The Candidate (Part 1 of 3)

Core idea

In 1934 the Republican Party nominated Robert Moses for governor of New York. He ran a sneering, condescending, prosecutorial campaign against incumbent Democrat Herbert Lehman, attacked Lehman's relatives, mocked upstate voters' concerns, advocated a state sales tax in the conservative-Republican heartland, and lost by 800,000 votes — the largest gubernatorial-margin defeat in New York history. The campaign was the personal humiliation that ended his electoral ambitions forever and clarified that he was built to wield power, not to win it.

Why it matters

The Republican choice

The state Republican Party in 1934 was casting around for a candidate who could compete with Lehman. Moses, prominent in the press, was an unusual choice — a Jewish lifelong Democrat being run on the Republican ticket. He accepted the nomination, telling reporters it had been more or less forced on me. The reluctance was largely fictional. He wanted it.

The campaign as catastrophe

Moses spent the campaign sneering. He proposed a state sales tax in Binghamton, where the Chamber of Commerce opposed any tax. He attacked Jack Murray, Lehman's campaign chair, for his deceased father's political associations. He mocked upstate concerns. The press, which had loved him in 1933, turned hostile. He lost 1,808,672 to 2,477,955 — by 800,000 votes.

Key takeaways

Mental model

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Practical application

Example

Henry Kissinger and George Shultz were enormously effective Secretaries of State and would have been catastrophic presidential candidates. They knew it. Moses learned the same lesson in one campaign and accepted it for the rest of his life.

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