Governor of New York in the context of "Presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933–1941)"

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882 – April 12, 1945), also known as FDR, was the 32nd president of the United States, serving from 1933 until his death in 1945. He is the longest-serving U.S. president, as well as the only one to have served more than two terms. His first two terms were centered on combating the Great Depression, while his third and fourth saw him shift his focus to U.S. involvement in World War II. A member of the Democratic Party, Roosevelt previously served in the New York State Senate from 1911 to 1913, the assistant secretary of the Navy under President Woodrow Wilson from 1913 to 1920, and as the 44th governor of New York from 1929 to 1932.

Born into the prominent Delano and Roosevelt families in Hyde Park, New York, Roosevelt graduated from Harvard University with a Bachelor of Arts. He entered Columbia Law School in 1904, but dropped out in 1907 after passing the New York bar examination. Roosevelt was elected to the New York State Senate from 1911 to 1913 before serving as the assistant secretary of the Navy under President Wilson during World War I. Roosevelt was James M. Cox's running mate on the Democratic ticket in the 1920 presidential election, which Cox lost to Republican nominee Warren G. Harding. In 1921, Roosevelt contracted a paralytic illness that permanently paralyzed his legs. However, he returned to the public office upon being elected governor of New York in 1928, partly through the encouragement of his wife Eleanor, and during his tenure as governor of New York, he promoted programs to combat the Great Depression. After receiving the Democratic nomination, Roosevelt defeated President Herbert Hoover in a landside victory in the 1932 presidential election.

The Rockefeller Republicans were members of the United States Republican Party (GOP) in the mid–20th century who held moderate to liberal views on domestic issues, similar to those of Nelson Rockefeller, the governor of New York from 1959 to 1973 and Vice President of the U.S. from 1974 to 1977. Rockefeller Republicans were most common in the Northeast and the industrial Midwestern states (with their larger moderate-to-liberal constituencies), while they were rare in the South and the West.

The term refers to "[a] member of the Republican Party holding views likened to those of Nelson Rockefeller; a moderate or liberal Republican". Geoffrey Kabaservice states that they were part of a separate political ideology, aligning on certain issues and policies with liberals, while on others with conservatives and on many with neither. Luke Phillips has also stated that the Rockefeller Republicans represent the continuation of the Whig tradition of American politics.

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (/ˈɛlɪnɔːr ˈroʊzəvɛlt/ EL-in-or ROH-zə-velt; October 11, 1884 – November 7, 1962) was an American political figure, diplomat, and activist. She was the longest-serving first lady of the United States, during her husband Franklin D. Roosevelt's four terms as president from 1933 to 1945. Through her travels, public engagement, and advocacy, she largely redefined the role. Widowed in 1945, she served as a United States delegate to the United Nations General Assembly from 1945 to 1952, and took a leading role in designing the text and gaining international support for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In 1948, she was given a standing ovation by the assembly upon their adoption of the declaration. President Harry S. Truman called her the "First Lady of the World" in tribute to her human rights achievements.

Roosevelt was a member of the prominent and wealthy Roosevelt and Livingston families and a niece of President Theodore Roosevelt. She had an unhappy childhood, having suffered the deaths of both parents and one of her brothers at a young age. At 15, she attended Allenswood Boarding Academy in London and was deeply influenced by its founder and director Marie Souvestre. Returning to the U.S., she married her fifth cousin once removed, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in 1905. Between 1906 and 1916 she gave birth to six children, one of whom died in infancy. The Roosevelts' marriage became complicated after Eleanor discovered her husband's affair with her social secretary, Lucy Mercer, in 1918. Due to mediation by her mother-in-law, Sara, the liaison was ended officially. After that, both partners started to keep independent agendas, and Eleanor joined the Women's Trade Union League and became active in the New York state Democratic Party. Roosevelt helped persuade her husband to stay in politics after he was stricken with a paralytic illness in 1921. Following Franklin's election as governor of New York in 1928, and throughout the remainder of Franklin's political career, Roosevelt regularly made public appearances on his behalf; and as first lady, while her husband served as president, she greatly influenced the present scope and future of the role.

The 1928 New York state elections were held on November 6, 1928, to elect the governor, the lieutenant governor, the state comptroller, the attorney general, a U.S. Senator and a judge of the New York Court of Appeals, as well as all members of the New York State Assembly and the New York State Senate.

Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 8, 1932. Against the backdrop of the Great Depression, the Republican ticket of incumbent President Herbert Hoover and incumbent Vice President Charles Curtis were defeated in a landslide by the Democratic ticket of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the governor of New York and John Nance Garner, the Speaker of the House. This realigning election marked the effective end of the Fourth Party System, which had been dominated by Republicans, and the beginning of an era of Democratic dominance under the New Deal coalition.

Despite disastrous economic conditions due to the Great Depression, Hoover faced little opposition at the 1932 Republican National Convention. Roosevelt was widely considered the front-runner at the start of the 1932 Democratic National Convention, but was not able to clinch the nomination until the fourth ballot of the convention. The Democratic convention chose a leading Southern Democrat, Speaker of the House John Nance Garner of Texas, as the party's vice presidential nominee. Roosevelt united the party, campaigning on the failures of the Hoover administration. He promised recovery with a "New Deal" for the American people.

John Jay (December 23 [O.S. December 12], 1745 – May 17, 1829) was an American statesman, diplomat, signatory of the Treaty of Paris, and a Founding Father of the United States. He served from 1789 to 1795 as the first chief justice of the United States and from 1795 to 1801 as the second governor of New York. Jay directed U.S. foreign policy for much of the 1780s and was an important leader of the Federalist Party after the ratification of the United States Constitution in 1788.

Jay was born into a wealthy family of merchants and New York City government officials of French Huguenot and Dutch descent. He became a lawyer and joined the New York Committee of Correspondence, organizing American opposition to British policies such as the Intolerable Acts in the leadup to the American Revolution. Jay was elected to the First Continental Congress, where he signed the Continental Association, and to the Second Continental Congress, where he served as its president. From 1779 to 1782, Jay served as the ambassador to Spain; he persuaded Spain to provide financial aid to the fledgling United States. He also served as a negotiator of the Treaty of Paris, in which Britain recognized American independence. Following the end of the war, Jay served as Secretary of Foreign Affairs, directing United States foreign policy under the Articles of Confederation government. He also served as the first secretary of state on an interim basis.

Edward Thurlow Weed (November 15, 1797 – November 22, 1882) was an American printer, newspaper publisher, and Whig and Republican politician. He was the principal political advisor to prominent New York politician William H. Seward and was instrumental in the presidential nominations of William Henry Harrison (1840), Zachary Taylor (1848), and John C. Frémont (1856).

Born in Cairo, New York, Weed apprenticed as a printer under William Williams and served with him in the War of 1812 before winning election to the New York State Assembly. He met Seward in the assembly, and they formed a close political alliance that lasted for several decades. Weed and Seward became leaders of the New York Anti-Masonic Party, and Weed established the Albany Evening Journal as the party's main newspaper. Weed supported the American System of Henry Clay and helped establish the Whig Party in the 1830s. He helped Seward win election as Governor of New York and supported the successful presidential candidacies of Harrison and Taylor.

William Henry Seward (/ˈsuːərd/; May 16, 1801 – October 10, 1872) was an American politician who served as United States Secretary of State from 1861 to 1869, and earlier served as governor of New York and as a United States senator. A determined opponent of the spread of slavery in the years leading up to the American Civil War, he was a prominent figure in the Republican Party in its formative years, and was praised for his work on behalf of the Union as Secretary of State during the Civil War. He also negotiated the treaty for the United States to purchase the Alaska Territory.

Seward was born in 1801 in the village of Florida, in Orange County, New York, where his father was a farmer and owned slaves. He was educated as a lawyer and moved to the Central New York town of Auburn. Seward was elected to the New York State Senate in 1830 as an Anti-Mason. Four years later, he became the gubernatorial nominee of the Whig Party. Though he was not successful in that race, Seward was elected governor in 1838 and won a second two-year term in 1840. During this period, he signed several laws that advanced the rights of and opportunities for black residents, as well as guaranteeing jury trials for fugitive slaves in the state. The legislation protected abolitionists, and he used his position to intervene in cases of freed black people who were enslaved in the South.