[3][4][5] The head of the Ku Klux Klan, Imperial Wizard Hiram Wesley Evans, was in the city for the convention but maintained a low public profile.

[4][5] Time featured Evans in a cover photograph[6] in conjunction with an article about the organization's role in the Republican convention, dubbing it "the Kleveland Konvention.

Coolidge fended off his progressive challengers with convincing wins in the Republican primaries, and was assured of the 1924 presidential nomination by the time the convention began.

Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover of California and appellate judge William Kenyon of Iowa were seen as the front-runners for the nomination, as both were popular Western progressives who could provide balance to a ticket led by a conservative from Massachusetts.

[10] Illinois Governor Frank O. Lowden, University of Michigan president Marion Leroy Burton, Ambassador Charles B. Warren of Michigan, Washington Senator Wesley Livsey Jones, college president John Lee Coulter of North Dakota, General James Harbord, and General Charles Dawes also had support as potential running mates.

Schulman spoke with appreciation for "the Republican Party's precious heritage of the championship of human rights"; he called for "every form of prejudice and misunderstanding" to be "driven forever out of our land".

Schrembs characterized President Calvin Coolidge as "a chieftain whose record of faithful public service, and whose personality, untarnished and untainted by the pollution of political corruption, will fill the heart of America with the new hope of a second spring".