Legislators’ fear for party allies in 1926 elections drove their park policy votes
Evidence
Upstate Republican legislators might be insulated in their rotten boroughs, but it wasn’t only legislators whose names would be on the ballot in 1926. Al Smith would be campaigning for re-election, and Republican strategists were determined to knock him out of the Governorship. They had already persuaded the man they regarded as their strongest candidate, Ogden Livingston Mills, to leave Congress and run against him. And there was a United States Senate seat up for grabs, too, and the present occupant of the seat was James J. Wadsworth himself, the former Assembly Speaker and one of the state’s most powerful Republicans. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 924
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Parks once united voters across class lines as an unopposable political issue — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 746; Electoral politics in 1926 made Republicans afraid to oppose park programs — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 923; Political party influence skewed representatives’ views away from the rural majority’s wishes