John W. Davis, a dark horse, eventually won the presidential nomination on the 103rd ballot, a compromise candidate following a protracted convention fight between distant front-runners William Gibbs McAdoo and Al Smith.

Wealthy New Yorkers, who had outbid other cities, declared their purpose "to convince the rest of the country that the town was not the red-light menace generally conceived by the sticks".

(McAdoo's candidacy was hurt by the revelation that he had accepted money from Edward L. Doheny, an oil tycoon implicated in Teapot Dome.)

The Ku Klux Klan had surged in popularity after World War I, due to its leadership's connections to passage of the successful Prohibition Amendment to the U.S.

Instead, tension between pro- and anti-Klan delegates produced an intense and sometimes violent showdown between convention attendees from the states of Colorado and Missouri.

Non-Klan delegates, led by Sen. Oscar Underwood of Alabama, attempted to add condemnation of the organization for its violence to the Democratic Party's platform.

[10] The first day of balloting (June 30) brought the predicted deadlock between the leading aspirants for the nomination, William G. McAdoo of California and Gov.

McAdoo was the leader from the outset, and both he and Smith made small gains in the day's fifteen ballots, but the prevailing belief among the delegates was that the impasse could only be broken by the elimination of both McAdoo and Smith and the selection of one of the other contenders; much interest centred about the candidacy of John W. Davis, who also increased his vote during the day from 31 to 61 (with a peak of 64.5 votes on the 13th and 14th ballots).

After six minutes the chairman's gavel brought order and the roll call resumed, and soon the other side had something to cheer, when New Jersey made its favorite son, Gov.

Smith's trick was to plant his extra votes for his opponent, so that McAdoo's strength might later appear to be waning; the Californian countered by holding back his full force, though he had been planning a strong early show.

With the party split into two assertive parts, the rule requiring a two-thirds vote for nomination crippled the chances of both candidates by giving a veto each could—and did—use.

According to Claude Bowers, McAdoo said: "I like the old Senator, like his simplicity, honesty, record"; and it was reported that he told Smith supporters he would withdraw only in favor of Ralston.

As with John W. Davis, Ralston had few enemies, and his support from men as divergent as the Bryans and Taggart cast him as a viable compromise choice.

He passed Davis, the almost consistent third choice, on the fifty-second ballot; but Taggart then discouraged the boom for the time being because the McAdoo and Smith phalanxes showed no signs of weakening.

The alphabetically sorted list of all 58 candidates: Thirteen names were placed into nomination for Davis' vice-presidential running mate, two of which were withdrawn before the balloting commenced.

The choices represented the party's coalition at the time: there were five Episcopalian ministers; three Presbyterians; three Lutherans; two Roman Catholics; two Baptists; two Methodists; one each from the Congregationalists, Disciples of Christ, Unitarians, and Christian Scientists; and two Jewish rabbis.

With the convention deadlocked over the choice of a nominee, some of the invocations became calls for the delegates and candidates to put aside sectionalism and ambition in favor of party unity.

[17][18][19] Among the clergy who spoke to the convention: In his acceptance speech, Davis made the perfunctory statement that he would enforce the prohibition law, but his conservatism prejudiced him in favor of personal liberty and home rule and he was frequently denounced as a wet.

The dry leader Wayne Wheeler complained of Davis's "constant repetition of wet catch phrases like 'personal liberty', 'illegal search and seizure', and 'home rule'".

[32][33] In fact, the widely circulated photo depicted a December 1924 march by Klansmen in Madison, Wisconsin, and had no connection to any political convention.

[34][4] The term "Klanbake" appears to have been coined by New York Daily News columnist Joseph A. Cowan, in a satirical column reporting on the Convention at the time.