The Democratic Party had nominated Governor Alfred E. Smith of New York, the 1st Catholic ever nominated by a major party. He won just 40.8 percent, a figure exceeded by all but 2 Democratic nominees since (George McGovern in 1972 and Walter Mondale in 1984), and took just 8 States, worth 87 Electoral Votes: South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas in the South; and the 2 most Catholic States in the nation, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
After a career that had seen him get rich in mining, lead a massive hunger relief program for Europe during and after World War I, and serve as Secretary of Commerce under Presidents Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge, Hoover had even broken through in what was then known as "the Solid South": He won Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Florida, Oklahoma and Texas.
That's how much anti-Catholic bias there was: Southerners, who normally would never have voted for the nominee of the party of Abraham Lincoln, did so. After all, the Ku Klux Klan hated Catholics nearly as much as they hated black people.
It was a massive landslide: Even if Smith had won every State in which he got between 45.0 and 49.9 percent of the vote -- Texas, New York, Tennessee, Virginia, Utah, Connecticut and North Carolina -- he still would have lost the Electoral Vote, 349-189.
In his nationally-syndicated newspaper column, humorist Will Rogers wrote that Smith's supporters "are going to be shocked at how much of the country lives west of the Hudson River." He was right, as Smith was too New Yorky for the rest of the country, including most of New York State. The term "the Big Apple" had already come into use, and Smith called the State north of The Bronx "Apple-knockers."
Alfred E. Smith
In the end, thought, it was never even about Smith. Had Smith been a Protestant, from a small town rather than the biggest city, with a pleasant voice instead of a N'Yawk accent, in favor of keeping Prohibition rather than repealing it, and not connected (however loosely) to the corrupt Tammany Hall political machine that dominated New York State and especially New York City, he still would have lost, as Hoover rode the Republican prosperity of the Roaring Twenties.
Hoover's running mate was Senator Charles Curtis of Kansas, a member of the Kaw Nation. His inauguration as Vice President made him, to this day, the highest-ranking Native American in the history of American politics.
Despite the Hoover landslide, Franklin D. Roosevelt, former Assistant Secretary of the Navy, 1920 Democratic nominee for Vice President, and cousin of the late former President Theodore Roosevelt, is narrowly elected to succeed Smith as Governor. Someone asked Smith if FDR, one of his biggest backers, was going to be a rival that would prevent him from getting the Democratic nomination again in 1932. Smith, noting that Roosevelt had been dealing with the effects of polio since 1921, said, "No, he will be dead within a year."
Within a year of the 1928 election, the stock market had crashed, and, barring a major scandal, the Democratic nominee was going to win in 1932. Smith tried for that nomination. He lost it. To FDR. FDR became President. Smith became one of his fiercest critics. And, in the end, in spite of FDR's health difficulties, Smith died 6 months before he did.
Hoover, on the other hand, was pretty much forgiven by Republican regulars, and was invited to speak at every Republican Convention from 1936 to 1964. Only in the last of these did he decline, due to the illness that brought his life to an end at 90 years shortly before the general election. As for his enemies, he said, "I outlived the bastards."
He also outlived every one of his fellow members of both Warren Harding's Cabinet and Calvin Coolidge's, and even his own: His last surviving Cabinet member was Patrick J. Hurley, his Secretary of War, who died in 1963. Hurley remains the highest-ranking native of Oklahoma in American political history.
Hoover also outlived his Vice President: Charles Curtis died in 1936, 13 months before what would have been the 2nd Hoover-Curtis term would have ended. However, Curtis was 74, making him 12 years old than Hoover.
And yet, at the time of his death, Herbert Hoover was less famous than the Director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, who was not related to him. Nor was he related to Irwin "Ike" Hoover, the White House Chief Usher from 1904 to 1933, who died in that post a few months after Herbert Hoover was succeeded by FDR.
In 1931, a bill was passed by Congress to build a dam on the Colorado River, forming the Nevada-Arizona State Line. It was named the Hoover Dam. In 1935, a year before it opened, President Franklin D. Roosevelt renamed it for the closest town, Boulder City, Nevada: Boulder Dam. In 1947, a Republican Congress renamed it Hoover Dam. As Hoover was U.S. Secretary of Commerce, the U.S. Department of Commerce Building in Washington is named for him.
Hoover remains the only President born in Iowa, and the only one to live in Oregon. He was the 1st one to represent California.
Hoover was played by Larry Gates in Backstairs at the White House in 1979. On the campus of his alma mater, Stanford University, the Hoover Institution is a conservative economic think tank. Yes, they named an economic think tank after the Depression President.
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November 6, 1928 was a Tuesday. This was also the day the news-flashing "Zipper" sign was introduced in Times Square. I have a separate entry for this event.
Baseball season was over. Football was in midweek. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And the NHL season didn't start until November 15. So there were no scores on this historic day.
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