1924
June 10-13
The Ticket: Calvin Coolidge and Gen. Charles G. Dawes
Big Picture:
After the death of Ohio native Warren G. Harding in 1923, Vice President Calvin Coolidge was installed in the Oval Office. Coolidge made a bid for his own term in 1924, beginning his campaign in Cleveland in January. He quickly wrapped up the nomination and later requested that the convention be held in the Forest City to honor Harding.
Local Picture: The convention of 1924 was a chance for Cleveland to show off after a downtown building boom. In 1920, the city had 76 hotels with more than 5,000 rooms downtown. Opened in 1922, Cleveland Public Auditorium was one of the largest convention spaces in the nation with seating for 11,500 people. To lure the Republicans to town, it was offered for free — along with a $125,000 expense fund.Ladies First: The 1924 convention was the first to include female delegates after the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920 — 118 were among the throng of 1,109 delegates that arrived in Cleveland. “My only regret is that I have but one wife to give to my party,” remarked Courtland Nichol, whose wife was a delegate from New York, in the June 10 Plain Dealer.
Whizbang: It was also the first convention to be broadcast on the radio by WTAM and WJAX. The convention proceedings were also sent out over telephone wires in nine other cities, including Washington, D.C.
No-Showboat: Having already secured the nomination, Coolidge did not attend the convention. As delegates got off their trains in Cleveland June 9 an 80 mph storm was buffeting his yacht, the Mayflower, on the Potomac. A few days later, on the third day of the convention, he listened from Washington as he was nominated on the first ballot.
The Result: Coolidge and Dawes won a decided victory with 54 percent of the popular vote.
Notable Quotable: “ ‘It’s the smokingest convention yet,’ said Harold Murphy as he pushed full boxes of cigars cross the case to the purchasing delegates at the Hollenden and pulled them back empty. ‘They burn up the best we got as tho [sic] they were 3-for-10’s,’ he said. ‘This town’s going to look like a forest fire from out on the lake,’ and he rang the cash register 22 times in succession.” — Cleveland Press, June 10, 1924
1936
June 9-12
The Ticket: Alf Landon and Illinois Newspaper Publisher Frank Knox
Big Picture: After Franklin D. Roosevelt trounced Herbert Hoover in 1932, the party was in disarray. And as Roosevelt’s New Deal continued with the introduction of the Social Security Act and Works Progress Administration in 1935, the Republican Party coalesced around center-left Kansas Gov. Alf Landon.
Local Picture: In four presidential election cycles, Cleveland had welcomed two Republican conventions. Yet, the biggest attraction of the 1936 convention was probably the Landon bandwagon on the street outside Cleveland Public Auditorium or the half-completed Great Lakes Exposition grounds.
Sing-Along: A copy of the Constitution in downtown bookstores cost 50 cents, but the real get was copies of the official convention song. The book’s cover portrayed a curved elephant trunk with two heavy lines through the “s,” “suggesting the dollar sign,” said the June 8 Cleveland Press. The closing stanza went, “We can’t go wrong, Keep on tryin’, Making some concession, Help fight Old Man Depression, For better times are coming, Bye and bye.”
Lookalike: Walking the streets of Cleveland during the convention, the bespectacled
J. Henry Smythe was often mistaken for the Democratic candidate, the incumbent FDR, according to the June 8 Cleveland Press. But Smythe was a staunch Republican. He even wrote slogans for GOP candidates, including one for Landon: “Let’s Make it a Republican Landonslide.”
Bad Omen: On the convention’s last day, perhaps portending Landon’s defeat, 13 seconding speeches were given. Then, high in the catwalks of Public Auditorium, 3,000 red, white and blue balloons and 3,000 “Landon For President” feathers rained down on the crowd. “Unemotionally the galleries watched — sitting on their hands as they did through the whole evening,” according to the Cleveland Press.
Notable Quotable: Landon, reflecting on his monumental loss before his death in 1987, described himself to The New York Times as “an oilman who never made a million, a lawyer who never had a case and a politician who carried only Maine and Vermont.”
