Why did Jimmy Carter win New York State in the 1976 Presidential Election?
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  Why did Jimmy Carter win New York State in the 1976 Presidential Election?
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Author Topic: Why did Jimmy Carter win New York State in the 1976 Presidential Election?  (Read 8147 times)
Fuzzy Won't Cover Up Biden's Senility
Fuzzy Bear
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« Reply #25 on: May 10, 2015, 09:01:58 AM »

The success of New York's Republicans depended on (A) a non-ideological politics (B) based on factionalism (Tammany Hall vs. "reformers" and "Fusionists").  These divisions were primarily NYC based, but the issue resonated statewide at certain levels.

Then, too, there were Favorite Sons.  Tom Dewey beat Truman because he was NY's sitting Governor, and considered (by some) the more progressive candidate in NY.  Eisenhower was a Dewey Republican and a hero, plus he was a NY resident when he ran in 1952 (he had been President of Columbia University). 

Almost all of NY's elected statewide Republicans were moderates, or even liberals.  It was not until 1962 that NY's Conservative Party was launched, to pressure the GOP to nominate more conservative candidates.  The only true conservative Republican ever to be elected statewide in NY was Sen. James Buckley, who was elected as a member of NY's Conservative Party (in 1970) with 39% of the vote in a 3 way race with a Liberal Republican incumbent (Charles Goodell).  Al D'Amato took over 50% of the vote only once, against weak opposition; had a top-tier candidate opposed D'Amato in 1986, he may well have lost, but this was 1986, and nothing was going to distract the Democrats from re-electing Mario Cuomo.

Carter did not win particularly big on Long Island; LBJ and Kennedy won bigger.  On top of that, Carter LOST Schenectady and Rennselear (Troy) counties, as well as a few other upstate counties with Democratic bases (Niagara County comes to mind).  What Carter DID do was bring back most of the Nixon Democrats in the Democratic cities, which has always been enough for a Democratic victory.

I can't emphasize the degree to which the GOP had to nominate liberals to win NY.  Tom Dewey, Jacob Javits, Louis Leftowitz, Irving Ives, Kenneth Keating, and Nelson Rockefeller were ALL liberal Republicans.  NY's conservative Republicans were locally based and did not have wide-ranging followings.  Buckley was a fluke, and didn't win a 2 way race.  This changed for good with the 1976 nomination of Buckley (as a Republican) over Peter Peyser (a moderate-liberal Westchester County sitting Republican Congressman who later became a Democrat) and the defeat of Javits in the 1980 Senate Primary by Al D'Amato, which may not have been accomplished without the power of Joe Margiotta and the last major political machine in the Northeast (Nassau County's GOP).  I was there for much of this. 
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Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
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« Reply #26 on: May 11, 2015, 04:59:10 AM »

When you say Buckley was the only true Conservative Senator from New York, I would in addition to D'Amato that you mentioned include some others just from the 20th Century like James Wadsworth. He opposed FDA, Anti-Lynching Legislation and Women's suffrage and the minimum wage as well as most all of the New Deal, though one could argue he got more Conservative whilst he was subsequently in the house. The only views in line with New York's majority would be his internationalism and also his opposition to prohibition on rather libertarian grounds.
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Mechaman
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« Reply #27 on: May 11, 2015, 06:48:23 AM »

When you say Buckley was the only true Conservative Senator from New York, I would in addition to D'Amato that you mentioned include some others just from the 20th Century like James Wadsworth. He opposed FDA, Anti-Lynching Legislation and Women's suffrage and the minimum wage as well as most all of the New Deal, though one could argue he got more Conservative whilst he was subsequently in the house. The only views in line with New York's majority would be his internationalism and also his opposition to prohibition on rather libertarian grounds.

A lot of the liberal Republican drift really came about as a result of the New Deal.  Up to that point they had benefitted largely from constitutional "reforms" passed in the 1890s that gave the GOP a natural advantage in the state legislature, which disadvantaged the largely Democratic New York City area.  Before then the state legislature had elected machine politicians on both sides who were pretty committed to opposing political reform that would harm their turnout operations.  Overall, you could say they represented the interests of business, though the interests the GOP represented at the time were fairly larger (ie, Railroads vs. Big Alcohol).
This was one of the motivations for passing the 17th Amendment, to limit the power of special interest dominated state legislatures (the irony being that people who support the repeal of said Amendment now advance such cause for the same reason).
When Senate elections started coming up to a vote the Republicans were at a strong disadvantage due to the demographics of the state.  New York City was only getting bigger and bigger and bigger and some of the other urban areas (particularly Buffalo) were also urbanizing and gaining more and more non-protestant working class who moved to those places due to the growth of industry jobs.
Going back to the mention of Wadsworth, I should note that him and his other Republican colleague, William M. Calder, were both first elected in the mid 1910s when Woodrow Wilson was in office.  In regards especially to Wadsworth, Wilson and company did not get off well with even many ethnic Democrats in New York State particularly given some of the blatantly anti-German views of his Democratic opponent in 1914.  Thus, "Wilson Democrats" were viewed in a very negative light by many of the common folk they were supposed to be trying to win over due to the perception that they were a bunch of intellectual elitists who were more than a little too supportive of the Eugenics movement to the point of concern.  Wilson didn't make things easier for Calder's opponent in 1916 when Wilson started attacking the patriotism of Irish Americans (going as far as to push for a plank to the 1916 DNC denouncing "un-American" behavior) who were very critical of his pro-British foreign policy, something so unpopular among many New York Irish that some of the more Fenian among them started advocating for people to vote for Hughes because "at least he is an honorable man".  Such reactions certainly didn't help the cause of  Democrat William F. McCombs, who made his mark as Wilson's campaign manager and was later head of the DNC during Wilson's first term went down in flames.  I don't know much about Calder's views, but on ourcampaigns it notes that he was a supporter of LaGuardia later in life.  So yes basically the two Republicans elected pre-Ives owe their luck largely to the times (Wadsworth would go on to win re-election in 1920 when the national environment was extremely Republican while Calder would lose in 1922 when there was backlash against the Harding administration and the GOP was fractured between their progressive and conservative factions) and Democratic nominees all too associated with an unpopular Democratic president.  Al Smith's terms as Governor in the 1920s along with the opposition many New Yorkers had with Prohibition and other moralistic movements of the 1920s too often associated with Republicanism helped New York have Democratic gains in an era when most northern states were becoming quite Republican.  By that point enough people were offended by the Puritanical impulses of rural folk that many urban state Republicans were anti-Prohibition to keep from being associated with the activist wing of their party.
Which was why political reform was a necessary go to issue.  By the 1930s there were simply way too many non-protestant non-Republican voters for the GOP to succeed only on middle class appeal alone especially with how bad the Great Depression hit New York.  Tammany Hall and their elected officials were all too often in bed with organized crime figures, which made perfect attack fodder for Republicans like LaGuardia and Dewey.  Further, while Lehmann did get elected Governor, in a lot of instances the NY Democrats seemed to be an "Irish only" club when it came to political advancement.  Both of these factors helped create an outright "liberal" wing of the New York Republican Party that was barely different from their Democratic counterparts except maybe a little more critical of organized labor and a bit tougher on crime.

Really, why shouldn't Jimmy Carter have won New York by that point?  He was a Democrat running in a bad year for Republicans.
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