Chicago is hosting thousands of Democratic Party delegates who have gathered to ceremonially nominate Kamala Harris for president at their party’s convention.
Conventions provide a rare, quadrennial glimpse into the partisan political process and their role has changed over the decades. With Harris taking over the presidential ballot from Joe Biden at the ninth hour, it’s a chance for Americans to witness a bit more how conventions used to select presidential candidates before primary elections became the determining factor.
“This used to be done in smoke-filled rooms by just the elites,” says Nicole Hemmer, a presidential historian at Vanderbilt University. “Powerful party leaders needed to gather in the same place to decide who the nominee should be.”
A disproportionate amount of that precedent-setting presidential history happened in Chicago. And this month’s DNC gathering is the 26th time that Chicago has hosted a major party presidential nominating convention
The Lincoln miracle
More than a decade before the Great Fire that put Chicago on the map, it was little more than a trading hub on the edge of the western frontier, far from the coastal political establishment. Even so, Republican delegates traveled to the city in 1860 to find a candidate for president, beginning a tradition of Chicago presidential nominating conventions that would continue for the next 16 decades.
“The Republican National Committee chose Chicago because they thought it was neutral ground,” said Ed Achorn, author of The Lincoln Miracle about the 1860 convention.
”No serious presidential candidate came from Illinois.”
That provided fertile ground for a political upset. A little-known local politician named Abraham Lincoln threw his name in the ring for the presidential nomination.
Despite his reputation as “honest Abe,” Achorn says that his campaign surrogates used some callous tactics to get the underdog Lincoln ahead of the party’s favorite William Seward. After all, the Lincoln team believed that only he could win an impending civil war.
The Lincoln campaign printed counterfeit tickets to the convention and even planted actors to play Lincoln supporters, according to Achorn. That helped propel Lincoln to the top of the ballot despite the odds.
Smoke-filled rooms
“Interestingly, if the modern primary system prevailed, I think Seward would have won the nomination. He had the institutional support, he had the money. He would have been able to mount a multi-state effort,” said Achorn.
“But in those days, it was a smoke-filled room. And look what they came up with? They came up with the greatest president since George Washington,” said Achorn.
In the sixty years following Lincoln's nomination, Chicago became the go-to spot for conventions, minting candidates George B. McClellan, William Jennings Bryan, and Grover Cleveland for two terms.
By 1920, the Republicans had a good lay of the land in Chicago, with their favorite hotel rooms booked up long in advance. With a majority of American men being avid smokers, the “smoke-filled room” became a literal place where delegates could find a consensus candidate.
An intrepid young reporter named Raymond Clapper of the United Press knew this, so he camped out in the hallways of the Blackstone Hotel late at night to get the scoop of who’d be nominated.
Around midnight, Kansas Senator Charles Clapper exited room 915, reported Clapper, cigar smoke swirling around his bald head.
"Well, they are going to go for Senator [Warren G.] Harding," Curtis told Clapper. "They can all agree on him."
Clapper is credited in the article that came out that morning with coining “smoke-filled room” as an idiom that’s now cemented in political discourse.
The Chicago machine
By 1940, a Chicago convention rewrote American political tradition again. Chicago Mayor Ed Kelly, a staunch Democrat, felt that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt should run for an unprecedented third term.
Kelly had made a name for himself as chief engineer of the city’s sewer system, leveraging clean water and an army of loyal Irish workers to get his way in politics, both locally and nationally. He created a system of governance that the city still refers to as “Machine politics.”
When that year’s convention came to Chicago, Kelly’s sewer workers packed the stands at the Chicago Stadium, says local historian John Schmidt.
“The Sewer Commissioner had a hookup in the basement where he’d chant, ‘we want Roosevelt, we want Roosevelt,’” and of course, all the people in the stands repeated ‘we want Roosevelt, we want Roosevelt,” says Schmidt, whose grandfather was among those chanting sewer workers.
“Roosevelt was popular, but this whole spontaneous demonstration was obviously orchestrated,” added Schmidt.
The Machine’s shenanigans carried into the 1960s, when Mayor Richard J. Daley, known as “Chicago’s boss” hosted the Republican convention in 1960. After Republicans nominated Richard Nixon, they accused Daley of committing massive voter fraud to skew the election in favor of Democrat John F. Kennedy in the general election.
A turbulent convention era
The 1968 Democratic National Convention marked a turning point. After the recent assassinations of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy, many Americans began to feel disenfranchised by closed political systems. When Democrats came to Chicago in 1968 to find a nominee to replace Kennedy, young activists blamed Machine politics for perpetuating the Vietnam war.
“We were wired to make our voices heard…and the Chicago cops were wired to do something to stop us,” says Judy Gumbo, an organizer with the Youth International Party, one of the organizers of the mass protest movement.
The Yippies, as they were known, even brought forth their own candidate for the presidency, a pig they dubbed “Pigasus.”
“We used humor and satire…[to criticize] the power structure,” says Gumbo, “but the cops beat people up.”
Mayor Daley was so embarrassed about the protests outside, that he mobilized the National Guard to arrest hundreds of activists. He infamously ordered the Chicago Police Department to “shoot to kill” anybody they might see as a “potential murder.”
Democrats felt the chaos inside of the stadium, too. One prominent delegate even compared the Daley administration to the Gestapo, Nazi Germany’s secret police.
Many historians point to the 1968 convention as the impetus for moving the presidential nominating process away from closed-door meetings to the ballot box. Nearly every state party now uses primary voting or caucusing to determine their preferred nominee.
“So the nominating conventions have become sort of coronation ceremonies,” says Hemmer.
That will even be the case for Kamala Harris, who was actually nominated in a virtual roll call on July 30. Even though Joe Biden won the primary elections, he endorsed Harris and his delegates committed to her weeks before the convention.
A new era of conventions
After 1968, it took decades for another convention to come to Chicago. In 1996, Mayor Richard M. Daley, the first Mayor Daley’s son, hosted the Democratic National Convention that nominated Bill Clinton for a second term. In an attempt to rehabilitate the city’s image, that year’s convention went off without incident.
Now, as Chicago hosts its 26th major party presidential convention, delegates are gathering at the United Center to go through the motions of selecting Kamala Harris and Tim Walz to head the Democratic ballot.
Even though conventions have become far more transparent and democratic over the decades, some groups are still wired to have their voices represented. A group called the Poor People’s Army won a permit on a legal technicality to march up to the doors of the United Center.
“This is a show of strength, and an irrevocable step away from the Democratic party machine,” says Andy Wills, Andrew Willis is a local organizer for that group.
The 2024 convention organizers see outside groups’ interest in the convention as evidence of a robust electoral process.
“Kamala Harris is for more freedom, not less for Americans, so we're going to make sure that people have the ability to express themselves,” says Alex Hornbrook, Executive Director of the 2024 Democratic National Convention Committee.
Transcript
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The Democratic National Convention comes next week in Chicago. We will have plenty of coverage here on NPR News. This event is hardly the first presidential convention in Chicago. There have been some historic ones, some really good ones, a few bad ones. In fact, Chicago has hosted more conventions of this sort than any other city in the country. From Chicago, reporter Julian Hayda shares some history.
JULIAN HAYDA, BYLINE: In Chicago's financial district, gleaming glass and steel skyscrapers tower hundreds of feet above. A look down at one sidewalk, there's an old bronze slab with the profile of a young Abraham Lincoln.
Here we are, the site of the Wigwam in which Abraham Lincoln was nominated for president - 1860.
JOHN SCHMIDT: This is the temporary wooden structure. No architectural significance.
HAYDA: Chicago historian John Schmidt is pointing out spots around town where 25 American presidential hopefuls were nominated to both Republican and Democratic ballots.
SCHMIDT: And this is where Abraham Lincoln was - our greatest president started on the road to the White House. Right here in Chicago.
HAYDA: The 1860 Convention was the first ever hosted by the city. Local politicians used some pretty callous tactics to get the underdog, Lincoln, ahead of his more mainstream opponent.
EDWARD ACHORN: What Lincoln's people did was print up counterfeit tickets to the Wigwam and give those out to their supporters.
HAYDA: Edward Achorn is the author of "The Lincoln Miracle" about the 1860 convention and all of the people behind the scenes who worked to get Lincoln nominated, including his campaign manager, David Davis.
ACHORN: Somebody said, you must have prevaricated somewhat. And he said, prevaricated? We lied like hell. So that was the Lincoln team. And he was Honest Abe, and that was his reputation. And these were the men representing him in Chicago, very practical, pragmatic guys who wanted to get the job done.
HAYDA: Chicago hosted eight more conventions for the Republicans and Democrats through the end of the 19th century. Achorn says it was the ideal place to host conventions because, well, it was demographically representative of the United States, centrally located and the kind of place where backroom deals could be made. That sort of brokered convention was typical for most of American history, says Nicole Hemmer, presidential historian at Vanderbilt University.
NICOLE HEMMER: If somebody doesn't have enough delegates in order to be the outright nominee, then there needs to be some wheeling and dealing in order to figure out who the nominee is going to be.
HAYDA: All conducted, Hemmer says, in smoke-filled rooms by political elites.
PIERRE-LOUIS GIACOTTO: This is the smoke-filled room, and you can recognize through the pipe, the little pipe.
HAYDA: Pierre-Louis Giacotto, the general manager of The Blackstone Hotel in Chicago, opens the door for me to take a peek inside of Room 915. In the thick of the 1920 Republican National Convention, nobody knew who the nominee would be. That is until United Press reporter Raymond Clapper wandered The Blackstone's hallways to catch wind of who might lead the party. Clapper wrote that a senator from Kansas exited Room 915 in the dead of night. Quote, "They're going to go for Senator Warren G. Harding, the candidate made in a smoke-filled room," unquote.
SCHMIDT: So they nominated him. He was elected. Very popular.
HAYDA: Historian John Schmidt.
SCHMIDT: Smoke-filled rooms gave us Abraham Lincoln, then, you know, FDR and a bunch of good - great presidents.
HAYDA: When delegates met again at the Chicago Stadium in 1940, it was a history-making move for Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER #1: Here's the amazing scene as the Democratic National Convention in Chicago names President Roosevelt as its candidate in the November elections. So the tradition of not standing for a third term is broken.
HAYDA: Historian Schmidt says that then-Chicago Mayor Ed Kelly really wanted a third term for FDR.
SCHMIDT: Ed Kelly had a man by the name of Gary, who was the head of his sewer department. And Mr. Gary brought out all the - a whole bunch of sewer workers, and they packed the stands, the gallery of the Chicago Stadium. And whenever - when Roosevelt's name was mentioned, Mr. Gary is down in the basement, and he's got a special hook up to the auditorium. And finally, he starts going, (chanting) we want Roosevelt. We want Roosevelt. And, of course, all the people in the stands going, (chanting) we want Roosevelt. We want Roosevelt.
HAYDA: Historians cite this early 20th-century era as the golden age of machine politics. Political strongmen with the right connections conducted backdoor deals to get what they wanted in Chicago and nationally. For example, in 1960, when Republicans held their last convention in the city, they nominated Richard Nixon. He ended up losing to Democrat John F. Kennedy in the general election with the help of Chicago's boss, Mayor Richard J. Daley. A challenge to the machine came in the summer of 1968, though, when Democrats convened in Chicago to select a nominee for a 10th time.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER #2: When the flower children and thousands of other protesters hit the streets here next week...
HAYDA: It was just a few months after the murders of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy. Thousands of mostly young protesters descended on the Democratic National Convention to protest the Vietnam War. Judy Gumbo was an organizer with the Youth International Party, the Yippies, who coordinated much of the effort.
JUDY GUMBO: The Chicago cops were wired to do something to stop us, and we were wired to make our voices heard. And ultimately, both happened.
HAYDA: Mayor Daley made it clear with a now-infamous quote saying he'd meet protesters with force.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
RICHARD J DALEY: To shoot to kill any arsonist or anyone with a Molotov cocktail in their hand in Chicago to fire a building because they're potential murderers.
HAYDA: The 1968 convention was a turning point. Afterwards, primary elections became the main way that states selected nominees, and it took decades for another nominating convention to come to Chicago. It was in 1996 that Richard J. Daley's son, then-Mayor Richard M. Daley, made it his mission to rehabilitate the city's disastrous convention image.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
RICHARD M DALEY: You're not going to rewrite history. History cannot be rewritten. Maybe some people will try, but you can't.
HAYDA: And with tons of security, the 1996 convention went off without a hitch, nominating Bill Clinton to a second term. Now, nearly three decades later, Democrats will gather at Chicago's United Center for a celebratory roll call for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, the nominees already chosen to head the Democratic presidential ticket. It's a historic twist of the process and the 26th time that Chicago has been the host to a major party presidential convention.
For NPR News, I'm Julian Hayda in Chicago.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CHICAGO")
CROSBY, STILLS, NASH AND YOUNG: (Singing) In the land that's known as freedom, how can such a thing be fair? Won't you please come to Chicago for the help that we can bring? We can change the world. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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