(Editor's note: This is an updated version of a story that was published in the Journal Sentinel's Green Sheet in February 2019, before Milwaukee had been designated the host city for the 2020 Democratic National Convention — and then the convention went nearly all-virtual thanks to the coronavirus pandemic.)

A Republican incumbent facing a national emergency. A Democratic Party torn between populism and practicality. A divided nation united by the idea that America needs to get out of the mess it's in.

Sound familiar? That's how it was the first time Milwaukee landed a national political convention.

This week, Milwaukee is hosting the 2020 Democratic National Convention, but it's a very different gathering than the one the city had hoped for. About 50,000 people had been expected to come to town. But because of the pandemic, the nominee, Joe Biden, and the delegates are staying home, and all those high-profile gatherings are off.

In 1932, when Milwaukee hosted its first national presidential convention, for the Socialist Party, expectations weren't as high. That convention attracted about 800 people — a sliver of the number originally expected for the 2020 DNC.

A nation in crisis

When the Socialists gathered in Milwaukee in 1932, the White House seemed up for grabs. The Republican incumbent, Herbert Hoover, was flailing against the Great Depression. The Democratic front-runner, Franklin D. Roosevelt, faced opposition from conservatives in his own party.

And the Socialists, whose candidate Norman Thomas barely made an electoral dent in the 1928 election, believed their message would register with voters faced with a capitalist system that seemed to be crumbling.

Milwaukee was a logical place for the party to meet. Milwaukee Mayor Dan Hoan, Milwaukee's Socialist mayor since 1916, also was considered a serious presidential candidate — even though he said he wasn't running.

Other potential candidates included Thomas, who like Hoan had said he wouldn't run, and muckraking novelist and activist Upton Sinclair.

Of the 800 people who came to Milwaukee for the Socialists' convention, held at what was then the Auditorium on May 21-24, 1932, about half of them were delegates.

What started as a love-fest turned surly in a hurry.

On May 20, the night before the convention, about 30 party members making up a "militant" faction met in secret, barring reporters from the "capitalist press." Among their aims: Force the party to endorse the Soviet Union, a sore point between American Socialists and Communists.

On another front, other delegates, including celebrated New York columnist Heywood Broun, intended to defy party leaders by pushing for a platform calling for an end to Prohibition. (Party leaders hoped to avoid the hot-button issue by ignoring it.)

"I would not say that Prohibition is the most important issue of the moment," Broun told the Milwaukee Sentinel in a story published May 21, the first day of the convention. "But for the Socialist Party to mouth such platitudes as 'food is more important than beer' is to evade an issue of interest and importance to the American people."

The convention began with party leaders trying to keep a lid on dissent. After national party chairman Morris Hillquit opened the convention with a call for unity, Hoan made a more direct pitch:

"Take this advice," Milwaukee's mayor told the delegates. "Eliminate dissension, never swing to the right or too far to the left. … There can be no time to waste on bickerings and dissensions. America wants our plan."

Floor fights over Russia, beer

The delegates bickered anyway.

First, after a bitter floor battle that went late into the evening, they endorsed efforts in Russia "to create the economic foundations of a socialist society."

Then they fought over — and narrowly rejected — supporting the confiscation of America's principal industries. (The party's conservatives successfully lobbied to call it a "transfer," which sounded less threatening.)

And, with a boost from Broun and Hoan over party leaders' objections, the delegates pushed through a call for the repeal of Prohibition. (According to The Milwaukee Journal, one New England delegate opposed to the measure yelled from the floor: "The Massachusetts delegation is going back to tell every party member in the state what a dirty political machine is going to run this convention.")

Even picking a party chairman turned into a brawl. The left-leaning faction sought to replace Hillquit, who had led the party for years, in favor of Hoan. But, the Sentinel reported, the debate deteriorated into accusations of East Coast bias, anti-Semitism, pragmatism over principles, "and practically everything except Hillquit vs. Hoan."

In the end, Hillquit was re-elected chairman, but both sides were battered.

The only vote at the convention that wasn't a wild ride, apparently, was the one selecting a candidate: Despite the talk of nominating Hoan, Thomas and James H. Maurer, who was Thomas' running mate in 1928, were nominated unanimously.

Even with the convention-floor donnybrooks, Milwaukee's reputation came through unscathed.

At a banquet held at the Pfister Hotel on the final night of the fractious convention, participants raised a glass to Milwaukee.

B.C. Vladek, manager of the Jewish Daily Forward, which the Sentinel called the leading Socialist paper in America," called Milwaukee "the America of tomorrow": "If I owned all the real estate in the world, I wouldn't feel so powerful as I do on the streets of this socialist city," he said, according to a Sentinel story published May 24.

The Journal reported that Thomas, the newly minted presidential candidate, said Milwaukee is an example that shows Socialists that "dreams will someday come true."

Thomas' dreams of the White House didn't exactly come true in 1932. Roosevelt won in a landslide over Hoover, collecting more than 22 million votes. Thomas and the Socialist Party finished a distant third, with about 2% of the vote; still, the Socialists' tally, 884,885 votes, was nearly four times the ticket's 1928 total.

The Socialist Party held its political convention in Milwaukee another half-dozen times, most recently in 2015. And in 2004, the Green Party held its nominating convention in Milwaukee, picking David Cobb as its presidential candidate over high-profile gadfly Ralph Nader.

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