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In the Chicago mayoral election of 1935, incumbent Interim Mayor Edward J. Kelly (who had been appointed to office of mayor after the assassination of Anton Cermak) defeated Republican Emil C. Wetten and independent candidate Newton Jenkins by a landslide 60% margin of victory.
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Both major parties held primary elections to select their nominees. In the Democratic Party primary, Interim Mayor Kelly won a massive majority over three opponents, winning 88.92% of the overall vote. In the Republican primary, Wetten won a sizable majority against two opponents. Businessman Mortimer B. Flynn was the strongest of his opponents. The second opponent, Grace Gray, was the first woman to ever file as a candidate for mayor of Chicago.
Interim mayor Edward J. Kelly ran for election to a full first term. He had been appointed as interim mayor by the Chicago City Council following the death in office of Anton Cermak and subsequent resignation of acting mayor Frank J. Corr.
Despite a blizzard, a substantial number of Chicago voters participated in the Democratic mayoral primary.[1] Edward J. Kelly won what was the greatest plurality ever in a Chicago mayoral primary.[1]
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Democratic | Edward J. Kelly (incumbent) | 479,825 | 88.92 | |
| Democratic | Martin Powroznik | 39,153 | 7.26 | |
| Democratic | James Fred Robertson | 15,541 | 2.88 | |
| Democratic | John P. O'Meara | 5,077 | 0.94 | |
| Turnout | 539,596 | 100.00 | ||
The Republican primary was won by Emil C. Wetten. Wetten was an attorney that had served in such roles as first assistant corporation counsel for the city.[3]
Mortimer B. Flynn had been president of the Pottinger-Flynn Coal Company.[4][5]
Unsuccessful candidate Grace A. Gray was the first woman ever to file as a candidate for mayor of Chicago.[6]
The primary illustrated a collapse in Chicagoans' support for the Republican Party. In the previous election, more than five times as many voters had participated in the Republican primary.[1]
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republican | Emil C. Wetten | 69,600 | 59.73 | |
| Republican | Mortimer B. Flynn | 37,061 | 31.80 | |
| Republican | Grace Gray | 9,868 | 8.47 | |
| Turnout | 116,529 | 100.00 | ||
Newton Jenkins, an attorney,[8] ran as an independent candidate. Jenkins promoted himself as a "progressive" candidate.[9][10]
Jenkins had run for office before. He first ran for alderman of the 27th Ward in 1920.[8] He ran in the Republican primary of the 1924 United States Senate election in Illinois on a Robert La Follette-aligned platform.[8][11] During the 1930 Illinois U.S. Senate race he had been one of several candidates challenging incumbent Charles S. Deneen for the Republican Party nomination. Ultimately, Ruth Hanna McCormick had received the Republican nomination.[8][11][12] He again ran unsuccessfully in the Republican primary of the 1932 United States Senate election in Illinois.[8][11]
Jenkins' run was supported by the Third Party, an effort to create a new party. The party claimed itself to be spun-off from the progressive Republican movement.[13] The party, which intended to use "U.S., Unite" as its national slogan and utilize the buffalo as its mascot, sought to use Jenkins' candidacy as a national launchpad for the party.[8][13][14] This effort ultimately merged into the short-lived Union Party, on which party line Jenkins would go on to run unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate in 1936.[8][15][14]
Jenkins was very openly antisemitic.[14][15] During his campaign, Jenkins published a number of antisemitic pieces.[16] The platform of the Third Party-backed slate of independent candidates in the 1935 Chicago municipal elections was to create a city manager position in the city, to adopt the city commission-style of government in Chicago, to create jobs for the head of family of 100,000 households, to eliminate taxes in the city, and to end "corrupt elections".[17] The Third Party was regarded to be "openly fascist".[18] The July 10, 1935 edition of the American Guardian newspaper wrote that Jenkins had,
Established contact with the Chicago Nazi organization, has appeared on platforms with uniformed Nazis at their official meetings, is openly anti-Semitic and has announced as part of his policy the formation of highly militarized storm troops to defend and protect the interests of his party. The Jenkins [Third Party] is also anti-labor, Jenkins having pescribed the lamp post hanging as the cure for all labor "agitators".[18]
Wetten framed his campaign against Kelly as a campaign against machine politics.[19] Wetten was a rather weak opponent.[20]
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Democratic | Edward J. Kelly (incumbent) | 798,150 | 75.84 | |
| Republican | Emil C. Wetten | 166,571 | 15.83 | |
| Independent | Newton Jenkins | 87,726 | 8.34 | |
| Turnout | 1,052,447 | 100.00 | ||
Kelly received 84.84% of the Polish-American vote, while Wetten received 8.08%.[22]
Kelly would go on to win reelection twice. In 1947, he would forgo seeking a fourth term after being urged to step aside by the Cook County Democratic Party, which had been concerned about the prospect of Kelly losing a general election due to scandals which had plagued him during his fourteen years as mayor.[23][24][25]
This was the first Chicago mayoral election won by a candidate hailing from the Bridgeport neighborhood of Chicago.[26] Over the subsequent decades, Bridgeport would come to generate several additional mayors, with Martin Kennelly, Richard J. Daley, Michael A. Bilandic, and Richard M. Daley all hailing from the neighborhood.[26]
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