1924 - Coolidge vs. Davis
Coolidge with his car radio in the 1924 campaign; Courtesy of the Library of Congress
Calvin Coolidge, who took over the presidency after Warren G. Harding’s death in 1923, is nominated by the GOP for a full term of his own. Coolidge’s campaign raises nearly $4.4 million, a bit more than half as much as the late Harding had amassed. (Even so, the Republicans are so flush with cash that they can afford to spend $120,000 to set up their own radio stations to promote Coolidge.) But in contrast to the previous election, in which at least one Harding donor tried to buy his way into the Cabinet, Coolidge insists that there won’t be any such quid pro quos this time around. “I would make clearly and definitely one other requirement: that no individual or group of individuals may expect any governmental favors in return for party assistance,” he says in his speech accepting the nomination.
Coolidge’s fundraising vastly outclasses the Democrats, who have to go into debt to come up with $1 million for their nominee, former West Virginia congressman John W. Davis.) Once again, the Democrats try to turn their financial disadvantage into a campaign issue, proclaiming in their platform that “predatory interests have, by supplying Republican campaign funds, systematically purchased legislative favors and administrative immunity.” To prevent such abuses, they propose limiting both individual contributions and campaign expenditures, and providing “reasonable means of publicity, at public expense, so that candidates, properly before the people for federal offices, may present their claims at a minimum of cost.”
But the corruption issue apparently doesn’t resonate with voters, or perhaps it’s negated by the public sense of well-being from a booming economy. In November, Coolidge wins in a rout, garnering 54 percent of the popular vote to 28.8 percent for Davis and 16.6 percent for third-party candidate Robert LaFollette. In the Electoral College, Coolidge takes 382 electoral votes to Davis’s 136 and LaFollette’s 13.
SOURCES: Mark Green, Selling Out: How Big Corporate Money Buys Elections, Rams Through Legislation, and Betrays Our Democracy (New York: William Morrow), 2002; “Candidate Coolidge,” Time, August 25, 1924; Stuart Lewis, Party Principles and Practical Politics (New York: Prentice Hall), 1928; John William Davis, Biographical Directory of the United States Congress: 1974 – Present; “Democratic Party Platform of 1924,” The American Presidency Project; “1924 Presidential Election Results,” David Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections.
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