Franklin D. Roosevelt: Special Prosecutor

“All you’ve got to do is stay alive until election day.” That’s the advice Franklin D. Roosevelt got from his running mate, John Nance Garner in 1932. In the rear-view mirror of history that looks like no great insight. The Great Depression had descended on the nation in 1929 and poor Herbert Hoover got blamed for it. Shanty towns were called “Hoovervilles” and when newsreels showed his face at movie theatres he was jeered and hissed. When he showed up at the 1931 World Series, the fans booed.

But Roosevelt and his campaign guru, Louis Howe were on edge. Only two Democrats had been elected since before the Civil War, and both had won squeakers. The Republicans had won three blowouts in a row and political polling was unheard of. When America’s first pollster, Emil Hurja offered his services to the Democratic National Committee, its chairman, John K. Raskob thought he was a crank and kicked him out the door.

Three wildcards had Howe and FDR nervous. The first was FDR’s polio, which they took pains to cover up. Woodrow Wilson’s stroke and Warren Harding’s fatal coronary were fresh in the public’s mind. Hoover’s handlers made sure he was depicted as hale and hearty, tossing a medicine ball around the south lawn. They also circulated rumors that FDR’s polio was fake news, that what he really had was syphilis.

The second wildcard was prohibition. Republicans wanted to keep it, and Democrats wanted a drink. The drys insisted that the Republican win in 1928 was an endorsement of mandatory tea totaling instead of a vote for roaring Republican prosperity, or against Al Smith’s popery.

The third was FDR’s association with Tammany Hall. Early in his career, he had called the New York Democratic organization a “noxious weed” but changed his tune when he realized he couldn’t get elected Governor without them. The rest of the country’s view of Tammany was summed up in “Ode to New York” by Byron Rufus Newton: Heartless, Godless, hell’s delight. Rude by day and lewd by night. Bedwarfed the man, o’ergrown the brute. Ruled by boss and prostitute. A squirming herd in mammon’s mesh. A wilderness of human flesh. Crazed by avarice, lust and rum, New York, thy name’s delirium.

Among those who took easily to avarice lust and rum was “the night Mayor of New York” James J. Walker who had managed to amass a fortune of one million dollars on a civil servant’s salary. Though married, he was constantly escorting showgirls around. When he ran for re-election his estranged wife was more than willing to be photographed with him leaving Sunday mass, because Tammany paid her $10,000 for the outing. He considered it his official duty to “represent” the city at the Kentucky Derby. After doffing a yarmulke at a Jewish wedding, a zaftig babushka teased “Jimmy, circumcision next?” His reply: “Madame, I would prefer to wear it off.”

The stench of scandal wafted through the New York air, particularly in its courthouses. When gambler Arnold Rothstein of Chicago Black Sox fame was murdered, a Judge ordered all of Rothstein’s files impounded at the office of a Tammany district leader. They were promptly stolen. A Walker crony, Judge Albert Vitale was exposed for mob connections. Judge Joseph Crater got into a cab outside Billy Haas’ Chop House on West 45th Street and was never heard from again. To this day the mystery is unsolved.

An ambitious anti-Tammany Judge named Samuel Seabury was appointed to investigate, and the Republicans saw this as an opportunity to wrap Roosevelt in Tammany’s dirty linen. Seabury dug up all kinds of dirt and then shortly before the Democratic convention dumped the scandal in Governor Roosevelt’s lap, issuing findings and recommending that the governor conduct an inquest to determine why Walker shouldn’t be removed from office. Seabury attended the Democratic convention to remind everyone of his availability for high office.

Roosevelt was in a pickle. He didn’t want to appear to be coddling Tammany. But offending Tammany was a great way to lose New York State, which a Democrat really needed to win. But most importantly, he feared that the inquest would expose the fact that he was a thoroughly unaccomplished lawyer.

FDR never wanted to go to law school, but his overbearing mother insisted and he depended on her for financial support until the day she died, eight years after he became president. He flunked two courses his first year, and dropped out without being graduated. Jackson Reynolds, one of his professors at Columbia said: “Franklin Roosevelt was not much of a student and nothing of a lawyer afterwards … he didn’t appear to have any aptitude for law and made no effort to overcome that.” He landed a job at the Wall Street firm of Carter, Ledyard & Milburn when his mother called in some old favors. She thought Franklin would fit in nicely with its admiralty practice, because he liked to sail.

The firm represented Standard Oil, American Tobacco and the New York Stock Exchange, but Franklin never got near those files. Instead, he was put in charge of representing a cemetery. He played hooky after a court appearance, caught a ballgame at the Polo Grounds, and returned to the office drunk. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t last. He partnered up with friends a few times, but rarely did anything because he was either holding office or selling surety bonds.

Thanks to a crash course in lawyering from trial attorney Martin Conboy, Governor Roosevelt held his own at the hearings, reminding everyone that strict adherence to the rules of evidence and procedure were unnecessary. He was leaning heavily toward letting Walker off with a reprimand, but Walker bailed him out by resigning and vowing to run to succeed himself. Boss John Curry had other ideas, especially after Archbishop Patrick J. Hayes made it clear he wouldn’t look the other way anymore when it came to Jimmy’s moral shenanigans. Walker moved to England, and got divorced and remarried. Within three years he was back in New York. And back on the dole. FDR set that up. Seabury was furious.