100 years ago in the Saratogian
Tuesday, July 16, 1918
“The vanguard of leaders and delegates is beginning to arrive for the Republican State convention, which will open in Convention Hall Thursday noon,” The Saratogian reports today.
This week’s gathering is not a nominating convention. Candidates for statewide offices will be decided by primaries in September. Both major parties will hold “conferences” in Saratoga Springs this month, at which party leaders will endorse candidates in the primaries. Party platforms will also be drafted at the conferences.
For the Republicans, the big story this week is the three-way contest for the gubernatorial nomination. Twoterm incumbent Charles S. Whitman has been challenged by state attorney general Merton E. Lewis and former state senator William M. Bennett. Campaign managers for Whitman and Lewis arrive in the Spa City today to set up campaign headquarters.
Following the tradition that dictates that politicians should not appear to electioneer for themselves, Whitman is keeping his distance from the convention. Lewis, however, has told reporters that “there is no reason in the world why he should not visit the convention and he plans to be on the spot.” Bennett, the real underdog in the race, “expresses his scorn of the Republican convention at Saratoga and says that the delegates have been hand picked by Governor Whitman.”
No matter how the race for governor plays out, “In many ways the convention will be a history making one, for it will be the first occasion when women have been seated as delegates in a Republican party convention.”
The women of New York State received the right to vote in a 1917 referendum. Many women delegates arriving in Saratoga are politicians’ wives, a reporter notes, and “have attended the conventions in the old days, but not as participants.
“Mixed views are held by the men delegates as to the feminine elements at the convention,” though only a handful of men have openly opposed the women’s presence. Four delegates from St. Lawrence County, for instance, are boycotting the gathering because women were included in their delegation.
“Amusement is being afforded over the arrangements at the [United States Hotel] headquarters, whereby the women are to be placed in one wing of the huge hostelry and the men on the other,” the report continues. One delegate describes the arrangement as “separating the sheep from the goats.”
“It would appear that the convention will be somewhat in the nature of a Shaker gathering,” the reporter adds.
Former presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft are scheduled to address the convention. Roosevelt, New York’s most prominent Republican, is maintaining strict neutrality during the race for governor.
-- Kevin Gilbert