A conservative Southerner, Garner opposed the sit-down strikes of the labor unions and the New Deal's deficit spending.

Garner again sought the presidency in the 1940 presidential election, but Roosevelt won the party's nomination at the 1940 Democratic National Convention and chose Henry A. Wallace as his running mate.

[6][7] That cabin no longer exists, but the large, white, two-story house where he was raised survives, at 260 South Main Street in Detroit, Texas.

[11] This disfranchised most minority voters until the 1960s, and ended challenges to Democratic power; Texas became in effect a one-party state.

It had become evident that Franklin D. Roosevelt, the governor of New York, was the strongest of several candidates, but although he had a solid majority of convention delegates, he was 87.25 votes short of the two-thirds required for nomination.

[16] Historian Patrick Cox traces the possible origin of this quote to a 1960 conversation with Lyndon B. Johnson, who consulted Garner on John F. Kennedy's offer to run for vice president.

Garner supported federal intervention to break up the Flint sit-down strike, supported a balanced federal budget, opposed the Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937 to "pack" the Supreme Court with additional judges, and opposed executive interference with the internal business of the Congress.

Garner identified as the champion of the traditional Democratic Party establishment, which often clashed with supporters of Roosevelt's New Deal.

The Gallup poll showed that Garner was the favorite among Democratic voters, based on the assumption that Roosevelt would defer to the longstanding two-term tradition and not run for a third term.

Time characterized him on April 15, 1940: Cactus Jack is 71, sound in wind & limb, a hickory conservative who does not represent the Old South of magnolias, hoopskirts, pillared verandas, but the New South: moneymaking, industrial, hardboiled, still expanding too rapidly to brood over social problems.

He stands for oil derricks, sheriffs who use airplanes, prairie skyscrapers, mechanized farms, $100 Stetson hats.

In congressional testimony, union leader John L. Lewis described him using tetrameter as "a labor-baiting, poker-playing, whiskey-drinking, evil old man".

However, Garner was also credited with steering a number of important bills through Congress in the crisis atmosphere of Roosevelt's first one hundred days in office and his relationship with the President would not become strained until Roosevelt's second term, when the Vice President's hopes of balancing the budget and paring New Deal programs faded.

[5] He was also active in Roosevelt's Cabinet meetings on national policy and legislative strategy, which also resulted in the effective transformation of the previously ceremonial office of the U.S. vice president.

[5] Also, by 1940, Garner had come to support federal legislation against lynching (although probably more out of political opportunism rather than for principled reasons) which Roosevelt opposed.

He retired to his home in Uvalde for the last 26 years of his life, where he managed his extensive real estate holdings, spent time with his great-grandchildren, and fished.

[24] His papers are held at the Briscoe Center for American History at UT Austin, which also operates Garner's former home as a historical site.