Protestant, and old-stock American. Because of his support for Prohibition he enjoyed the support of Bryan and the rural wing of the party and had become the darling of the Ku Klux Klan, a potent force in national politics following the Red Scare of 1919–20.† Smith was none of the above. Almost by default he became the candidate of the urban, progressive wing of the party, and FDR announced his support early on. “I have always supposed that if I went to the next Convention I would, in common with the rest of the [New York] delegation, be for Al,” he told the New York Post in January.
The 1924 convention would be held in New York City—a powerful advantage for Smith—and Charles Murphy was calling the shots for the campaign, another advantage given Tammany’s preeminence among the big-city organizations in the Democratic party. But on April 25, 1924, Murphy suffered a fatal heart attack, leaving the Smith campaign leaderless. “New York has lost its most powerful and wisest leader,” said FDR in a prepared statement released to the press by Louis Howe.81
Two days later, two of Al Smith’s closest advisers, Belle Moskowitz and New York Supreme Court justice Joseph Proskauer, called on Roosevelt at East Sixty-fifth Street. The Smith campaign needed a chairman, they said: someone with national standing, preferably Protestant, preferably dry (or at least not publicly identified as wet) who could appeal to the rural, dry, Protestant element in the party. FDR, they said, would be ideal. Would he take the job?
Roosevelt initially demurred. His disability would prevent him from dashing about from meeting to meeting as might be expected of a campaign chairman. Moskowitz and Proskauer assured him that would not be necessary. They would do the work for him. What they wanted was Franklin’s name and support.
Roosevelt accepted the position on those terms. Press coverage was generous. “What the campaign lost in practical political ability through the death of Murphy, it has now compensated for in prestige and principles,” wrote the New York Herald Tribune.82
Back in the political spotlight, FDR worked diligently on Smith’s behalf. In so doing he helped eradicate the taint of anti-Catholicism that had clung to him since his fight against Blue-Eyed Billy Sheehan. As one historian put it, Roosevelt’s new list of political correspondents “read like a sampling of the Dublin telephone directory.”83 FDR attempted to lessen the bitterness between Smith and McAdoo supporters but with little success. Smith was demonized by McAdoo’s backers because of his religion and opposition to Prohibition; McAdoo was castigated for his dependence on the Ku Klux Klan. As Franklin saw it, the personal vilification obscured the basic differences between Democrats and Republicans and virtually assured that Coolidge would be reelected in November.
Roosevelt sought support for Smith among Florida fishermen, middle western farmers, and Pennsylvania coal miners. Even Babe Ruth was mobilized in the cause. “Sure, I’m for Al Smith,” the Bambino wrote FDR.
There is one thing about your letter, Mr. Roosevelt, that went across with me good and strong—that was the take about the humble beginning of Governor Smith.
Maybe you know I wasn’t fed with a gold spoon when I was a kid. No poor boy can go any too high in this world to suit me.84
The death of Charles Murphy had allowed FDR to reenter public life as chairman of the Smith campaign. And it was the death of a second Tammany stalwart that catapulted Franklin to the center of the political stage. Smith had originally counted upon Bourke Cockran, the legendary Irish orator who had nominated him at San