Al Smith in The 1920s
Al Smith (1873–1944) was a four-term Governor of New York and the Democratic candidate for president in 1928.
Smith, a fierce opponent of Prohibition and the first Roman Catholic to win a major-party nomination for the presidency, was trounced in the 1928 election by Republican Herbert Hoover. Smith's nomination revealed the weakening split in the Democratic Party during the 1920s.
His appeal to the Northern, urban, ethnic, anti-Prohibition wing of the party was offset by his rejection by Southern, rural, white, Protestant, Prohibitionist Democrats. Smith became the first Democrat since the Civil War to lose multiple states of the old Confederacy.