Progressive Party | |
|---|---|
| Chair | Robert M. La Follette |
| Founded | 1924; 101 years ago (1924) |
| Dissolved | 1927; 98 years ago (1927) |
| Split from | Democratic Party Republican Party |
| Succeeded by | Wisconsin Progressive Party |
| Headquarters | Washington, D.C. |
| Ideology | Agrarianism Left-wing populism Progressivism Wisconsin Idea[1][2] |
| Political position | Left-wing[3][2] |
TheProgressive Party was apolitical party created as a vehicle forRobert M. La Follette to run for president in the1924 election. It did not run candidates for other offices, and it disappeared after the election. The party advocatedprogressive positions such as government ownership of railroads and electric utilities, cheap credit for farmers, the outlawing ofchild labor, stronger laws to helplabor unions, more protection of civil liberties, an end toAmerican imperialism inLatin America, and areferendum before any president could lead the nation into war.
After winning election to theUnited States Senate in 1905, La Follette had emerged as a leader of progressives. He sought theRepublican presidential nomination in the1912 election, but many of his backers switched toTheodore Roosevelt after the former president entered the race. La Follette refused to join Roosevelt'sProgressive Party, and that party collapsed after 1916. However, the progressives remained a potent force within both major parties. In 1924, La Follette and his followers created their own Progressive Party which challenged the conservative major party nominees,Calvin Coolidge of the Republican Party andJohn W. Davis of theDemocratic Party.
The Progressive Party was composed of La Follette supporters, who were distinguished from the earlier Roosevelt supporters by being generally more agrarian, populist, and midwestern in perspective, as opposed to urban, elite, and eastern. The party held anational convention in July 1924 that nominated a ticket consisting of La Follette for president, and La Follete later selected Democratic SenatorBurton K. Wheeler ofMontana as his running mate. The ticket enjoyed support among many farmers and laborers and was endorsed by theSocialist Party of America, theFarmer–Labor Party and theAmerican Federation of Labor.
In the 1924 election, the party carried only La Follette's home state ofWisconsin. The ticket won 16.6% of the national popular vote and carried many counties in the Midwest and West with largeGerman American elements or strong labor union movements. Kenneth McKay estimates that about 52 percent of the LaFollette's support (2,530,000 votes) came from farmers; 20 percent (1,000,000) from socialists; another 20 percent from union members of the American Federation of Labor; and about 8 percent from railroad workers.[4]
The party's share of the vote represents one of the bestperformances by a third party in presidential election history.
The Progressive Party's National Committee held its last meeting in 1927.[5] In 1934, nine years after his death, Follette's sons created theWisconsin Progressive Party and briefly dominated Wisconsin politics.
Years before, La Follette had created the "Progressive" faction inside theRepublican Party of Wisconsin in 1900. In 1912 he attempted to create aProgressive Party but lost control toTheodore Roosevelt, who became his bitter enemy.[6]
In 1924 his new party (using the old 1912 name) called for public ownership of railroads, which catered to theRailroad brotherhoods. La Follette ran with SenatorBurton K. Wheeler, Democratic Senator fromMontana. The party represented a farmer/labor coalition and was endorsed by theSocialist Party of America, theFarmer–Labor Party and theAmerican Federation of Labor and many railroad brotherhoods. The party did not run candidates for other offices, and only carried one state, Wisconsin. La Follette continued to serve in the Senate as a Republican until his death the following year, and was succeeded in a special election in 1925 by his son,Robert M. La Follette Jr.[7]
The La Follette family continued his political legacy in Wisconsin, publishingThe Progressive magazine and pushing for liberal reforms. In 1934, La Follette's two sons began theWisconsin Progressive Party, which briefly held power in the state and was for some time one of the state's major parties, often ahead of the Democrats.[8]
Hiram W. Johnson, backed by women's suffrage activist and early feministKatherine Philips Edson,[9] was a candidate for California governor in 1910, the Progressive Party vice presidential nominee in 1912, and was reelected asGovernor of California on the Progressive ticket in1914. In 1916, he was elected as a Progressive to the U.S. Senate and continued his affiliation with the state party throughout his decades in the Senate, while simultaneously winning the Republican nomination. While Johnson was personally close to Theodore Roosevelt, he was much closer ideologically to Robert La Follette. Johnson sat out the general election in 1924 after unsuccessfully challenging PresidentCalvin Coolidge for the Republican nomination. Johnson personally disliked La Follette but grudgingly admired his quixotic third-party bid and generally agreed with his 1924 platform.[10]
In 1934, when the La Follettes founded theWisconsin Progressive Party, theCalifornia Progressive Party obtained a ballot line in California and ran seven candidates (all unsuccessful, althoughRaymond L. Haight got 13% of the vote forGovernor of California, running as a moderate against socialist and Democratic nomineeUpton Sinclair). In 1936 they electedFranck R. Havenner asCongressman forCalifornia's 4th congressional district, and garnered a significant portion of the votes in some other races.
Havenner became a Democrat before the 1938 race; Haight defeated eventual winnerCulbert Olson in the Progressive primary election, but received only 2.43% of the vote in the general election as a Progressive; and by the time of the 1942 gubernatorial election, the Progressives were no longer on the California ballot. By 1944, Haight was again a Republican, a delegate to theRepublican National Convention.[11]
| Year | Presidential nominee | Vice-Presidential nominee | Popular votes | Percentage | Electoral votes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1924 |  Robert M. La Follette |  Burton K. Wheeler | 4,831,706 #3 | 16.6% | 13 |
He won 5 million votes nationwide — the highest total in the 20th century for a third-party candidate on the left... In fact, the program that La Follette ran on — taxing the rich, cracking down on Wall Street abuses, empowering workers to organize unions, defending small farmers, breaking up corporate trusts, strengthening public utilities — fueled a resurgence of left-wing populist movements across the upper Midwest: the Non-Partisan League of North Dakota, the Farmer-Labor Party of Minnesota and the Progressive Party of Wisconsin.
