FDR Presidential Library, CC BY
BY JAMES COCKAYNE
July 25, 2016
After a dramatic Republican National Convention in Cleveland
which saw Donald Trump finally become the party’s official nominee, Hillary
Clinton will this week accept the formal nomination of the Democratic Party.
U.S. national conventions have always been big business
opportunities. As one long-time ally of the Bush family reportedly said, “For
people who operate in and around government, you can’t not be here.” Although
some of the usual donors to the Republican National Convention, like Ford and
UPS, stayed home this year, the host committee was able to raise nearly US $60
million from American businesses. Yet historically the “people who operate in
and around government” are not only legitimate businesses but also, sometimes,
less-than-legitimate ones.
Take the 1932 Democratic National Convention. As I explain
in my book about the hidden power of organized crime, from which this article
is adapted, the nomination that year had come down to a contest between two New
York politicians. Al Smith was a reform-minded former governor aligned with
Tammany Hall, the Manhattan-based Democratic political machine. Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, the sitting governor, was running against him, and he was not
aligned with Tammany.
If Roosevelt was to win the nomination at the Democratic
National Convention, he needed to neutralize the Tammany threat. That meant
figuring out what to do about the Mob.
You can’t fight
Tammany Hall.
Through their control of liquor and vice-markets in southern
Manhattan, Tammany’s stronghold, the Italian-American Mafias and
Jewish-heritage gangs that made up the New York Mob had developed growing power
in Tammany affairs over the preceding years.
The Mob leadership now saw a huge strategic opportunity at
the Democratic National Convention to leverage that power into something even
bigger: influence over the next occupant of the White House.
Strange bedfellows
Mob leaders Lucky Luciano, Frank Costello and Meyer Lansky
all accompanied the Tammany Hall delegation to the convention in Chicago. Their
Mafia associate Al Capone provided much of the alcohol, banned under
prohibition, and entertainment.
Al Capone in 1929. US National ArchivesCostello shared a
hotel suite with Jimmy Hines, the Tammany “Grand Sachem,” who announced support
for Roosevelt. But another Tammany politician, Albert Marinelli, announced that
he and a small bloc were defecting and would not support Roosevelt.
Marinelli was Tammany’s leader in the Second Assembly
District, its heartland below Manhattan’s 14th Street. During Prohibition he
had owned a trucking company – run by none other than Lucky Luciano. Luciano
had helped Marinelli become the first Italian-American district leader in
Tammany, and in 1931 forced the resignation of the city clerk, whom Marinelli
then replaced. This gave Luciano and Marinelli control over selection of grand
jurors and the tabulation of votes during city elections.
Now, the two were sharing a Chicago hotel suite.
An offer he couldn’t
refuse
Why were Costello and Luciano backing rival horses, and
through them, rival candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination? Was
this a disagreement over political strategy?
On the contrary, the evidence suggests that the Mob was
playing both sides, to place themselves as brokers in the Democratic nomination
process.
Roosevelt needed the full New York state delegation’s
support – and thus Tammany’s – if he was going to win the floor vote at the
convention. But he also needed to avoid being tainted by the whiff of scandal
that hung stubbornly around Tammany – and the Mafia.
Roosevelt responded to the split by issuing a statement
denouncing civic corruption, while carefully noting that he had not seen
adequate evidence to date to warrant the prosecution of sitting Tammany
leaders, despite an ongoing investigation run by an independent-minded
prosecutor, Sam Seabury. Picking up his signal, Marinelli threw his support
behind Roosevelt, giving him the full delegate slate and helping him gain the
momentum needed to claim the nomination.
Roosevelt on the
campaign trail in 1932. FDR Presidential Library, CC BY
The Mob’s role may not have been decisive. Roosevelt’s
nomination had numerous fathers, not least John “Cactus Jack” Garner, a rival
presidential candidate to whom Roosevelt offered the vice presidency in return
for the votes of the Texas and California delegations. But it was a factor.
If the Mob leaders were not quite kingmakers as they had
hoped, they were certainly players. As Luciano reportedly put it, “I don’t say
we elected Roosevelt, but we gave him a pretty good push.”
It takes one to know
one
Luciano was nonetheless a newcomer to national politics, and
seems to have been quickly outsmarted by his candidate. Having secured the
nomination, Roosevelt loosened the reins on Seabury’s corruption investigation,
making clear that if it developed new evidence, he might be prepared to back
prosecutions after all.
Seabury quickly exposed significant Tammany graft in the New
York administration. The city sheriff had amassed $400,000 in savings from a
job that paid $12,000 a year. The mayor had awarded a bus contract to a company
that owned no buses – but was happy to give him a personal line of credit. A
judge with half a million dollars in savings had been granted a loan to support
34 “relatives” found to be in his care. Against the backdrop of Depression New
York, with a collapsing private sector, 25 percent unemployment and imploding
tax revenues, this was shocking profligacy and nepotism.
By September 1932, the mayor had resigned and fled to Paris
with his showgirl girlfriend. In early 1933, Roosevelt moved into the White
House and broke off the formal connection between Tammany Hall and the national
Democratic Party for the first time in 105 years. He even tacitly supported the
election of the reformist Republican Fiorello La Guardia as New York mayor.
Luciano was pragmatic about having been outsmarted. “He done
exactly what I would’ve done in the same position,” he reportedly said. “He was
no different than me … we was both s—ass double-crossers, no matter how you
look at it.”
This article was originally published on The Conversation.
Read the original article.