View attachment 650792
let's be honest that would have been a nail-biter if Coolidge had to run again
There's no real reason to think Coolidge would have done better in New York than Hoover did in 1928. Few people today realize how high Hoover's prestige was in 1928--even among ethnic voters inclined to support Smith for religous/Prohibition reasons. For example, the Polish-Americans:
https://books.google.com/books?id=dt1hXjPYgxAC&pg=PA127
Moreover, while I don't think the "third term" issue would have cost Coolidge many votes, it would probably have cost him some. As I once wrote:
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I discovered a very interesting thing in reading *The Third-Term Tradition: Its Rise and Collapse in American Politics* [the "collapse" part was obviously premature--the book was published in 1943] by Charles W. Stein: During the mid- to late 1920's, when it was discussed whether President Coolidge would run again in 1928--and many people thought he would, even after the famous "I do not choose to run" statement--the question was usually put as whether Coolidge would seek a "third term" in 1928. There was much debate as to whether the anti-third-term tradition would stand in his way.
Now at first that surprised me, because Coolidge had served only nineteen months of Harding's term. But then it occurred to me: I was approaching the matter wrongly because I was unconsciously assuming that the Twenty-Second Amendment's definition of the anti-third-term rule ("for more than two years of a term for which some other person was elected President" etc.) had already been agreed to. But of course it hadn't been! The Amendment was in the distant future; the anti-third-term tradition was just that--a *tradition*, with no law to define its extent. Hence, people could and did differ on what a "third term" was. (At least prior to Grant's failure to get the GOP nomination in 1880, one could argue that the tradition only prohibited three *consecutive* terms--and of course TR tried to revive that interpretation in 1912, one problem being that it seemed to clash with what he himself had said on Election Night in 1904. [1]) Some argued that the whole no-third-term traditon was silly and should be scrapped, anyway. Others said that the tradition was sacred and should prevent Coolidge from seeking a third term. What would today seem an obvious position--that the tradition was valid, but that Coolidge had not served enough of Harding's term for it to be applicable--was indeed taken by some commentators, but was not quite as widely accepted as might be imagined. Incidentally, one advocate of another term for Coolidge proposed that he should promise if elected to resign on August 2, 1931, so that he would not have served more than eight years!
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If, as I think, Coolidge would have done no better than Hoover in New York, there is no reason FDR would not have won the governorship. As in OTL, all he would have had to would be to do a little bit better than Smith statewide and get enough Protestant votes Upstate to cancel out the slight advantage Ottinger had (compared to other Republicans) among Jewish voters in New York City.
BTW, any comparison of Coolidge's 1924 showing in New York with Hoover's 1928 perfromance is misleading because in 1924 there was widespread resentment in New York that Smith had been passed over for the nomination for (it was thought) religious reasons. Many New York City Democrats in 1924 voted both for Coolidge for president and Smith for governor--"Cal and Al." Coolidge of course would not have this advantage in 1928.