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.