Al Smith

Alfred Emanuel Smith (December 30, 1873 – October 4, 1944) was an American politician who served as the 42nd governor of New York from 1919 to 1920 and again from 1923 to 1928. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the party's presidential nominee in the 1928 presidential election, losing to Republican nominee Herbert Hoover in a landslide.

The son of an Irish American mother and a Civil War–veteran Italian American father, Smith was born and raised on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City, near the Brooklyn Bridge. He resided in that neighborhood for his entire life. Although Smith remained personally untarnished by corruption, he—like many other New York Democrats—was linked to the notorious Tammany Hall political machine that controlled New York City politics during his era. Smith served in the New York State Assembly from 1904 to 1915 and was the speaker of the Assembly in 1913. He also served as the sheriff of New York County from 1916 to 1917. He was first elected governor in 1918, lost his 1920 bid for re-election, and was elected again in 1922, 1924, and 1926. Smith was the foremost urban leader of the efficiency movement in the U.S. and was noted for achieving a wide range of reforms as governor.