The American Presidential Election of 1904

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The 30th episode in a very long series about the American presidential elections from 1788 to the present. In 1904, Theodore Roosevelt is pretty darn popular, so does anyone stand a chance?

Feeling extra dorky? Then visit here:
http://www.countingthevotes.com/1904

The 30th Presidential election in American history took place on November 8, 1904. Theodore Roosevelt was running for re-election. Hold up. Teddy Roosevelt? Re-election? What happened to McKinley? Let’s rewind three years.

Back on September 6, 1901, an anarchist named Leon Czolgosz shot President William McKinley twice as he was shaking hands at the Temple of Music in Buffalo, New York. The wounds became infected, and McKinley died 8 days later. It was after this that the Secret Service provided full-time presidential protection, by the way.

Vice President Theodore Roosevelt was sworn in and became the 26th President in American history. At age 42, he was the youngest man to ever become President. But he wasn’t intimidated. He went straight to work, promising the average Joe fairness, fighting the giant corporations that had monopolies on the market, championing the construction of the Panama Canal (oh yeah, click here to see my video about the Panama Canal), and regulating the railroads, food and drugs. He made conservation a top priority, establishing a bunch of national parks, forests, and monuments. He even helped end the Russo-Japanese War, becoming the first President to earn a Nobel Peace Prize for doing so. More than any President before him, he welcomed the press with open arms. After noticing reporters just outside the White House getting wet in the rain one day, he let them in and gave them their own room. By doing so, he basically invented the presidential press briefing.

He truly became a man of the people, and because of this, he was extremely popular. Some fellow Republicans, however, called him a radical due to his Progressive policies, and they tried to get Mark Hanna to run against him as the official nominee. However, Hanna died in February, and no serious contender rose to compete with Roosevelt. So Roosevelt was the nominee, but to make the conservatives happy the Republicans nominated Charles Fairbanks, the likable Senator from Indiana, as his running mate.

The Democrats had a hard time finding a strong nominee that could compete with Roosevelt. William Jennings Bryan didn’t want to run a third time, and they even asked Grover Cleveland to run again but he turned it down, too. A lot of Bryan’s supporters flocked to the New York newspaper publisher turned- U.S. Representative William Randolph Hearst. But Hearst frankly scared many Democrats to death, so many of them turned to Alton Parker, the Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals. They nominated Henry Davis, a former Senator from West Virginia, as his running mate. At 80 years old, Davis was the oldest major-party candidate ever to be nominated for national office.

I will mention two third parties for this election. A new political party called the Socialist Party of America, or just Socialist Party for short, nominated a well-known socialist, perhaps one of the original socialists, Eugene Debs. Debs ran and lost in 1900, but his support seemed to be growing. The Socialist Party nominated Ben Hanford, a printer based out of New York.

The Prohibition Party nominated Silas Swallow, a Methodist preacher from Pennsylvania with an awkward name, for President with George Washington Carroll, a Texas oilman and lumberman, as his running mate.

The campaigning in 1904 was fairly low-key. Maybe it was because most everyone knew Alton Parker didn’t stand a chance against the popular Roosevelt. While Roosevelt was charismatic and energetic, Parker was boring and didn’t get even Democrats excited. Plus, Parker and Roosevelt agreed on most issues, so this election became more about the difference between their personalities.