WI: Hughes/Burton in 1916?

[Indigo]

So, the 1916 election was famously close; a common scenario has Hughes meeting Hiram Johnson in California to heal up the rift between them. This of course, would switch California and give Hughes a very narrow victory. I think there's another straightforward way to give Hughes, California; in his choice of running mate.

This source about one of the possibilities, former Ohio Sen. Theodore Burton, is especially interesting.

http://archive.org/stream/theodoreeburtona010366mbp/theodoreeburtona010366mbp_djvu.txt

(pg 244 is the relevant part)

According to the source; not only would Burton have caused a switch in California due to his influence in the state, he was also the choice of the party for VP. According to this account, it was only Burton's campaign manager strongly refusing the offer (which Burton would have accepted) that led to Fairbanks being chosen.

Does this seem like it would be a big enough POD to flip the election? I think especially pertinent is whether Indiana would now go Democratic (giving Wilson the victory again) without an Indianan on the republican ticket.

 

[David T]

First of all, I doubt that the famous Long Beach episode was what cost Hughes California. Secretary of the Interior Lane, a Californian, wrote after the election:

"The result in California turned, really as the result in the entire West did, upon the real progressivism of the progressives. It was not pique because Johnson was not recognized. No man, not Johnson nor Roosevelt, carries the progressives in his pocket. The progressives in the East were Perkins progressives who could be delivered. The West thinks for itself. Johnson could not deliver California. Johnson made very strong speeches for Hughes. The West is really progressive. . . ." https://books.google.com/books?id=8mwoAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA227

What alienated California progressives (and progressives in the rest of the West) from Hughes was not his manners (his snub of Johnson at Long Beach) but his politics. California labor, for example, which strongly backed Johnson in his own campaigns, spurned his backing of Hughes. Wilson did especially strongly in heavily unionized cities like San Francisco. This should not be surprising, given Hughes' opposition to the Adamson Act, which provided for an eight-hour day for railroad workers. William Allen White, who supported Hughes, nevertheless lamented, "He talked tariff like Mark Hanna. He talked of industrial affairs like McKinley, expressing a benevolent sympathy, but not a fundamental understanding. He gave the Progressives of the West the impression that he was one of those good men in politics—a kind of a business man's candidate, who would devote himself to the work of cleaning up the public service, naming good men for offices, but always hovering around the status quo like a sick kitten around a hot brick!" https://books.google.com/books?id=cnU9AQAAMAAJ&pg=RA1-PA138

Second, let's not forget that even if he carried California, Hughes would still have lost had he not carried Indiana--and he carried Indiana *very* narrowly in OTL. http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?f=0&fips=18&year=1916 It is perfectly conceivable that without Fairbanks on his ticket, Hughes might have lost Indiana. Could Burton have compensated Hughes by enabling him to carry Ohio? It is very unlikely; Hughes lost Ohio by a quite substantial 7.68 percentage points. http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?f=0&fips=18&year=1916 Nate Silver has written that "On average since 1920, he [the vice-presidential candidate] has produced a net gain of only about two percentage points for the top of the ticket in his home state." http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytime...verrated-vice-presidential-home-state-effect/ This would make it plausible that Fairbanks enabled Hughes to carry Indiana (offsetting the help Marshall provided Wilson there) but implausible that Burton would have helped Hughes enough in Ohio.

 

[Ariosto]

I have to agree with David. Unless picking Burton would result in Hughes conducting his campaign in such a way that he managed to do better nationally, he can't win the election while losing Indiana, and he is not in an optimal position to pick up Ohio unless, again, he does better nationally.​

 

[AdmiralBlake]

Hughes lost California by less than 4,000 votes, so any minor change could have made the difference. Of course, he would still have lost the popular vote

 

[Indigo]

With regards to Ohio, I think that picking Burton could make it a republican gain, and here's why - 1916 is before any organized polling, so campaigns chose where to focus on based more on intuition than on actual numbers on the ground. In OTL, Wilson et al. almost certainly saw Ohio as a close but winnable state, and focused significantly more effort on it. In the ATL, with Burton on the ticket, it's certainly possible that the Democrats would write Ohio off and focus elsewhere. After all, this is essentially what happened in New England in the OTL 1916; Wilson didn't make any effort in those states assuming they would be solidly Republican, except in the end he actually won New Hampshire and came in very close in 3 others. So it's certainly a possibility for the Democrats to miscalculate like this.

 

[David T]

With regards to Ohio, I think that picking Burton could make it a republican gain, and here's why - 1916 is before any organized polling, so campaigns chose where to focus on based more on intuition than on actual numbers on the ground. In OTL, Wilson et al. almost certainly saw Ohio as a close but winnable state, and focused significantly more effort on it. In the ATL, with Burton on the ticket, it's certainly possible that the Democrats would write Ohio off and focus elsewhere. After all, this is essentially what happened in New England in the OTL 1916; Wilson didn't make any effort in those states assuming they would be solidly Republican, except in the end he actually won New Hampshire and came in very close in 3 others. So it's certainly a possibility for the Democrats to miscalculate like this.

There is no way the Democrats would write off Ohio in 1916. It was too important, and had given them reasonable percentages in the last couple of presidential elections, despite Taft, an Ohioan, being the Republican candidate. In 1908, Bryan had received 44.82 percent of the vote in Ohio--above his national average and *well* above his average for non-southern states. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1908 In 1912, Wilson had carried Ohio with 40.96 percent of the vote in a three-way race (or four-way if you count Debs)--a bit behind his national average but ahead of his average outside the South. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1912 Also, Taft and TR combined got under 50 percent in Ohio (48.98 percent--whereas nationally. Taft and TR had 50.57 percent of the vote), so if Wilson could get a substantial portion of the 1912 Debs vote in Ohio (8.69 percent) he had a good chance of carrying it even if most Bull Moosers returned to the GOP fold. The Democrats had elected governors in Ohio in 1905, 1908, 1910, and 1912. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_gubernatorial_elections It is true that Governor Cox was (rather narrowly) defeated for re-election in 1914 but that was largely because of a wave of anti-Catholicism stimulated by the Democrats' nominating a Catholic, Timothy Hogan, for the US Senate. Also, even in 1914 Democrats got a respectable nine of the twenty-two US House seats from Ohio (compared to, say, four out of sixteen in Massachusetts). And one of the two US Senators from Ohio, Atlee Pomerene, was a Democrat. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlee_Pomerene