The 1924 Mock Convention
How a W&L tradition earned its famed reputation nearly 100 years ago

The 1924 Democratic Party Convention was without question the longest, most acrimonious political convention in US history. A deeply divided Democratic party converged on New York City’s Madison Square Garden in late June 1924. Prohibition, immigration, the Ku Klux Klan, and progressivism were the issues cutting deeply into party unity. Plans for a week-long convention were shattered as floor fights over the platform gave way to bitter balloting for a nominee. 

From the outset of balloting it was apparent that Governor Al Smith of New York and former Treasury Secretary William Gibbs McAdoo were deadlocked in an epic battle. Party rules required the nominee to receive two-thirds of the delegate vote, which neither Smith nor McAdoo had come close to. Personal acrimony between the two candidates ran deep and permeated the convention floor. To make matters worse, a record heat wave moved over New York City, and the temperature in the unairconditioned Madison Square Garden exceeded the record temperatures outside.

After sailing past the old Democratic Party record of fifty-seven ballots, which had been set at the 1860 convention in Charleston, the seventieth ballot showed no material change. McAdoo held 415 delegates to Smith’s 323, with a handful of compromise candidates lagging far behind. As one historian has written, “The deadlock that developed might as well have been between the Pope and the Imperial Wizard of the KKK, so solidly did the Catholic delegates support Smith and the Klan delegates support McAdoo.” 

The New York-based Smith supporters talked openly of prolonging the convention in order to bankrupt the McAdoo forces. The McAdoo forces responded, “We’ve ordered our winter clothes and will stay till Christmas if necessary.” Liquor flowed freely even among the prohibition forces. One South Carolinian was heard to complain, “The only problem with staying here all summer is that the price of hog jowl and turnip greens in New York City is too damn high.”

As the convention moved into its third week and past the one-hundredth ballot, it was apparent that a compromise candidate had to be nominated. On the 103rd ballot, an exhausted convention nominated former Ambassador and Solicitor General John W. Davis, a Washington and Lee alumnus from West Virginia. As columnist Walter Lippmann wrote, “ Davis’ nomination was the result of confidence in his character rather than of studied agreement with his conservative views.”

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Six weeks prior to the commencement of the Democratic bloodbath, Washington and Lee University students had convened their already well established quadrennial mock convention. The W&L fireworks started with a bitter — and prophetic — platform fight over Prohibition. Rousing speeches from the wets and the drys followed. Toward the end of the speeches, a student rushed to the podium to read an urgent telegram from the Plumbers Union of Bangor Maine, urging the convention “to take action toward the modification of the Bone Dry Law.” 

It was not reported exactly why the Bangor plumbers’ wisdom was offered, but their input was apparently not decisive, as the convention narrowly passed — no doubt over the students’ own better judgment — a strong Prohibition platform. As the wet forces protested, the student chairman, Randolph “Booze” Whittle, declared the issue settled and the platform ratified.

Next, the students turned their attention to the central business of nominating a candidate, and again they proved amazingly prophetic. The mock convention endured twenty-two ballots during which McAdoo and Smith waxed and waned, while the favorite son candidates refused to release their delegates. The mock convention was operating under the same two-thirds rule as the Democratic party, and it became apparent that deadlock had set in.

At the conclusion of the twenty-second ballot, the convention chairman made an impassioned plea for party unity, which was followed by the mysterious “withdrawal from the convention of the Texas, Ohio, and Connecticut delegations.” This withdrawal threw the convention into an uproar as rumors circulated of a “back room deal”.

After struggling to regain order and securing the return of the three missing delegations, the chairman began the twenty-third ballot. These three delegations threw their support to W&L’s favorite son, and there followed a mad stampede to John W. Davis.

It was later rumored that the “back room deal” had revolved around an impassioned plea from the chairman to produce a nominee in order for the convention to adjourn and move on to the planned post convention festivities. In violation of their own pro-prohibition platform, he warned the delegates, “The beer is getting warm!” Whatever the motivation, the deadlock was broken.

When the almost identical scene was reenacted at Madison Square Garden two months later — albeit with many more ballots — the W&L Mock Convention’s reputation was firmly established as the most accurate, most realistic, and most raucous mock convention in the country. W&L students have ably carried on the tradition of the 1924 mock convention for 100 years.