| Description |
Utah politics during the elections of 1932 through 1938 have as their dominant characteristic the fact that they were constituent parts of a massive grass-roots change in voting behavior that resulted in a new coalitional patiern for the nation's two major parties. The 1932 election in the state saw the Democrats win the presidential vote, all of the state offices, most of the legislative races, and all of the congressional seats. This election not only routed the Republican party but it also spelled the demise of Utah's five-term Senator, Reed Smoot. The Senator even had the support of President Heber J. Grant of the Mormon Church, whose members comprised a majority of the state's citizens. The Democrats had charged that the inept policies of the Hoover administration had precipitated the depression and had retarded the return of prosperity. On the basis of this appeal and the fact that the state was severely affected by the economic decline, the majority of the voters aligned themselves behind Democratic candidates. The election of 1933 was for the purpose of deciding whether to retain state and national prohibition. Leading the cause for the drys was the Mormon Church. The wets had the support of the national administration and the local Democratic party. President Grant adamantly proclaimed that prohibition was a matter of religious principle. He stated that it furthered the Church's doctrine of abstinence called the Word of Wisdom. The wets based their campaign on the proposition that the experiment had not worked, and that a change was necessary in order to control the liquor traffic and to restore respect for the law. The election results were a crushing b Low for President Grant and the dry cause. The electorate by a decisive majority voted to end state prohibition and selected a slate of candidates to the constitutional convention who were pledged to repeal the Eighteenth Amendment. The convention so timed its proceedings that it became the thirty-sixth state to ratify the twenty-First Amendment and thus effect repeal of national prohibition. The interim election of 1934 had as its chief contestants the Democratic incumbent Senator William H. King and Don B. Colton, who had been defeated for re-election to Congress in 1932. As the state's first referendum on President Roosevelt's New Deal recovery program, the campaign demonstrated the popularity of the President's policies. The Republican strategy was to selectively object to the New Deal while they concentrated their attack on Senator King. They accused the Senator of not supporting the President's recovery program5 The Democratic strategy was to identify with the New Deal and to cite the improvement of economic conditions. The electorate gave their approval of the New Deal by returning the Democrats to Congress and to the state legislature. 1936 the progressive wing of the state's Democratic party tried to capture the gubernatorial nomination for their leader, state Senator Herbert B. Maw. The convention fight between the Maw forces and the incumbent Governor Henry H. Blood was bitter and intense. By a narrow majority the convention gave the honor to Governor Blood. This threatened a bolt from the party by the progressives. But Maw supported Blood for re-election with the understanding that Blood would support a direct primary Law for use in the 1938 election. |
