Upton Sinclair's Epic Run For Governor (1933)
This Day in Esoteric Political History
Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia
4.6 • 982 Ratings
🗓️ 7 September 2023
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It’s September 7th. This day in 1933, journalist Upton Sinclair launches a campaign for California governor.
Jody, Niki, and Kellie discuss why Sinclair turned to politics after enormous success and influence as a muckraking journalist — and how his radical progressive campaign found a large audience.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and |
| 0:03.7 | welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia. |
| 0:07.1 | My name is Jody Avergan. |
| 0:11.6 | This day, September 1933, Upton Sinclair began his campaign for governor of California. |
| 0:17.2 | Sinclair had run as a socialist candidate for Senate in 22, then as a socialist candidate for governor in 26 and 30 and now here he was again |
| 0:25.6 | declaring for the 1934 election and this time he switched his party and |
| 0:30.3 | registered as a Democrat because he thought his chances of winning would be a little better |
| 0:34.9 | running as a Democrat. |
| 0:36.4 | And I will spoil it for you folks. |
| 0:37.8 | His chances were a little bit better, but he did not win. |
| 0:40.5 | He lost to the incumbent Republican, but he got a pretty impressive 38% of the vote amid |
| 0:46.0 | record-breaking turnout in a super fascinating election in California. |
| 0:50.9 | It was called at the time, the race of the century. It was maybe the first to feature |
| 0:55.4 | attack ads and lots of other kind of modern dirty tricks which we will get into. |
| 0:59.2 | But then there's also this larger question of why Upton Sinclair is running for office over and over |
| 1:04.6 | after having made such a big impact in other ways. |
| 1:08.6 | You probably know the name Upton Sinclair, but you know one of the most influential writers of the |
| 1:12.4 | first part of the 20th century, his |
| 1:15.1 | muck-raking books exposed corporate corruption, they led directly to labor reforms. |
| 1:20.1 | So I think this is the first time we've really talked about Sinclair on the show, but we will do a little bit of him and a biography of him and then also talk about this political second act of his. |
| 1:30.8 | I was much more familiar with his writing and activism than I was with |
| 1:34.0 | his political life, which is really interesting. So here to discuss, as always, |
... |
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