he's actually got a fairly sort of progressive outlook on women in government. i mean, the advent of the women's vote doesn't immediately have a huge impact certainly on national politics. it ultimately begins to build. but it doesn't have the impact that many people are predicting. and in terms of new york state politics, i mean, john would know this better than i. but i don't have the perception that it really transforms his candidacy. >> not at first. in fact, smith was not in favor of women suffrage. he changed his mind. in fact, smith's mother said, i'll never vote. there's no need for me to vote. and she does. she casts her first ballot, i believe, for her son for governor. but smith's hook on women's suffrage is, he gets belle moskowitz and a lot of these people involved and he starts to realize, these are new voters. and they said, how do i talk to these people? they said, talk to them like you

would talk to a chamber of commerce. like you would anybody else in a campaign. smith starts to realize that women suffrage is a good idea. i can enlighten these people. i can get them to vote democratic. that's where he gets the brain trust and many of the people who work for him for governor, for president, a lot of reformers that become sturdy supporters of the democratic party. smith capitalizes on that. >> just a few blocks south of here is the new york governor's mansion. al smith lived in there for eight years or so during his career here. what was life like for al smith at the governor's mention. >> hectic. >> would he walk up here to the assembly? >> he would walk. he would walk up here. in fact, when i worked for the legislature, worked for an assemblyman up in his 80s who remembers the governor -- used to tell me these stories. he remembered the governor walking over from the governor's mansion to the capitol. he'd stop him and say, do you go to school with my son? probably son arthur. yeah, yeah, i do.

the governor would joke with him and everything. he was very much, i guess you could say, just a neighborhood guy. the mansion, of course, had five children. its own zoo. this is true. he had a zoo. >> was it there when al smith got there? >> no. he brought them all with him. a lot of things were given to him. he had a bear. he had deer. he had elk. at one point somebody gave him an alligator. >> why? >> he had all this stuff. smith always loved animals. when he was a kid he used to collect dogs. down in the south street and on the seaport and everything, people would come in, sailors would come in and they'd have these exotic animals. and they'd give him monkeys and goats. he'd take them home and put them in his attic. then he'd have them in his backyard. he never lost this. he never had less than two dogs, i think he used to say. in fact, when he came here for his first term he brought with him his great dane. and the great dane jumped up on

to charles whitman and smith joked in his good sense of humor, it's the tammany tiger comes to take over. that was his love of animals. the governor's mansion with five children, with all of these animals, it was always a hectic place. and he always had the neighborhood kids dropping in. it was kind of a very friendly kind of family atmosphere. >> if i could add on the animal front, we actually all owe smith a bit of a debt for his love of animals. because one of his great allies first in state government and then in the government of new york city was robert moses, famous parks commissioner of new york, the man who made new york in many ways. he and smith remained very, very affectionate well into the '30s after smith is really out of political life. and one of the reasons that as robert moses is sort of refashioning new york's parks, et cetera, one of the reasons that he insists that there be a zoo in central park is so that al smith can come visit the animals. he's living uptown by that point. there are really some very poignant stories for the end of smith's life about him.

he literally had a key to the zoo. and he would go down there, sometimes in the middle of the night. he would take his grandchildren down. he would just kind of hang out with the animals at the central park zoo. but in many ways the central park zoo really is robert moses's tribute to al smith and his love of animals. >> the honorary night superintendent was smith of the central park zoo. >> we've had a very patient audience here in the assembly with us. in just a minute, we're going to start taking questions from you as well. but we've had a very patient tony in pleasantville, new york, who's been on the line holding. tony, you're on c-span on "the contenders." >> caller: peter, thank you. this series and for c-span, i've been watching for over 20 years. i think that if more people watched c-span, we'd have better presidential candidates. but you beat me to the punch. i had -- i wanted to ask about belle moskowitz and robert moses. the two of your guests have pretty much handled that.

i wonder if they could expand on belle moskowitz's role in the office of governor and the job she had for governor smith. and also earlier you mentioned that al smith didn't speak for two years. eighth grade education. didn't speak in the assembly. intimidated by all of the other lawyers that were there. can you tell us what al smith did at night while the others went down on state street to booze it up and carouse? what was al smith doing and how did he educate himself to become the majority leader and speaker. >> we're going to get john evers to answer those questions. but i know you're a new yorker. is that your reason for your interest in al smith and your knowledge? >> well, i read a great book called "empire statesman." i didn't know much about al smith even though i worked in albany for a while. i knew the al smith building was there, the tallest building in new york state before the empire state building, i believe. but i didn't know much about al smith until i read a book, a

biography called "empire statesman." >> all right. thanks for calling in tonight, tony. john, belle moskowitz and what al smith did to educate himself. >> belle moskowitz served as his unofficial gate keeper. she would serve as his adviser. it was probably the best way to describe it as she was the person who would pass through all of these labor programs, all of these reconstruction commission. in fact, the reconstruction of new york state, which eventually led to the reforming of the state constitution and the establishment of a strong chief executive, was done with the reconstruction commission. that was belle moskowitz's brain child. he recruited bob moses' administration.

they used to joke and say, that's the brains of tammany hall. it was kind of they joked with it because they weren't irish catholics, they were new york city and they were jewish. the interesting point you made about him not speaking in the assembly, smith sat so far back and was so intimidated, and he was so lost that he went back to new york after his second term and told tom foley, the tammany boss of his district, i think i might be in over my head. and he told him, i might be able to find you a job. maybe superintendent of buildings in new york city. if you really can't hack it. and that appealed to smith's ability to fight. he said, i'm not going to admit that i can't handle something. so he went back with a mission. he took all the bills back every night and read them. read every bill introduced so that he could understand the legislature. because he didn't have a high school or college degree. he wasn't a lawyer.

the assembly at the time was prominently the legal field. smith made sure that he could do that. also since he didn't have any money, i mean, he lived on the $1,500 a year plus the traveling expenses. he had nothing else to do. he didn't go out partying at night. he didn't do bad things. he missed his family. he would go back to his room at his hotel and he'd read. and when he wasn't there, he'd been in the legislative library look up the bills and the laws that they affected. >> are they still about 300 pages long? >> they could save a lot of trees by having them done electronically. smith was the chairman of ways and means. in 1911 he used to read the appropriation bill cover to cover. and he said not ten people in the assembly or the senate could explain the appropriation bill. thick stacks of appropriation, line by line by line. he mastered that and it ultimately led him to become a very good financial governor because he had an understanding of the budget system. >> we have a question here from

our audience. i want to introduce this question here. this is dave pietrusza, an author. did not know he was going to be here tonight. we know him from book tv. he wrote a book about the 1960 election. he just has a new book comes out which is called "1948" about the 1948 election. go ahead, mr. pietrusza. >> thank you. your guests are doing a great job tonight. there's some constants in the al smith's career. there's tammany hall, there's franklin roosevelt and there's another fellow, william randolph hearst. what can you say about that relationship, specifically the 1918, the 1922 gubernatorial races and the 1932 presidential nomination process? >> let's start with beverly gage. >> well, hearst is one of al smith's great critics. he's one of those towering figures at the moment. he turns into one of smith's great critics. he's sort of the man around which smith learns how to deal

with the press in many ways. i know that you -- we were talking earlier. you said you had been writing about this in great detail about the milk issue and hearst's attacks on smith. >> this is a great question. i'm glad dave brought this up. william randolph hearst was probably one of the most controversial government figures or quasi government figures in new york history. he was a two-term congressman from new york city. he basically bought the seat. he went to tammany hall, says he wanted it. tried to get the nomination in 1904 for president of the united states and he lost that. he runs for governor in 1906 against charles evans hughes and loses. runs for new york city mayor and loses. but he has control of the two newspapers, "the evening journal" and "the new york american." and he turns out real -- the bases appeal to people. to try to tell them that i know better. i'm a reformer.

i want municipal ownership of utilities that will lower your rates. i want to have transparent government. you can get that if you back me. in 1918 he wants the nomination for governor. and they try to figure out how to go about, you know, who's going to get this. they settle on smith. smith goes and gets elected. in 1919, immediately, william randolph hearst starts to poke at smith's programs. there's a milk strike in new york city. the upstate dairies can't get the milk into new york city. they then have a milk strike upstate where the producers won't ship it to new york city. well, none of this is within the purview of the governor's powers. the governor tries to get his department of farms and markets to act. they don't act because they don't report to the governor because the governor has no power over his own departments. hearst won't take this answer. he says you're moving too slow on municipal ownership. you're the governor. make the legislature do this.

they won't do this. smith goes head to head with him. october 29th, 1919, he takes the stage at carnegie hall and has it out with hearst. he has a debate. invites hearst to the debate. hearst won't show up to the debate. he goes to sam simeon and buys more art work. smith goes and probably loses control, red in the face, screams and yells about this man and unmasks hearst. hearst ironically comes out and backs smith for re-election. smith wants nothing to do with it. he battles again in 1922. smith is going to make a comeback for running for governor. hearst wants the nomination. smith says i won't run a ticket with hearst. either me or hearst. he'll settle to be u.s. senator. i won't run on a ticket where he's going to be u.s. senator. i won't run on a ticket with hearst at all. smith was one of those guys, well, he was honest. he says i'm not going to be somebody that would change my mind left and right and be as

despicable as hearst when it comes to character assassination. smith wins. he also unseats the new york city mayor who is an ally, mayor hylan, one of hearst's allies, replaces him with jimmy parker. hearst gets the last laugh. in 1932 hearst uses his power to throw on the fifth ballot or sixth ballot the nomination of -- from the fdr/smith battle, he takes his votes from california under mcadoo, i believe, and texas with john nance garner and give it to roosevelt. knocks smith out. he loses the nomination because of hearst behind the scenes. >> there were three or four presidential elections that al smith was active in. 1920, '24, '28 and '32. here's a newsreel recap.

from 1932 about the '24, '38, and 1922 elections. >> then the great political battle of 1924 where with alfred e. smith and john w. davis he stood out as a leader. there never was a political convention to match the democratic national gathering of 1924 in new york. mcadoo against al smith. day after day a fruitless -- terrific storms of passion shaping the delegates and convulsing the thousands in the gallery. franklin d. roosevelt's presentation of the name of alfred e. smith. the happy warrior. democratic convention in the lone star state. once more franklin d. roosevelt took the stage to praise as only he could do. the man for whom he has always

had such affection and respect, naming him again the happy warrior, his friend, alfred e. smith. the governor of new york. al smith who will always have his own place in the hearts of the american people. but events were moving fast. al smith is candidate for president in 1928. wanted a good man to run for governor. her persuade franklin roosevelt to make the race. although mr. smith lost the state by a narrow vote, franklin roosevelt elected to his first term as governor. already franklin d. roosevelt was a favorite for the nomination. his leading opponent was none other than his old friend alfred e. smith. >> franklin d. roosevelt, having received more than two-thirds of all the delegates voting, i proclaim him the nominee of this convention for president of the united states! >> you have nominated me, and i know it. and i am here to thank you for

the honor. i pledge myself to a new deal for the american people. >> and back live in the new york state assembly chamber, beverly gage, how did we get from 1928, fdr calling al smith the happy warrior, supporting him, to 1932 presidential election? >> right. well, 1928, they are -- they had been allies before that as well. both coming up through the same new york democratic party. a couple of things happened between 1928 and 1932. some of which are very personal and some of which are on a grand scale. the most important thing that happens between 1928 and 1932 is, of course, that we enter depression. so herbert hoover begins in

1929 as president. you get the stock market crash that year. by 1932 you're really in the deepest, darkest moment of the depression. so that's bad news. but for the democratic nominee for president that's actually really good news. so in 1932 al smith wants to be the candidate again. in fact, he's put forth as a possibility. but there's a lot of controversy about whether or not this is going to be a good idea. there are a lot of people who do not want to introduce into what looks like it's going to be a smashing democratic year all of the issues that you had seen in 1928. issues about catholicism, issues about prejudice, issues about prohibition. all of these sorts of things. franklin roosevelt has a little bit to say about these things. but when he's a candidate in 1932 he's kind of being as even keel about all of this as you possibly can be. and so smith is gunning for this and there's a lot of pushback

about that. and it's not clear either that smith is a huge fan of roosevelt. they've had a very, very cooperative relationship, but it's always been smith through the elder statesman with roosevelt the supportive younger man. and it seems that at this moment smith -- in fact, we should acknowledge like a lot of people in the united states in 1932 he views franklin roosevelt kind of as a dilettante, someone not willing to come out and make hard stands on issues, someone who's had a life of leisure. he's come from this wealthy family. here's smith who's worked his way up. you've got this sort of personal drama playing out at the same time you've got a political drama playing out. of course, we know who wins that in the end in 1932. and it doesn't take very long for smith to begin to attack roosevelt personally as well as politically. and i think that it's easier to understand his personal

animosity toward roosevelt as it begins to develop. i've always found it a little bit more puzzling to understand how by 1936 he's actually endorsing the republican presidential candidate and is embracing a kind of politics that he really hadn't embraced before. is it because he's heartbroken in is it because he doesn't like roosevelt? is it because he's actually changed his mind as he sees roosevelt actually enact the new deal? i think these are all still kind of open questions about their relationship. >> and now back to your calls here on "the contenders." sheridan, arkansas, richard you're on, please go ahead with your question. >> caller: my grandfather albert godwin was a county democrat chairman, a state senator, supporter of al smith. compare al smith's campaign for president and dewey's campaigns

for president. >> let's ask the former new york state assembly his story. if he could do that in a minute or less. >> oh, sure. there's no comparison. >> tom dewey will be one of the show. >> there's no comparison, with dewey the personalities could not be more different, they could not be, first of all, smith is a democrat, dewey is a republican, smith is a progressive, prenew deal campaigner. and dewey takes over the reigns in new york state. and he runs new york state during the new deal, and he is by all accounts somebody that puts in place the programs. he is not a republican in the sense of a conservative.

dewey wanted to be president and made it known, i think there was rumors that he was going to run for president, he was a possible presidential candidate when he was still new york district attorney, he had it in the cards that he wanted to do it for a long time. smith as campaign in 1928 was troubled from the start. he got the nomination and did his campaign from july onwards. dewey had more of the modern campaign that he got -- in fact fdr did it in 1952 -- he knew he would run early on and he traveled the country getting his campaign in order. the big differences between dewdu dewey and al smith is that dewey was out there preparing more than al smith ever was. >> we have a question here in the audience. >> my name is amy and i'm from clifton park, new york, besides the zoo that al smith brought the zoo, what was his most

notable achievement. >> as governor? >> as governor. >> if i were to rattle it off, it would be impressive. but we do not have like three hours. probably smith's biggest achievements were to bring progressiveness in the modern age, he was the prenew deal type person. fdr had his own programs but smith had the modern labor code, he had parks and recreation, he had new york state vote on bonds. hundreds of millions dollars of bonds to improve roads and bridges, parks, hospitals prisons, he was ahead of his time when it came to criminal justice. smith's whole movement of government was not to downsize government but to use government as a tool to provide people with services. instead of it used to be a

conservative where government was simply there. the federal government would delivery the mail, it had the military. in new york state, it was not that much different. it had functions, but it did not go out and regulate utilties or have the interaction with people that needed it. so if his overall accomplishments in new york tate was to launch us on a social welfare in the best positive sense of the word. >> when you are here in the new york state capitol, beautiful old building finished in 1894, here in albany, surrounded by state government office buildings, would al smith -- what would he think about the growth of state government in new york? >> i think that he would be okay with state government as it is. when smith was governor, it was ten, ten and a half million people. he realized that new york state government needed to be housed.

in fact he was one of the people that said you have to get all of these agencies not only coordinated but he used to yoek and say, we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to rent offices, can't we build office buildings and professionalize the state workforce. he believed that using the government to deliver services, that was the proper role of government, he stood with it his whole life. he thought the new deal went too far. >> i want to just add on the national stage, i think he really plays a very different but equally important role in the sense that you know, smith's candidacy in 1928 comes after a decade whereas we have sort of said already, issues about immigration, issuings about race, you had immigration reform passed in the early 1920s. in part, targeting people from places like italy, like russia,

people who were considered ethnically different. the other great, kind of social subject was the rise of the kkk, the kkk in the 1920s is a mass organization, it's not kind of the southern targeted klan that we think of in the '60s and '70s, strong hold in indiana and midwestern states and a lot of urban centers in the east have large klan populations that were targeting catholics and jews, and immigrants and these were the issues driving the plan. smith is a person that stands up to national stage and says no to all of that. he said no, that is not what the united states is supposed to stand for, all of those people that you are talking about restricting and pushing out, who you are describing as foreign, those are my people, we are all americans and stands for it

powerfully on the national statement, even though he is rejected as the president. >> and in a moment, we will ask what the guests think al smith's biggest failures were. but kate, you are on the contenders go ahead. >> i was so excited to hear you were going to have al smith on. my grandfather was part of the irish catholic machine, and of course, they did split ranks in '28 and voted for al smith. but my question is, after -- after mr. roosevelt's election, al smith had very harsh words to say both about president roosevelt, the new deal and the democratic party. and do you think it was because he feared that the democratic party was edging too close to socialism and away from true progressiveness? >> i think that his initial responses in 1928 were more of a emotional response.

basically, saying, and he admitted it, saying i'm done, i'm not going run again and then he comes back in '32 and said, well, i changed my mind. he wanted to set the record straight and say, you know, i think i can do a good job on this, his split with roosevelt is hard to explain, a lot of historians have struggled with this. he alternatively said it went too far and in certain things that is okay. he supports preparation for the war in the late '30s. but then he will not support roosevelt in 1940. it's kind of hard to pin smith down near the end except that he thinks that the federal government is growing too big. he blames some of the proliferation of the agencies as to how government got off track, and he hides behind the state's rights issues, he thought prohibition was a state issue, you cannot flew the federal

government police people's individual behavers and he said that it was a state right's issues which played great for the democratic party, but he stretched it when it came to states rights. >> we heard from john who is the former new york state assembly historian, and we heard from beverly gage, from yale university, wendell wilke, he supported over fdr, in fact, here is al smith on the radio talking about his support for wendell wilke. >> i would just like to make a little observation. i would like to wonder what could be going on in the mind of the 16 million men that are in the draft. i wonder if they are not saying to themselves, if this becomes serious, if it becomes necessary

that we have to face an enemy, who would you want to be behind? the third time candidate or wilke? [ applause [ applause ] the only hope for the people is the election of wendell wilke -- [ applause ] >> who believes in the constitution of the united states and the principals upon which it was founded. when he is chosen to guide this nation, then and then only will the stars and stripes again wave over the land of the free and the home of the brave. [ applause ] >> bever