Al Smith, president of the New York City aldermen, was elected to the first of his four two-year terms as governor.

Following his failed candidacy for U.S. Senate in 1914, Franklin D. Roosevelt reconciled with Tammany Hall.

He delivered the keynote address at the society's 1917 Fourth of July celebration, and Tammany stalwarts John M. Riehle, William Kelley, Thomas J. McManus, and up-and-comer Jimmy Walker endorsed him as a potential candidate for governor in 1918.

However, he refused, believing that the ongoing Great War would continue through the election and that 1918 would be a Republican year.

[2] Roosevelt instead endorsed William Church Osborn,[3] though he would later claim to have engineered Smith's nomination himself.