The date was June 12, 1920.
The place was Chicago, where 940 Republican delegates from across the country had gathered to nominate their partys candidates for president and vice president of the United States.
The moment occurred when the national conventions presiding chair called upon a delegate from Oregon, who was seeking attention by standing on a chair and waving his arms.
That delegates name was Wallace McCamant, and the brief speech he made upon being recognized would change American history.
McCamants name is little known today, but for several decades his actions and opinions were the subject of Oregon newspaper headlines.
Born and raised in Pennsylvania, McCamant headed west shortly after becoming a practicing lawyer in 1890. Landing in Portland, a rough-and-ready port town of about 46,000 people, he signed on with a Portland law firm that is known today as Miller, Nash, Graham & Dunn. McCamant quickly earned a reputation as an intelligent and eloquent attorney. He became involved in a number of patriotic organizations, and he married and started a family.
Wallace McCamant, circa 1917-18 (Oregon Historical Society)
Along with pursuing his law career (hed eventually become an Oregon Supreme Court justice), McCamant also became a loyal member of the Republican Party, which dominated Oregon politics at the time. He served as a delegate to the GOP national convention in 1896 and 1900.
When the still-popular former President Theodore Roosevelt left the Republican Party in 1912 to run as a Bull Moose after becoming disenchanted with his hand-picked successor, President William Howard Taft, McCamant remained staunchly in Tafts camp.
The Taft-Roosevelt split led to the election of Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, as the 28th president of the United States, and four years later Wilson narrowly won re-election. So when 1920 arrived, with no incumbent on the ballot, Republicans believed they had an excellent opportunity to return their party to the White House.
McCamant, then 52, wanted to be a part of the effort. Seeking to attend his third national convention, he filed the required paperwork to run for election as a convention delegate. (At the time, both the Republican and Democratic parties in Oregon elected national convention delegates in May primary elections.) The Oregonian reported on McCamants filing in February, stating that Judge McCamant asks that the following be printed after his name on the ballot: For President, an American, a republican, and a statesman.
In speeches leading up to the primary, McCamant made clear that, as a delegate, he would support the candidate who won the Oregon presidential primary -- unless, that is, that candidate was Sen. Hiram Johnson of California. McCamants refusal to support Johnson largely came down to his determined party loyalty: Back in 1912, Johnson had bolted the GOP to run as the vice-presidential nominee on Roosevelts Progressive, or Bull Moose, ticket.
Sen. Hiram Johnson (Library of Congress)
When the May 21 Oregon primary results were tabulated, Johnson had narrowly defeated former U.S. Army chief of staff Leonard Wood -- and McCamant had overwhelmingly been elected as a delegate. The Johnson forces wasted no time in arguing that, no matter his anti-Johnson campaign rhetoric, McCamant was bound by an Oregon statute requiring that each delegate take an oath that he will use his best efforts to bring about the nomination of the person receiving the largest number of votes at the primary.
McCamant, a by-the-book lawyer, was ready with a response. He pointed out that the statute requiring delegates to support the primary winner referred explicitly to delegates who had their names placed on the ballot after simply paying a filing fee of $15. Every candidate for delegate except McCamant had paid that fee. The best efforts statute, however, did not reference the other method for delegate candidates to get on the ballot -- submitting a petition signed by 500 registered voters. This was how McCamant scored his place, with a petition containing more than 1,600 signatures. After the Oregon delegation arrived in Chicago, the conventions credentials committee sided with McCamant: he was free to support the candidate of his choice.
In the end, McCamants presidential vote at the convention made no difference. A candidate needed 471 delegates to win the nomination. On the first ballot, Wood received the support of 287 delegates (including McCamant). Illinois Gov. Frank Lowden placed second with 211, and Johnson ended up in third place with 133. Twelve other favorite son candidates also received votes. After three more ballots resulted in little change, the convention adjourned for the evening.
It was then that the partys bosses convened at the Blackstone Hotel in Room 404 -- a famed smoke-filled room, where presidential candidates often were chosen before the modern primary system began in the early 1970s. The party poobahs, many of them U.S. senators, hashed over the candidates strengths and weaknesses, and, at 3:00 a.m., they reached a consensus: Sen. Warren Harding of Ohio was the best option to break the deadlock. They regarded Harding, nearing the end of his first term in the Senate, as a genial, go-along-to-get-along type who would not be objectionable to either progressive or conservative Republicans. As one of the meetings attendees reportedly concluded: We have a lot of second raters and Harding is the best of them.
It took a few ballots the next morning at the Chicago Coliseum for the decision reached in Room 404 to filter through to the delegates, and then Hardings momentum became unstoppable -- the nomination was his. The powers-that-be then quickly met in a small alcove under the speakers stand to choose Hardings vice-presidential running mate. In hopes of uniting the stalwart wing of the party that Harding represented with the more progressive wing, they decided that Sen. Irvine Lenroot of Wisconsin, a Johnson supporter, would fill out the ticket.
Heres where McCamant stepped into his place in history.
Sen. Irvine Lenroot (Library of Congress)
Nominating speeches were quickly given for Lenroot, but before a roll-call vote could seal the deal, the chairman noticed a stocky, red-faced man standing on a chair and demanding he be recognized, Harding biographer Francis Russell has documented. Affably, the chairman recognized Wallace McCamant of Oregon, assuming that his was merely one more seconding voice for Lenroot.
McCamant, however, had no intention of backing a Johnson ally. He called on his fellow delegates to instead support a man who is sterling in his Americanism and stands for all that the Republican Party holds dear. On behalf of the Oregon delegation, I name for the exalted office of vice president, Calvin Coolidge of Massachusetts.
The mention of Gov. Coolidge, who had achieved national prominence the previous year when he broke up a Boston police strike, ignited the convention floor. Not so much because the taciturn Coolidge was loved, but because few delegates liked that their decisions often were made for them in smoke-filled rooms. McCamant had tapped into a mood of revolt that had been simmering under the surface, and all of a sudden there was a Coolidge bandwagon. The Massachusetts governor received 874.5 delegates to Lenroots 146.5.
McCamants role in choosing the vice-presidential nominee didnt get much attention across the U.S. -- though Oregon took note of it. Naming of Coolidge is Oregons Honor: Response to McCamants Speech Causes Thrill, read the June 13 headline in The Oregonian.
The November election was never really in doubt. After the trauma of World War I, American voters were hungry for the stolid Hardings promise of a return to normalcy. On Nov. 2, 1920, the Harding-Coolidge ticket won a landslide victory over the Democratic nominee, Ohio Gov. James Cox, and his running mate, the 38-year-old assistant secretary of the Navy, Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Less than three years later, on August 2, 1923, Harding died after what is believed to have been a massive heart attack. And, thanks to Oregon delegate Wallace McCamant, the man who took the oath of office as the 30th president of the United States was Calvin Coolidge, not Irvine Lenroot.
Perhaps no Oregonian, before or since, can be said to have made a larger impact on the history of our country. The reason: he may have inadvertently helped bring about Franklin Roosevelts presidency.
Coolidge, a pro-business Republican who reduced taxes and restored confidence in the government after various scandals rocked Hardings administration, would be elected president in his own right in 1924. Even though he was immensely popular, he chose not to run for re-election four years later. Republican Herbert Hoover won in his place, and Hoover would be in the White House in October 1929 when the stock-market crash helped usher in the Great Depression. Hoover would be overwhelmingly defeated by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932.
But what if Irvine Lenroot had succeeded Harding as president? Would he have stood for election in 1924? Would he have run again in 1928? Would Roosevelt have had the opportunity to create the New Deal -- and lead the U.S. during World War II -- if a President Lenroot, much more progressive than the rigid Hoover, had been in office in October 1929 and responded aggressively to the countrys economic collapse?
The answers to these questions are, of course, unknown, but they make for a fascinating, Oregon-themed what-if?
What is known, however, is that Hiram Johnson was a man who held a grudge.
Wallace McCamant, late in life (The Oregonian archives)
On May 25, 1925, President Coolidge re-paid his debt to Wallace McCamant by appointing him to the United States 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Since McCamant was appointed during a Congressional recess, he was authorized to serve on the court for one year. If the U.S. Senate confirmed the appointment during that year, then McCamants appointment would be for life.
At that time, presidential nominees to federal courts were routinely confirmed without requiring the nominee to even appear at a Senate committee hearing. Those nominees, however, had not crossed Hiram Johnson. The senator from California used his seniority and influence to block a confirmation vote until he could personally question McCamant.
On January 29, 1926, McCamant faced his adversary in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Oregonian proclaimed: It is doubtful the meeting between these sworn enemies from the west coast has been surpassed in dramatic interest by any that has ever taken place in the capitals long history.
The hearing reached its dramatic crescendo when Johnson focused on speeches during which McCamant had said that the California senator was not a good American. He asked the judge to explain himself. McCamant responded by saying Johnsons support for allowing judicial decisions to be overruled by public vote, part of Theodore Roosevelts 1912 Progressive platform, meant he was not a good American.
Johnson pointed out that the beloved Roosevelt, who had died in 1919, also supported that policy, and he demanded to know if McCamant believed that Roosevelt therefore also was not a good American. McCamant admitted that was, indeed, what he believed.
I stand on that, Mr. Chairman, Johnson called out in triumph. I am willing to see if the United States Senate will confirm a man as circuit judge, the next highest judicial position in this country except only the Supreme Court, who tells this committee that Theodore Roosevelt was not a good American.
Johnson was right. McCamants response had killed any hopes of his confirmation. The Portland-based judge did try to backtrack, sending a letter to committee members stating it was the idea of public recall of judicial decisions, and not Roosevelt, that was un-American, but it was too little too late. President Coolidge soon withdrew the nomination.
McCamant would remain active in the Oregon legal community until his death at the age of 77 on Dec. 17, 1944. When he died, The Oregonian eulogized him as a champion of the Constitution of the United States and a lifelong advocate of the forthright Americanism of the founders.
Tymchuk is the executive director of the Oregon Historical Society.
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The forgotten Oregon Republican who upended national politics 100 years ago and may have paved the way for - oregonlive.com