[2] Corning declined the 1928 race because he was in increasingly poor health, and retired from business and political life after leaving the lieutenant governor's office in December 1928.

Although Roosevelt was the ideal complement to Smith as a prominent rural, upstate Protestant without strong views on Prohibition who had supported Woodrow Wilson, he was very reluctant to run.

After failing to persuade Roosevelt through many phone calls and telegrams from late September, on October 2, Smith finally got him to agree to run if nominated; the state convention did so the next day.

Roosevelt followed President Herbert Hoover's advice and asked the state legislature for $20 million in relief funds, which he spent mainly on public works in the hope of stimulating demand and providing employment.

In response to various allegations of public corruption among the judiciary, police force, the city government, and organized crime, Roosevelt began the Seabury Commission investigations in 1930.

With Tuttle losing Republican support because he was regarded as insufficiently "dry" on the Prohibition question (he favored prohibiting the sale and transportation of alcohol but thought it was a state issue, not federal), and the electoral tide turning towards Democrats as voters largely blamed Republicans for the Great Depression, Roosevelt and Lieutenant Governor Herbert H. Lehman won landslide reelections in November, leaving Roosevelt well-positioned to run for president in 1932.

Roosevelt's second term in Albany was focused on measures to counter the effects of the Depression, such as the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration which eventually provided unemployment assistance to 10 percent of New York's families.

[21] In August 1932, Roosevelt forced Tammany's hand on the corruption issue by convening a public hearing on the question of removing Walker as mayor.