Election
In 1829, Weed was an Anti-Masonic member of the New York State Assembly, and also started production of the Albany Evening Journal, the first number was issued on March 22, 1830. The Evening Journal was first the main Anti-Masonic newspaper, and from 1834 on the main Whig paper and had in the 1840s the largest circulation of any political newspaper in the United States. After 1856, it was one of the Republican newspapers. As the Evening Journal's editor, proof reader, political manager and main reporter, he was a vocal advocate for economic development, supporting new banking measures, internal improvements such as roads and railroads, and the rest of Henry Clay's American System.
Weed skillfully blamed the Panic of 1837 on Martin van Buren and the Democrats, and in 1838, he pushed his friend and fellow Whig Seward for the governor's race, and was largely credited with Seward's victory. Seward thus owed Weed favors throughout his governorship, which increased Weed's power in the state. Weed then put the power of the New York Whig party behind William Henry Harrison's presidential bid in 1840. By this time, Weed had the power to bend the Whig party to his will.
Read more about this topic: Thurlow Weed
Famous quotes containing the word election:
“Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“He hung out of the window a long while looking up and down the street. The world’s second metropolis. In the brick houses and the dingy lamplight and the voices of a group of boys kidding and quarreling on the steps of a house opposite, in the regular firm tread of a policeman, he felt a marching like soldiers, like a sidewheeler going up the Hudson under the Palisades, like an election parade, through long streets towards something tall white full of colonnades and stately. Metropolis.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“In the past, as now, Haiti’s curse has been her politicians. There are still too many men of influence in the country who believe that a national election is a mandate from the people to build themselves a big new house in Petionville and Kenscoff and a trip to Paris.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)