1916 and 1920
"...I may not be able to stand, but I will tirelessly stand up for the American people..."
-Leonidas Dyer, on accepting the presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention in 1932
The 1920s saw a wave of prosperity across America (
except for in rural areas). The governing Democratic Party, in reaction to the progressive era and with the leadership of Albert Ritchie and then Royal Copeland as President, governed in a conservative direction, generally taking a hands-off approach to government. This was widely popular with the public, who itself had a strong reaction to the progressive era and then felt quite happy with the new era of economic prosperity, and the Democrats were able to attain sizable Congressional majorities
But the prosperity was in no small part built on a rotten foundation of bad credit. In 1929, the bubble burst, with the New York Stock Exchange taking a sharp downturn, followed by many bank failures, and (because of these and other reasons) then a worldwide economic depression
The initial Democratic position was that the market would naturally restore itself and that taking a hands-off approach would be best. This was not very popular at all, and things got worse. President Copeland began to consider some degree of economic interventions to hasten the recovery. Some of these actually showed some promise, and would be expanded on significantly with the Fair Deal, but even then, under Copeland such interventions were generally half-assed and underfunded, with the Democrats reluctant to pursue them at all. And the biggest intervention is the one most remembered nowadays. Before the 1920s, Democrats often performed rather poorly in elections in the north of the country, and in the 1920s had ran a number of candidates who were somewhat moderate (if still conservative-leaning) on some issues. In the time of the Depression, a number of these northern Democrats, including President Copeland himself, had come to lean towards arguments from certain factions of the Republican Party regarding trade. As part of their government interventions to fight the Depression, the Democrats, with support from a faction of Republicans, enacted a sizable increase in tariffs. It was hoped that this would spur on the economic recovery, but had the reverse effect - a number of other countries enacted retaliatory tariffs, and the decline in global trade just led to an even worse global economic situation
Going into 1932, President Copeland initially intended to simply not run again, but at the insistence of his party - with few other credible figures willing to run and fearing an electoral wipeout - he reluctantly accepted re-nomination
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Republican Leonidas Dyer was first elected to Congress in the 1910s as a progressive anti-usury platform. By the late 1910s, he had made a name for himself nationally in politics, making the headlines by calling for a federal ban to lynching after the St. Louis race riots and lynchings of Black Americans that occurred during the riots. As the country turned towards conservatism with the advent of the 1920s, Dyer remained a voice for progressivism, and retained his seat in Congress - until 1921, when he was shot by a radical white supremacist. His wounds in the assassination attempt were severe, initially it looked as if he would die, and while he did manage to pull through, one of the bullets that hit him in the assassination attempt had hit his spine and left him paralyzed at the waist and confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life
Dyer remained an outspoken progressive, and while he initially stepped down from office in order to focus on recovery, he later again sought political office, being elected to the House in 1926. In 1928, the Missouri Democratic Party saw something of a split at the state level due to conflicts over prohibition (a number of Democrats had opposed it). Seeing an opportunity with that split, Dyer ran for governor, and despite the Democratic landslide nationally, managed to win. As governor, Dyer pushed for rural electrification and other assistance to aid with the 1920s farm crisis, and with the outbreak of the Depression, pushed for unemployment aid, pensions, and other spending to assist the recovery
Dyer's recovery program in Missouri, and the popularity of that program, helped raise his popularity and garnered him national attention. The 1930 midterm elections saw a major gains for the progressive faction of the Republican Party (in part due to Democratic unpopularity and in part due to the progressive Republicans having been the faction of the party that by this time was less supportive of tariffs, including Copeland's Disaster of a tariff), and it appeared that a progressive Republican would have an easy shot at the Republican nomination for 1932. Dyer sought the nomination, and won the most votes on the first ballot at the convention. Some in the party had some concerns, however. For one, he was visibly disabled, requiring the use of a wheelchair - he'd be the first candidate with such a condition, and this could potentially cause issues. Furthermore, he had a record of advocating for Black American civil rights, and while the others in the party weren't opposed to such ideas (by 1932 the party had become dominated by progressive voices), there were concerns that Dyer might potentially push too far in that direction, and hurt the party due to this
After some conversations with some other Republicans, including some of his rivals for the nomination, Dyer reluctantly agreed to stay quiet on civil rights, at least in the short term, with other Republicans expressing hope that the party could use the unpopularity of the Democrats and popularity of the proposed progressive reforms that many Republicans were supporting to expand Republican congressional support and perhaps weaken the Democratic stranglehold over the South. With Dyer's concession on that issue, he saw a wave of delegates flock to him, and won the nomination. For the Vice Presidential nomination, he and the party agreed on Fiorello La Guardia, former rival at the convention, fellow progressive, and Mayor of New York, in part to provide some geographic balance to the Missourian top of the ticket and in part because Dyer and La Guardia simply found themselves to get along reasonably well in negotiations
In the general election, Dyer and fellow Republicans for Congress ran on a platform calling for a "Fair Deal" (visibly calling back to Roosevelt's Square Deal) program of reform and relief for the country. This was quite popular, especially in contrast to Copeland's administration, reeling as it was from the unpopularity due to the Depression in general, as well as backlash for the tariff, and an incident in 1932 where protesting veterans of the great war were violently suppressed by federal forces. Dyer faced some concerns over his disability, but Dyer and Republicans were effectively able to turn that around with rhetoric attacking Copeland and his Democrats for "crippling" the economy, as well as frequently having visibly disabled veterans (including those who had been involved with Bonus Army activism) stand next to Dyer at campaign events. So the main effect of Democratic attacks against Dyer for his disability was simply to make the candidate already heavily favored to win to also look like something of an underdog to many people
In the election, Dyer won a landslide victory, winning every state outside of the south and achieving the strongest Republican performance in the region since 1872 (before Reconstruction was ended), winning the border-south states of Oklahoma, Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware, as well as the formerly solid-south states of North Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee. Republicans expanded their control in Congress, with Dyer entering office with a strong majority behind his proposed Fair Deal agenda