Full Reading: Week 1, Section 1

History of Presidential Nominations

Dr. Steffen Schmidt 

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There is a saying “To know where we are we need to understand from where we came.” So it is with the Iowa Presidential candidate selection caucuses that forms the focus of this MOOC.

The election of a President in the United States has not always been a contest involving common voters. 

The Miller Center at the University of Virginia has an excellent summary of the first election in the not then fully formed United States.

The Campaign and Election of 1788

"In the wake of winning his country's independence and then overseeing the formation of its government, George Washington thought he had done enough. He desperately wanted to go home and live a quiet life, but Americans wanted no one else to lead them. No other person was seriously considered. America's first presidential campaign was really its citizens' efforts to convince Washington to accept the office. Letters poured into Mount Vernon—from citizens great and small, from former comrades in arms, even from other shores. Many told Washington that his country needed him more than ever and that there was no justification for his refusal. While he warmed slightly to the idea, he still told a friend, "I feel very much like a man who is condemned to death does when the time of his execution draws nigh."

As specified by the Constitution, the Electoral College chose the President. In 1788, the method for selecting electors was decided by each state legislature—by public vote in some states and by legislative selection in others. Each state had as many electors as senators and representatives. The election was administered only in ten of the states because Rhode Island and North Carolina had yet to ratify the Constitution and a quarreling New York failed to choose electors in time. Each elector was given two votes to cast for President. Washington received the support of every one of the electors, each of whom cast one of the two ballots for him. John Adams, who received thirty-four votes, was the runner-up and was thus named vice president.[i]

At the founding of the United States there were no political parties. Also, only white men who owned property could vote so the idea of grass roots participation in the selection of a Presidential candidate was rare. Only Pennsylvania and Maryland chose the “electors” by holding an election.

The divisions between political groups grew intense in the first years of the Republic. Dennis Jamison writes[ii], “Political parties first emerged during Washington’s first term in office with the Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist Party in 1791 and in the following year, the formation of the Anti-Federalist Party or Democratic-Republicans under the leadership of Thomas Jefferson.”

George Washington was so concerned about the destructive consequences of partisanship that he warned in his farewell address to the nation of “… the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. “

Inevitably the intense divisions were consolidated in two major political parties, the Democrats and Republicans, who have largely monopolized American politics, thus making the United States one of only few countries with a two-party system.

Since 1832 the mechanism for nomination of presidential candidates has been a national political convention of each party.[iii] Delegates to the national convention were generally chosen by having voters from congressional districts in each state choose delegates to state conventions. At the state convention the delegates to the national convention would be selected.

Political “Bosses”

A huge problem with this system was that powerful political “bosses” in the states often had the real muscle and would control the state delegates. These bosses, such as Democrat James A. Farley, Huey Long - a Southern boss of great power, Boss Tweed in New York, James Michael Curley of Boston, the Tom Pendergast Machine of Kansas City, Missouri, and others.

While these bosses were usually very undemocratic, corrupt, and often connected to organized crime, they built their power on the close connections they made with the poor voters in their fast growing cities. Using patronage and assisting the poor, these bosses dominated local politics, but also deeply influenced national politics often through the Presidential nomination process.

Tom Pendergast once told the New York Times, “I know all the angles of organizing and every man I meet becomes my friend. I know how to select ward captains and I know how to get to the poor. Every one of my workers has a fund to buy food, coal, shoes and clothing. When a poor man comes to old Tom's boys for help we don't make one of those damn fool investigations like these city charities. No, by God, we fill his belly and warm his back and vote him our way.”[iv]

Using direct assistance and often bribes these bosses built powerful but in a sense very undemocratic “political machines.” Today we may be familiar with the award winning HBO television series Boardwalk Empire (Image credit[v]) The star of that series is Enoch "Nucky" Thompson, a character based on Enoch L. Johnson who was a Republican Party boss in Atlantic City, New Jersey during the 1920s and 1930s. As the HBO web site advertises, What is “Boardwalk Empire?” America in 1931. On the beach in southern New Jersey sits Atlantic City, a place where rules don’t apply and Nucky Thompson rules.” This is a perfect description of the power of bosses.

Bossism is still very common around the world and bosses are common for example in Latin America where they are known as caciques, jefes politicos, or gamonales.

Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago

I share the story of these very colorful and powerful bosses, because it was bossism that led to a profound change in the Presidential candidate selection process.

The 1968 Democratic convention took place in Chicago, Illinois a city that was tightly controlled by Democratic Mayor Richard Daley. Daley took pride in the economic and development progress the city had made under the administration of his political machine. The Daley Democratic organization was tightly organized with a vast network of neighborhood and ward operatives who saw to it that voters would be served by city programs and that they in turn would show their gratitude and vote for Daley and his candidates for city council and other positions.

But 1968 was a time of great turbulence in the United States with a year of violence, political turbulence, especially the rising violent opposition to the Vietnam War, and civil and racial unrest, which included serious riots in cities across the nation after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4. The convention was also overshadowed by the assassination of Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Robert F. Kennedy, brother of the assassinated President John F. Kennedy of New York, on June 5.

Disturbances by a range of protesters and what would today be called “anarchists” threatened to disrupt the convention. Mayor Daley took a strong hand in suppressing these disturbances with his police force that used a great deal of force in bringing law and order to the event. A subsequent report by a special commission concluded that the force was so great as to have constituted an uncalled for “police riot.”

All of this was covered live on television much to the consternation of the Democratic delegates and potential Presidential contenders. The chaos and violence threatened to taint the Democratic Party and undermine its support among voters in the general election.

The crux of the matter at this convention was that President Lyndon B. Johnson had announced he would not seek reelection. In a shocking surprise move he announced that he was not going to run for a second term and that the opposition to the Vietnam War and to his role in pursuing that conflict was so great that he should bow out.

Thus, the main task and purpose of the convention was to write a party platform and select a new presidential nominee to run as the Democratic Party's candidate for President. The tense national atmosphere over Vietnam and racial discrimination which had produced massive urban riots added to the intensity of the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The “liberal” contenders for the White House were South Dakota Senator George McGovern and Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota. The mainstream or “establishment” Democrats, Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey and Senator Edmund S. Muskie of Maine, after a tumultuous, divisive convention were nominated for President and Vice President. They went on to lose the election to Republican Richard Nixon.

McGovern–Fraser Commission

The spectacle on television and the clear role of political “Boss Daley” led to the creation of the McGovern–Fraser Commission (formally the Commission on Party Structure and Delegate Selection) that changed the presidential nominating process.

Senator McGovern spearheaded the reforms of how Democrats would select their Presidential nominee. This led to greatly increasing the number of caucuses and primaries where average voters would express their preferences for who they would like to see as the candidate of their party, thus vastly reducing the power of bosses and party “insiders” as they were called.  The Republicans followed with rules that eventually also used the caucus and primary process to select their Presidential candidates.

The reforms were also intended to increase the participation of groups that were underrepresented in the old system of delegate selection. The new rules included “affirmative steps” to “ … encourage representation on the National Convention delegation of minority groups, young people and women in reasonable relationship to their presence in the population of the State.”[vi]  This quota system was controversial but continues to inform how Democrats select delegates.

It was these reforms which eventually launched to prominence the Iowa “First in the Nation” Caucuses and primaries including the New Hampshire primary.

I should conclude by pointing out that a lively debate has followed these reforms.  Some argue that too much power in selecting Presidential candidates has been given to people outside of the party organization, thus diminishing the influence of the political party professionals. These non-professional politicians, it is averred, supposedly are often not well informed or take extreme positions on various issues and tend to support candidates for President who are more narrow and extreme than the average voter in a general election. Party bosses and organizations, it is said, were aware that they needed to choose a candidate who could appeal across party lines to win. Others support the new process because they argue that it opens the door to groups of voters who in the past were largely ignored and the Presidential candidate selection is thus more democratic.

If you are interested in this on-going debate read Kaufmann, Karen M., James G. Gimpel, Adam H. Hoffman, “A Promise Fulfilled? Open Primaries and Representation.” [vii]

[i] http://millercenter.org/president/washington/essays/biography/3 Links to an external site.

[ii] http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/history-purpose/2012/mar/9/george-washington-warns-against-political-parties/ Links to an external site.

[iii] James S. Chase; Emergence of the Presidential Nominating Convention, 1789–1832 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973)

[iv] San Jose University, Political Bosses and Machines Links to an external site.

[v] Image "Boardwalk Empire Season 3" by http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/news/Boardwalk-Empire-Season-3/18436. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia –

[vi] Judith A. Center, “1972 Democratic Convention Reforms and Party Democracy,” Political Science Quarterly 89, no. 2 (1974): 325-350 http://www.jstor.org/stable/2149263 Links to an external site.

[vii] The Journal of Politics Links to an external site. 65, No. 2 (2003): 457-476. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3449815 Links to an external site.

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 Videos

• Interview with Dr. Chis Larimer, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Northern Iowa