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1900 - McKinley vs. Bryan

Mark Hanna raises $2.5 million from business interests to bankroll President McKinley’s reelection effort, reportedly sending back contributors’ checks if he thinks the amount should be higher. McKinley’s biggest backer is Standard Oil Company, which again kicks in a $250,000 contribution. (After the election, Hanna dutifully sends the oil company a refund check for an unspent $50,000.)

McKinley’s Democratic opponent once again is Williams Jennings Bryan, who — despite having publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst as a donor — is at a financial disadvantage. Bryan accuses Hanna and the Republicans of planning to bribe election judges and buy votes with all the cash they are raising. (Hanna replies, testily: “When it comes to personalities I am willing to stand before the American people on my record as a businessman.”)

The McKinley campaign spends its money deluging voters with 125 million pieces of campaign literature, including 21 million postcards and two million newspaper inserts, and hires 600 public speakers and poll-watchers across the country. In states such as Maryland, there are also accusations of Republican vote-buying. Again, McKinley himself stays home and gave speeches on his front porch, although his running mate, Theodore Roosevelt, travels widely in an attempt to counter Bryan’s frantic whistle-stop speech-giving.

McKinley wins reelection, beating Bryan in the popular vote by 51.6 percent to 45.5 percent, and winning the Electoral College 292-155. Afterward, Senator Henry Teller of Colorado complains that the Republicans had “plenty of money for purposes legitimate and illegitimate,” while another disgruntled Democrat, Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld, grouses to Bryan that “the enemy simply bought the ground from under us.”