Slim Winnings for Tubby Taft: Utah and the Presidential Election of 1912

Authors

Natalie Larsen, Brigham Young University

Keywords

1914 Presidential Election, Utah, Republican

Abstract

Traveling on a special passenger train from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles, Utah governor William Spry waxed uncharacteristically eloquent with the reporters who hounded him for his insights on the 1914 congressional elections. Sent by the roundly Republican newspaper the Los Angeles Times, the reporters were looking to see how the dust had settled after the humiliating Republican losses two years earlier in 1912. Democrat Woodrow Wilson won a resounding victory that year, while Theodore Roosevelc's Progressive Parry won eighry-eight electoral votes, and the incumbent president William Howard Taft limped away with a meager eight electoral votes. Considering chose facts, the Times reporters paid careful attention to what the Republican governor had to say:

"This hysteria which helped to bring about the overthrow of the Republican parry is dissipating into a misty, musty past .... The people are returning co political sanity, having had enough of the temperate, so-called reform . . . . The third parry movement, so alluring co many only two years ago, is far down in the discard, where it belongs. Every Republican should participate in the burial. In Utah the Republican ticket will win, as it won 1912."

Recommended Citation

Larsen, Natalie (2017) "Slim Winnings for Tubby Taft: Utah and the Presidential Election of 1912," The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing: Vol. 46: Iss. 1, Article 12.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/thetean/vol46/iss1/12