Klansmen were influential inside
both major parties, pushing racism, nativism, Prohibition and especially anti-Catholicism. In the South, Jim Crow-supporting Democrats made a natural fit for the KKK. But in Midwestern industrial towns full of immigrant Catholics and Jews who voted Democratic, the Klan took root largely among Republicans. The Klan was Democratic in Oregon and Republican in Indiana — two of its biggest strongholds. By the end of the decade, the organization, whose membership remained semi-secret, claimed 11 governors, 16 senators and as many as 75 congressmen —roughly split between Republicans and Democrats.
Its initial successes in state and local elections prompted the Klan to turn its attention toward the White House in 1924. Its imperial wizard, Hiram W. Evans,
first descended on Cleveland, where Republicans had gathered to nominate Calvin Coolidge. There, about 60 Klan leaders and lobbyists prevailed upon party officials to smother a resolution condemning the Klan before it ever went to a floor vote, a move called a “brilliant victory” by
The Fiery Cross, a Klan newspaper in Indianapolis that also described the Republican convention as having a “real, genuine Klan atmosphere.”
Emboldened by its success in Cleveland, Klan leaders appeared two weeks later at the Democratic convention in New York City. There was great support for the Klan among many state delegations, but bitter opposition from others. The conflict was exacerbated by the party’s hopeless division over Prohibition, with the “wet” wing of the party hoping to nominate New York Gov. Al Smith, a Catholic.
Unlike in Cleveland, however, the KKK confronted vigorous pushback at the Democratic convention, first in a raucous debate over whether to condemn the Klan by name (a resolution to do so lost by a razor-thin margin amid numerous last-minute vote changes) and then in a bitter fight over the presidential nomination itself, in which both the Klan and anti-Klan candidates ultimately withdrew.
By all accounts, Klan representatives had expected to influence the Democratic convention the same way they had the Republican one — by quietly building support for their preferred nominations and policy planks behind the scenes, while picking up what H.L. Mencken called “a lot of free and gaudy advertising.” But vocal opposition caught the organization off guard. “There is such a thing, it appears,” wrote Mencken, “as being burnt by the spotlights.”