William Lemke's 1936 campaign

[soniquemd21921]

Isolationist North Dakota congressman William Lemke ran a third-party, anti-New Deal campaign in 1936 on the Union Party ticket, and I've never been sure if his campaign was to the right or left of Roosevelt.

Possibly due to the support of Father Charles Coughlin, Lemke did very well in areas of New England with large Catholic populations such as Boston and Providence, where he got 8 percent of the vote. I suppose many of them were more conservative Irish who disliked the New Deal yet were reluctant to vote for Landon because he was on the Republican ticket.

His strongest showing came in the Midwest. Naturally, he did best in his home state of North Dakota (11 percent), but also ran very strong in predominantly German counties in the Upper Midwest. Much of these voters were likely isolationist Republicans who didn't want to vote for Roosevelt a second time yet weren't ready to return to the GOP fold. I would imagine nearly all of his Midwestern voters switched to the GOP en masse in the midterm elections of 1938 and when Willkie ran four years later (indeed, the counties showing the biggest swing to the GOP in 1940 were counties where Lemke had ran the strongest).

[Darth Maul]

Lemke ran to Roosevelts left.

[Peter the Lefty]

Yeah, his opposition to the New Deal was on the basis that it didn't go far enough.

[Kitteh]

It's a little more complicated then that, his campaign wasn't exactly an ideological leftist one, it was more a rural populist one similar to William Jennings Bryan and the Populist/Greenback parties in the past. Lemke didn't run on support or opposition to the New Deal in general, he ran more on specific policies to help farmers that Roosevelt didn't support. It's difficult to place him and the Union Party on a left-right scale because they had leftist economic ideas without being leftist in general ideology and also a bit of a social reactionary tinge, which is what attracted people like Coughlin. Overall I'd say the only way to describe their ideology is "populist".

Also, Lemke's VP candidate was an Irish Catholic (presumably, there's no much known about him but his last name was O'Brien) so that might have helped with Catholic/Irish support too.

[Darth Maul]

Yeah, his opposition to the New Deal was on the basis that it didn't go far enough.

Agreed. The Union party was meant as a vehicle for those who opposed Marxism and the New Deal. It was the party Hughy Long was meant to run on so it was to the Left of Roosevelt.