Delaware County Progressive Committee
By: Zac Bow
Zac Bow, a director at the Delaware County Historical Society, recently found this letterhead from the Delaware County Progressive Committee, a short lived party that was affiliated with Roosevelt’s Bull Moose Party.
While the piece seems to date from 1914 (or 1915 at the latest), the Delaware County Progressive Committee (DCPC) can actually trace its origins to the formation of the Progressive Party in the aftermath of the June 1912 Republican National Convention in Chicago. After William H. Taft was selected as the Republican presidential candidate over Theodore Roosevelt at the contentious convention, the Progressive Party, or the “Bull Moose Party” as it was commonly called, was formed to challenge the conservative faction of the Republican Party. With Roosevelt at the helm, the party was able to garner a substantial portion of the popular vote in the 1912 presidential election — totaling over 27 percent of the total vote — but ultimately came up short in capturing the necessary support to obtain the office. Locally, the DCPC elected permanent officers for the first time on July 30, 1912 and proceeded to endorse Roosevelt and his “Square Deal” philosophy nationally and numerous progressive candidates at the state and local levels. As a prominent example, the Progressive Party supported Harry L. Kitselman for mayor in the 1913 city election, which resulted in a respectable second place finish — easily surpassing the totals of the Republican and Citizens party candidates — to Democratic nominee Dr. Rollin H. Bunch. However, in the immediate years following the 1912 and 1913 election cycles, support for the Progressive Party began to slowly wane and in 1916, the party functionally ceased to exist after Theodore Roosevelt rejected the party’s presidential nomination and officially threw his support behind the Republican candidate: Charles Hughes. Furthermore, after 1916, no mention of the DCPC can be found in the local papers and it can be inferred that the party went the way of the national party.
