U.S. presidential election, 1920

The U.S. presidential election of 1920 was dominated by the aftermath of World War I. The wartime boom had collapsed. Diplomats and politicians were arguing over peace treaties and the question of America's entry into the League of Nations. Overseas there were wars and revolutions; at home there were strikes, riots, and a growing fear of radicals and terrorists. Disillusionment was in the air.

Nominations

Republican Party nomination

On June 8, 1920, the Republican National Convention meeting in Chicago nominated Warren G. Harding, an Ohio newspaper editor and United States Senator, to run for president with Calvin Coolidge, governor of Massachusetts, as his running mate. Harding was a compromise candidate after the convention deadlocked between General Leonard Wood and Governor Frank O. Lowden of Illinois. Harding campaigned as advocating, in his own phrase, "A Return to Normalcy" ("normalcy" was a corruption of "normality" and later became part of the American dialect) after the trying times of the World War.

Related Topics:
June 8 - 1920 - Republican National Convention - Chicago - Ohio - Newspaper - United States Senator - Calvin Coolidge - Governor - Massachusetts - Leonard Wood - Frank O. Lowden

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Others placed in nomination included Senator Hiram Johnson of California, Senator Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin, Senator Miles Poindexter of Washington, Herbert Hoover, and Columbia University President Nicholas Murray Butler.

Related Topics:
Hiram Johnson - California - Robert LaFollette - Wisconsin - Herbert Hoover

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Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts provided the Convention keynote address.

Related Topics:
Henry Cabot Lodge - Massachusetts

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Harding's nomination, said to have been secured in negotiations among party bosses in a "smoke-filled room," was engineered by Harry M. Daugherty, Harding's political manager who, upon Harding's election, became Attorney General. Prior to the convention, Daugherty was quoted as saying, "I don't expect Senator Harding to be nominated on the first, second, or third ballot, but I think about 11 minutes before two o'clock on Friday morning of the convention, when 15 or 20 men, bleary-eyed and perspiring profusely from the heat, are sitting around a table some one of them will say: 'Who will we nominate?' At that decisive time the friends of Senator Harding can suggest him." Daugherty's prediction described essentially what occurred.

Related Topics:
Harry M. Daugherty - Attorney General

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Democratic Party nomination

The Democrats, meeting in San Francisco, nominated another newspaper editor from Ohio, Governor James M. Cox, as their presidential candidate, and thirty-seven-year-old Under-Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt, a fifth cousin of the late president Teddy Roosevelt, for vice president.

Related Topics:
San Francisco - James M. Cox - Franklin D. Roosevelt

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Early favorites for the nomination had included former Treasury Secretary William Gibbs McAdoo (Woodrow Wilson's son-in-law) and Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. Others placed in nomination included New York Governor Al Smith, New Jersey Governor Edward I. Edwards, and former Solicitor General John W. Davis.

Related Topics:
William Gibbs McAdoo - Woodrow Wilson - New York - Al Smith - New Jersey - John W. Davis

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Other nominations

Socialist Party candidate Eugene V. Debs received 913,664 popular votes (3.4%), despite the fact that he was in prison at the time (for advocating non-compliance with the draft in World War I). Debs was later released from prison by President Harding. This was the most ever popular votes received by a Socialist Party candidate.

Related Topics:
Socialist Party - Eugene V. Debs - Prison - World War I

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Parley P. Christensen of the Farmer-Labor Party took 265,229 votes (1.0%), while Prohibition Party candidate Aaron S. Watkins came in fifth with 189,339 votes (0.7%), the poorest showing for the Prohibition party since 1884; as the Eighteenth Amendment starting Prohibition had passed the previous year, this single-issue party seemed less relevant.

Related Topics:
Parley P. Christensen - Prohibition Party - Aaron S. Watkins - Eighteenth Amendment - Prohibition

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