100 YEARS AGO IN THE SARATOGIAN

Monday, July 22, 1918. New York’s leading Democrats are coming to Saratoga Springs for their party’s state convention this week, one week after the Spa City hosted the Republican state convention.

As the Republicans did, the Democrats will put together a platform for the 1918 statewide elections and most likely endorse a candidate for the gubernatorial nomination. The actual Democratic candidate for governor will be determined by a September primary election.

Democratic sources tell The Saratogian that New York City’s powerful Tammany Hall organization, the dominant force in the state party, wants upstate Democrats to decide which candidate will get the convention’s endorsement.

The front-runners for the endorsement before the convention kicks off tomorrow are Alfred E. Smith, the president of the New York City board of aldermen, and Harry E. Walker, the mayor of Binghamton. Among the longshots are publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst and former U.S. ambassador to Germany James W. Gerard, whose best-selling memoir “My Four Years in Germany” was recently adapted for the movies.

Hearst was the Democratic candidate in 1906, losing to Charles Evans Hughes. His supporters are circulating petitions statewide in order to secure a spot on the primary ballot, but The Saratogian reports that “The so-called Hearst boom is the flattest thing in Saratoga today.”

Gerard’s candidacy “also is likely to die an early death, as many look upon the former Ambassador as far too close to Mr. Hearst to be acceptable as a candidate.”

Smith appears to be the most popular candidate with the delegates here, but Walker is popular with upstate Democrats. Some delegates want the party to withhold an endorsement until former president Theodore Roosevelt decides whether or not to seek the Republican gubernatorial nomination, but the consensus as of today is that “the Democrats are going right straight ahead to name their strongest possible candidate regardless of the Colonel.”