The year of 1912 has proven to be a redefining moment in US political History. Many of the attributes of this race can be traced back as forming the issues and policies that dominate our current political landscape. Its effects in throwing off a party system that had survived 70 years radically shifted the balance of power in the USA.
President Theodore Roosevelt had made the Pledge in the 1904 election to not seek a third term for office. Despite him enjoying his position of president and his popularity in the office he decided to stick by the pledge as a check against a formation of a dictatorship. Roosevelt's departure left the Republican Party's nomination for president open to a wide range of candidates including Elihu Root, Charles Evans Hughes and Howard Taft. It was eventually to be Roosevelt's friend, William Howard Taft, with some aide from Roosevelt in hopes of appointing a like minded successor that would secure the nomination of the Republican Party for President in 1908. Taft defeated William Jennings-Bryan and became the successor to President Roosevelt.
Taft lacked energy and much of Roosevelt's progressive attitude. He alienated much of the electorate with his stance on Tariffs and began to separate his policy from Roosevelt's. As Taft grew more distant to Roosevelt, Roosevelt became more determined to get the Progressive wing of the Republican party back in power. He expressed support for The National Progressive Republican League whose agenda ended up consisting of replacing Taft at the national level. Roosevelt was however still sceptical of running against Taft in 1912 instead opting to run against any democrat in 1916 which may defeat President Taft.
After gaining the house majority for the first time in 16 years in the 1910 midterm elections the democrats would have been going into the 1912 election with cautious optimism due to the split among the Republican party, Speaker of the House Clark Champ was seen as an early frontrunner in the nomination process.
The Socialist Party of America had won a seat in the House of Representatives in the 1910 midterm elections. It was focused mainly in the upcoming election on building a name for itself and trying to keep together the feuding factions of the party. There was a Left Wing of radical anti-capitalisim and questionable views on democracy alongside a more moderate pro-democracy wing.
Due to his unpopularity and lack of appeal Taft performed poorly in the Republican primaries with the race seemingly starting off as a competition between Roosevelt and senator Robert La Follette. Roosevelt ended up having a strong lead in primary delegates but Taft gained delegates from conservative southern republican organisations. Going into the convention the winner of the competition was still unclear with many delegates remaining uncommitted but at the final convention vote Roosevelt would win with a slim majority of delegates. Taft was initially hostile towards Roosevelt after his win of the nomination but would eventually quit his public feud with Roosevelt, although he never did formally endorse him for the presidential race. In a close race between William Borah and Robert Follette Borah was selected by the convention as Roosevelts running mate as Follette was seen as too close to the Socialist Party
Despite being the initial frontrunner Clark Champ was dragged down by endorsements from controversial groups letting Governor of New Jersey Woodrow Wilson become the Party's Nominee
Despite unsuccessful campaigns in 1904 and 1908 Eugene Debs became the Socialist Party's nominee in the 1912 election as the outlook for the party's chances looked bleak considering the (relative) progressivism of the Republican and Democratic candidates. Alas the Socialist party would run on its agenda of a Pro Labour platform and campaign to supporters in rural and mining areas.
As Taft was still president he used the opporunity and the strong Conservative presence in congress to influence the passage of policies he liked. As the election campaign begun to heat up in July a small but sustantial General Strike in the West started becoming a thorn in the side of the president who had since tried to ignore in the hopes of the strike disbanding. The strike spread across Nevada, California, Arizona and Idaho with many thousands of strikers from various professions demanding greater pay, stricter anti-trust laws and right to union membership. It was found that the IWW was heavily encouraging workers to join in on the strikes and Taft decided that the best way to aleaviate the pressure on the government was to go after IWW. Painting IWW as a 'radical labour group' congress seeked to ban the organisation in the USA in hopes that doing so would discourage the members of the nearly month old strike. Congress theorised that any backlash that IWW would have would not be effective considering that IWW was already divided into different factions.
The IWW quickly set up public demonstrations in major cities as a way of callig public attention to the treatment of the group. Cities like Chigago and New York were flooded by IWW demonstrators. These demostrations increased public sympathy for the strikers and the IWW itself and made the attempt to ban the organisation deeply unpopular in the North and West. As a founder of the IWW Eugene Debs appeared at many major demonstrations and used them as a way to present himself and the Socialist party to a wider audience. Newspapers across the nation pitted him firmly against not just Taft but the conservative factions of the Republican and Democratic parties causing him to spihon support from progressive republicans and even a few democrats. In an unprecendeted move to survey the voting intentions, The New York times sent out hundreds of thousands of postcards across the state of New York surveying people of their voting intentions over a month. It saw Eugene Debs with a strong 20% of the vote statewide catching up to Wilson's 29% and Roosevelt's 48%. The news of the high level of support of the Socialist Party quickly spread throughout the nation, this event may have made people more seriously consider voting for the party.
Make no mistake, the strikes were escalating in violence and it was indeed controversial to conservative voters to appear sympathetic to them. Although Wilson had appeared to be part of a wing of the democrats that were more sympathetic to Labour, Wilson's public tone quickly changed and he tried to position himself as a candidate of order in a nation of rising chaos. Roosevelt had to balance between the two upsetting his left-wing supporters and once again giving Debs and the Socialist party more support. The New York Times decided to do another survey for the state of New York showing Roosevelt still ahead but with 36%, Wilson with 34% and Debs with 28%
As Roosevelt's support seemed to be floundering he turned his focus against the opinion surveys in New York calling them a "Perversion of Free Choice and Democracy" and gave fiery speeches about his bread and butter topics across the midwest and atlantic. Wilson tired to ride the 'momentum' in states that appeared to be close such as Ohio, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. More people warmed up to Wilson's pragmatic style than had did for Jennings-Bryan.
Just weeks before the election President Taft declared in the face of the now enormous western general strike that he could no no more to dissipate it and it was now the responsibility of the next president to aide the strikers and negotiate with them. This move was seen as a general win for the Socialist party and a minor one for the Republicans as the issue would not drag their party down too much and in the final stretch issues like Tariffs and Civil Rights became much more prominent
Debs went into election day with a band of strong supporters loyal to the ideas of socialism, Wilson went in with a sense of optimism and Roosevelt was hoping that the events of the campaign had not dampened his populist appeal and that his legacy would speak for itself.
As the candidates waited patiently it was clear by the end of election night that Debs' strong campaign had caused a deadlock and it was now up to congress to decide the election for the first time in 80 years. However, in this case it was decided that the incoming congress rather than the outgoing congress would vote as state delegations to decide a winner. Due to strong republican performances in individual state delegations in congress such as Tennessee and Ohio it became clear that Roosevelt would likely get the 25 states needed to become president. Wilson said publically wished for the states to vote in whichever way they wanted but conceded that it was unlikely that he would win a vote in congress. Both Republican candidates for President and Vice-President were elected by congress and Teddy Roosevelt was set for a 3rd term. The Socialist party hailed the election as a victory as shown by the deadlock in the electoral college and pledged to fight hard for the Strikers wants especially with them controlling who had the majority in the House of Representatives.
The socialist party had done extremely well at convincing voters to elect them in congress as well as the presidency picking up 20 seats and controlling the congressional delegation of Nevada. As they had no chance of pushing one of their own candidates for the speaker election they decided to first use their influence to push the Republicans to the left. Their first action was to influence the Republicans to dump Mann as leader who had a poor policy on Labour and Social issues in favour of the much more progressive Christensen. Despite the Democrats having the plurality of seats they were effectively a minority with somewhat of a coalition forming between the Socialists and Republicans as the Socialists exerted their influence. Laws would later be passed to edit the functioning of congress with parliamentary like colations being allowed in the US house and senate from this election on.
The Speaker election was also notable for having the first Female speaker candidate, Representative Mary Ovington, to receive a vote in a speaker election. Berger gave Ovington his vote to her surprise as a symbolic gesture for the Socialist Party's advocation for gender equality legislation. Although the two would later clash quite prominently over Berger's view that African-Americans were scientifically inferior while Mary Ovington was a founder of the NAACP. This conflict would become the start of a prominent spar between Ovington and Berger for leadership of the Socialist House Caucus.
The Senate stayed in the Republican's favour and the Socialist party won the Nevada senate seat due to a popular vote race for the seat. Notably it was won by Eugene Debs' brother Theodore. The Socialist party also felt snubbed from the senate and beleived that if all states were decided by popular vote that they would have had a better result. Part of their legislative agenda was to push for the abolition of state legislature appointed senate seats. Additionally the Socialist Party also made a massive influence on state legislatures winning close to 100 house and senate seats of state legislatures, although there were no strong performers in the 1912 governor elections
The extremely strong third party presence in politics majorly affected Roosevelts agenda over the next 4 years. Whether it was to cost Roosevelt an unprecedented 4th term or further boost socialist presence in congress... or both! was yet to be decided.