He
therefore stayed in it, and supported Mr. Blaine.
The Democrats nominated the courageous Governor of New York,
Grover Cleveland. Both before and after this, he and Mr. Roosevelt
worked together for measures of good government, and respected
each other, while belonging to different parties. The presidential
election turned out to be close, and in the end several incidents
besides the split in the Republican party worked against Blaine.
He was narrowly defeated. The change of a few hundred votes in the
State of New York would have made Blaine the President. As in
later years large election frauds were discovered to have been
going on in New York, some people contend with good show of
reason, that Blaine and not Cleveland was really the choice of the
voters.
Two years after this, in 1886, when Roosevelt was on his Dakota
ranch, the Republicans nominated him for Mayor of New York City.
He was about twenty-eight years old, and it is evident that he had
made a mark in politics. He came East, accepted the nomination,
and made the campaign.
The opponents were, first, Abram S. Hewitt, a respectable
candidate nominated by Tammany Hall in its customary fashion of
offering a good man, now and then, to pull the wool over the eyes
of persons who naturally need some excuse for voting to put New
York into the hands of the political organization whose existence
has always been one of America's greatest disgraces.
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