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Running A “Front Porch” Campaign: The Brilliance of Mark Hanna

© Melanie Storie

Amid this election year it would be inconceivable for potential presidential candidates to remain at home and give speeches from their front porches. Can you imagine traveling to Massachusetts to hear what John Kerry wants to accomplish if he is elected President? No, not many people can envision this today. Candidates today feel the need, and rightly so, to travel about the various states in order to take their message to the people. However, the campaigning process was much different during the 19th century. Presidential candidates rarely traveled about to make stump speeches and usually left much of the campaigning to their supporters. Indeed during the election of 1896, William McKinley thought it best to remain at home and give speeches from his front porch. Meanwhile, William Jennings Bryan, the Democratic nominee, took a different approach. Bryan traveled approximately 18,000 miles by railroad and spoke to close to 5 million people. Nevertheless, McKinley was able to carry the election by running his "front porch" campaign. So how was McKinley able to pull this off? It was nothing short of brilliance by his campaign manager Mark Hanna.

Mark Hanna, an Ohio business tycoon, had watched the country slip into a severe economic depression under the administration of Democratic President Grover Cleveland. Factions of the Democratic Party along with new political groups like the Populist Party, advocated silver as a solution to the economic woes. They insisted that by moving from the tightly controlled gold standard to a more flexible standard based on gold and silver would allow debtors (i.e. farmers and laborers) a better opportunity to pay off their debts. On the other hand businessmen like Hanna feared that the dollar based on gold and silver would become unstable and lose significant value. So in the interest of big business and prosperity Hanna was determined to restore the Republicans to the office of President. William McKinley became acquainted with Hanna while serving in the House of Representatives. Hanna's ties to big business allowed him to successfully finance McKinley's bid for the Republican Presidential nomination in 1896. In the meantime, Grover Cleveland disagreed with the so-called "silver" Democrats. With his party virtually split over the currency issue, Cleveland indicated that he was not interested in running on the Democratic ticket. So the nomination was wide open and the stage was set for William Jennings Bryan, a young Congressman from Nebraska. Bryan's supporters had suggested that he take the traditional action of remaining at home while they secured his nomination at the Democratic convention in Chicago. However, Bryan was not content to remain at home and he traveled to Chicago to win the nomination through his own efforts. Known for his oratory skills Bryan locked up the nomination after delivering his dramatic "Cross of Gold" speech. In this now famous speech he endorsed a silver platform saying, "You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold."

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