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87 Nat'l Civic Rev. 1 (1998)

handle is hein.journals/natmnr87 and id is 1 raw text is: INTRODUCTION Political Reform and the Future of American Democracy Modern political fundraising began with William McKinley's campaign for president in 1896. The innovator was Mark Hanna, a successful Cleveland entrepreneur-turned-political kingmaker, who backed McKinley (at that time the governor of Ohio) in his campaign against William Jennings Bryan. Hanna was the precursor of the modern media consultant, who controls the candi- date's schedule to fit the message and strategy of the campaign. As McKinley sat on his front porch in Canton, Ohio, receiving delegations of well-wishers from across the country, Hanna mobilized an army of speakers to crisscross the nation, refuting Bryan's famous Cross of Gold speech and spreading word of the merits of the Ohio Republican. Some reports suggest that the campaign raised as much as $12 million, which would have been a staggering sum in those days. Most of the money came from New York financial circles, through an assessment on banks, which would benefit from the continuance of the gold standard that McKinley staunchly defended. Other donations came from large corporations and wealthy individuals. Hanna's campaign machinery overwhelmed Bryan, but at least one participant had second thoughts. Theodore Roosevelt, who was then a young police commissioner from New York and McKinley's running mate, was disgusted by some of Hanna's methods, complaining that he advertized McKinley as if he were a patent medicine. Hanna's fervent courting of the very rich caused Roosevelt to muse on the historian Brooks Adams's gloomy antic- ipations of our gold-ridden, capitalist-be-stridden, usurer-mastered future. It is not surprising that Roosevelt was troubled by Hanna's campaign tac- tics. A committed reformer, the former New York police commissioner was one of several prominent Progressives who, only two years earlier, had founded the National Municipal League (the present-day National Civic League). During the late nineteenth century, America's largest cities where undergoing deep social and political turmoil. Powerful big-city party bosses and corrupt patron- age machines were the order of the day. The reformers, however, saw the prob- lem as more than individual or partisan corruption; rather, it was the result of an antiquated and inadequate system of government at the local level. A successful movement to professionalize city government and reform local elec- tion procedures made significant improvements in the quality of democracy in many American communities. NATIONAL Civic REVIEW, vol. 87, no. 1, Spring 1998 ©Jossey-Bass Publishers 1

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