It's a bad time for America. President Scipio Grocer, the first African-American president who succeeded to the office after the tragic assassination of his predecessor in 1921, has presided over a time of troubles, of rising racial tension and of rising economic stagnation. Somehow re-elected in 1924 due to a fluke of the Electoral College, he has seen his party take hits downballot as people rally to the Conservative Party and to other options...
Think the economy is bad and that only someone experienced with money can lead America out of it? Well, the
Conservatives have you sorted with young, charismatic and telegenic businessman Jay Gatling! Some will say he's too inexperienced, being only a Representative, but he will settle down nicely as President, they say! And he has a much more experienced running-mate to help him!
Of course, he's not up against President Grocer, but against possibly the
Progressive-Republicans' best candidate this time around, the left-y firebrand from Minnesota Clark Forsyth who promises to solve this recession with old-style Progressive policies that President Grocer shunned, along with new ideas like his promised infrastructure policy that he is sure will bail thousands out of unemployment!
But surely some of you will claim, the PRUSA and Conservatives are in the pocket of the globalist Wall Street conspiracy? Well, luckily for you there's an option in the rockscrabble populist
Nationalists, promising to end American internationalism and return to splendid isolation while kicking Wall Street and the globalists out. [Rupert Larson insists he is not speaking of Jews, but it's a very familiar dog-whistle that brings quite a few votes]. Their leader is running for the second time and has hopes that people's despair will catapult him to power.
What if you see the Nats as unpleasant anti-Semites yet want radical reform and not willing to trust Forsyth? The
Social Democrats are here and they still champion socialist reforms, handing power over to the working-class and bringing around a "people's society", whatever that means. Samuel Franklin, their 1920 nominee, is back and hoping to build on their 1924 success.
Oh, what extremism! What unpleasant radicalism! Surely there must be an option for the liberal middle-class that isn't Gatling? And there is! Two in fact! The idiosyncratic Michigan centrist
Louis Orléans and the New York Governor
Al Smith, the latter running on his vanity Democracy Party platform. Orléans has a huge ego, but he is great at convincing thousands that if only America would elect him, all its troubles would be over. This isn't true of Smith, unfortunately for him, but he does have party infrastructure backing him.
But what about Paddy O'Brien and the
United All-Americans? Well, if you're Mormon and a member of O'Brien's Supreme Ku Klux Klan, they're certainly your first choice, even if you're not sure about O'Brien himself, what with his weird drug-taking liberal left-wing past.
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In the first round, Gatling won a strong plurality riding on middle-class discontent, making huge gains in the north-east while losing traditionally Conservative Plains states to Forsyth and Larson. The runoff would be Forsyth and Gatling, and once Larson denounced both as "globalists", Gatling had the momentum and locked in his victory in the runoff, returning Conservatives to power after 12 years.
Things were looking great for "the Great Gatling", as some nicknamed the new President. And then the economy went to hell.