Grover Cleveland

At 71 years old, Grover Cleveland has this physical status:

Political career in New York

Cleveland allied with the Democratic Party from his early days in politics. He had a deliberate dislike for Republicans, John Fremont and Abraham Lincoln, and the Rogers law firm's CEOs were committed Democrats. He ran for District Attorney in 1865, losing only marginally to his colleague and roommate, Lyman K. Bass, as the Republican nominee.

Cleveland earned the Democratic nomination for Sheriff of Erie County, New York, in 1870, with the support of a friend, Oscar Folsom. He gained the presidency by a 303-vote margin and took office on January 1, 1871, at the age of 33. Although his new work led him away from the use of law, there were other ways in which the fees were said to increase over the two-year period (equivalent to $904,778 in 2021).

Remarkable in Cleveland, but biographer Rexford Tugwell described the period in office as a political waste for the city. During his tenure as sheriff's office, Cleveland was aware of graft but chose not to address it. On September 6, 1872, Patrick Morrissey was executed, during a pivotal event of his term. He had been found guilty of murdering his mother. Cleveland was either personally executing the execution or paying a deputy $10 to do the job. Despite reservations about the hanging, Cleveland executed Morrissey himself. On February 14, 1873, John Gaffney, another murderer, was hanged.

Cleveland returned to his law practice after his term as sheriff ended, founding a company with his friends Lyman K. Bass and Wilson S. Bissell. Bass was elected to Congress in 1872, but Cleveland and Bissell soon followed him to the top of Buffalo's legal scene. Cleveland's political career had been both honorable and unexceptional up to this point. "Probably no man in the country on March 4, 1881, had less hope than this slim, simple, and robust advocate of Buffalo" that four years later, he would be standing in Washington and taking the oath as President of the United States," biographer Allan Nevins wrote.

Maria Halpin, a widow, was arrested during this time. She accused him of raping her later. As some early reports suggested, Halpin was killed by Cleveland, or if their friendship was consensual. The incident was, it seems, consensual. Cleveland accused Halpin of being an alcoholic and had her child removed from her care in March 1876. The child was taken to the Protestant Orphanage Asylum in Asylum, and Cleveland paid for his stay there. Halpin was admitted to the Providence Asylum in an attempt to have her sober and get her life back to normal. Halpin was only in prison for five days because she was not insane. Cleveland welcomed her after she left the asylum in order to help her start her own business outside of Buffalo. Despite the fact that there is no clear evidence that Cleveland was the father, the illegitimate child became a campaign issue for the Republican Party in Cleveland's first presidential election, where they smeared him by claiming that he was "immoral" and for allegedly behaving cruelly by not raising the child yourself.

Buffalo's municipal government had become increasingly bloated in the 1870s, with Democratic and Republican political machines working to divide the spoils of political power. The Republicans nominated a number of particularly disreputable machine leaders in 1881; Democrats saw the opportunity to gain the support of dissatisfied Republicans by nominating a more credible candidate. As the majority of the ticket was to his liking, the party leaders met in Cleveland, and he accepted his bid for Mayor of Buffalo. Cleveland accepted the nomination when the more prominent politicians were left off the Democratic ticket. Cleveland received 15,120 votes over Milton C. Beebe, his rival, at 11,528. He took office on January 2, 1882.

The term of Cleveland's mayor was spent fighting the party's entrenched concerns. A veto of the Common Council's street-cleaning bill was one of the Common Council's vetoes. The street-cleaning service had been up for bidding, and the Council selected the highest bidder at $422,000 rather than the lowest bidder at $100,000 less due to the bidder's political links. Though this sort of bipartisan graft had previously been tolerated in Buffalo, Mayor Cleveland would not have a clue. "I regard it as the culmination of a most naked, impudent, and shameless plot to violate the people's interests and threaten the public funds," his veto message read. The Council reversed itself and awarded the job to the lowest bidder. Cleveland also requested that the state legislature form a Commission to develop a plan to upgrade the sewer system in Buffalo at a much cheaper price than had been anticipated locally; this initiative was successful. Cleveland began to gain a following outside of Erie County as a leader committed to combating government abuses through this and other measures.

Officials from the New York Democratic Party began considering Cleveland as a potential candidate for governor. Daniel Manning, a party insider who admired Cleveland's record, was instrumental in his candidacy. With a split in the state Republican party in 1882, the Democratic Party was thought to have a leg up; many men ran for the party's nomination. Roswell P. Flower and Henry W. Slocum were the top Democratic candidates for the two leading Democratic candidates. Their factions were deadlocked, and the convention was unable to decide on a nominee. Cleveland, which had been in third place on the first ballot in subsequent elections, regained support and emerged as the compromise choice. The Republican Party remained split, with Cleveland winning by 535,318 votes to Republican nominee Charles J. Folger's 342,464. Cleveland's margin of victory was, at the time, the largest in a contested New York election; Democrats also secured seats in both houses of the New York State Legislature;

Cleveland reacted angrily to the governor's office by vetoing eight senators in his first two months. The first thing to stand out was his veto of a bill to lower the fares on New York City commuter trains to five cents. Since the trains' owner, Jay Gould, was unpopular, the bill was widely accepted, and fare hikes were widely condemned. Cleveland, on the other hand, found the bill unjustified—Gould had taken over the railroads when they were failing and had made the operation work again. In addition, Cleveland found that changing Gould's brand would be in breach of the federal Constitution's Contract Clause. Despite the initial success of the fare reduction bill, the newspapers lauded Cleveland's veto. Theodore Roosevelt, a member of the Assembly, had reluctantly voted for the bill, which Cleveland had opposed, in an attempt to discipline the unscrupulous railroad barons. Roosevelt recovered himself after the veto, as had many senators, and the veto was retained.

Cleveland's defiance of political corruption earned him acclaim, as well as the enmity of the influential Tammany Hall group in New York City. Tammany's resistance erupted after Cleveland publicly condemned and prevented the re-election of Thomas F. Grady, the state's head man, under its chairman, John Kelly. Cleveland has steadfastly opposed Tammanyites' candidates, as well as bills that have been approved as a result of their merger process. Tammany's absence was offset by Theodore Roosevelt and other reform-minded Republicans who aided Cleveland in passing several law reforming municipal government.

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