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Alfred Mossman Landon (September 9, 1887October 12, 1987) was an American oilman and politician who served as the 26th governor of Kansas from 1933 to 1937. A member of the Republican Party, he was the party's nominee in the 1936 presidential election, and was defeated in a landslide by incumbent president Franklin D. Roosevelt. The margin of victory in the electoral college was the largest of Roosevelt's four elections to the office of president, as Landon won just 8 electoral votes to Roosevelt's 523. Landon died on October 12, 1987, becoming the only presidential candidate from either of the major parties to live to the age of centenarian until Jimmy Carter in 2024, and is to date the only Republican candidate to do so.
Born in West Middlesex, Pennsylvania, Landon spent most of his childhood in Marietta, Ohio, before moving to Kansas. After graduating from the University of Kansas, he became an independent oil producer in Lawrence, Kansas. His business made him a millionaire, and he became a leader of the liberal Republicans in Kansas. Landon won election as Governor of Kansas in 1932 and sought to reduce taxes and balance the budget in the midst of the Great Depression. He supported components of the New Deal but criticized aspects that he found inefficient.
The 1936 Republican National Convention selected Landon as the Republican Party's presidential nominee. He proved to be an ineffective campaigner and carried just two states in the election, neither of which was Kansas despite him being the sitting governor of that state. After the election, he left office as governor and never sought public office again. Later in life, he supported the Marshall Plan and President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society programs. He gave the first in a series of lectures, now known as the Landon Lecture Series, at Kansas State University. Landon lived to the age of 100 and died in Topeka, Kansas, in 1987. His daughter, Nancy Kassebaum, represented Kansas in the United States Senate from 1978 to 1997.
By 1929, Landon's career in the oil industry had made him a millionaire, and he was instrumental in the establishment of the Kansas-Oklahoma division of the United States Oil and Gas Association, then known as the Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, a petroleum lobbying organization.
Landon was married to Margaret Fleming until her death in 1918.
In 1930, however, incumbent Republican Kansas governor Clyde M. Reed failed to gain renomination, as he was defeated by challenger Frank Haucke, who would later go on to lose the general election to Harry H. Woodring. The election left the Kansas Republican Party damaged and divided. Landon decided to run in 1932 as a candidate who would reunite the Kansas GOP, and he won the nomination.
During the 1932 presidential campaign, a degree of animosity developed between Landon and then U.S. President Herbert Hoover. Osro Cobb of Arkansas, a friend of both men, tried to bring about a reconciliation, as he explains in his memoirs:
During his gubernatorial years, Landon attempted to address the needs of his Great Depression-battered state while still advancing the Republican Party. After his speech at the Cleveland convention in 1936, Landon stated, "My chief concern in this crisis is to see the Republican Party name its strongest possible candidate and a man that would be a good president." During the election year, Landon called for a "special session of the Legislature to enact measures to bring Kansas within the requirements of the federal social security program."
Landon proved to be an ineffective campaigner who rarely traveled. Most of the attacks on Roosevelt and Social Security were developed by Republican campaigners rather than Landon himself. In the two months after his nomination he made no campaign appearances. As columnist Westbrook Pegler lampooned, "Considerable mystery surrounds the disappearance of Alfred M. Landon of Topeka, Kansas ... The Missing Persons Bureau has sent out an alarm bulletin bearing Mr. Landon's photograph and other particulars, and anyone having information of his whereabouts is asked to communicate direct with the Republican National Committee." Time, August 31, 1936
The Literary Digest conducted a large mail poll that incorrectly predicted Landon would defeat Roosevelt. The survey, based on responses from magazine subscribers, automobile owners, and telephone users, disproportionately represented wealthier Americans who tended to favor Landon, resulting in severe sampling bias. The poll’s publication created a false sense of momentum for Landon’s campaign and briefly boosted Republican morale, though it had little real effect on the election’s outcome, as Roosevelt went on to win in a landslide.“United States presidential election of 1936,” Encyclopædia Britannica.Peverill Squire, “Why the 1936 Literary Digest Poll Failed,” Public Opinion Quarterly (1988).
Landon respected and admired Roosevelt and accepted much of the New Deal but objected that it was hostile to business and involved too much waste and inefficiency. Late in the campaign, Landon accused Roosevelt of corruption – that is, of acquiring so much power that he was subverting the Constitution. Landon said:
The 1936 presidential election was extraordinarily lopsided. Although Landon accrued nearly seventeen million votes and obtained the endorsement of track star Jesse Owens, he lost the popular vote by more than 10 million votes. He lost his home state of Kansas and carried only Maine and Vermont for a total of eight electoral votes to Roosevelt's 523. On the same day, Republicans lost control of the Kansas governorship, as Democrat Walter A. Huxman was elected as his successor as governor. FDR's win was the most lopsided electoral victory since the 1820 election. The overwhelming Roosevelt victory prompted Democratic National Committee chair James Farley to jokingly update the political maxim "As Maine goes, so goes the nation" to "As Maine goes, so goes Vermont".
In 1938, he spoke out in defense of the First Amendment rights of one his 1936 opponents, Norman Thomas. Mayor Frank Hague, a close FDR ally, had forced Thomas to leave Jersey City after he attempted to speak at a rally for free speech. The two men struck up a lifetime friendship. Landon hoped that the incident would "draw together all those who have common ideals of freedom and tolerance" and pledged to stand "shoulder to shoulder with you in this fight for free speech." Landon's comments portrayed the New Deal and Hague, as closely aligned threats to free speech.
The Republicans' defeats in 1932 and 1936 plunged their party into a period of bitter intra-party strife. Landon played an important role in ending this internal bickering in 1938 by helping to prepare a new group of leaders for the presidential campaign of 1940, and in trying to bring about a compromise between the isolationist and internationalist viewpoints in foreign policy. Landon was in the American delegation led by Secretary of State Cordell Hull to the 1938 Pan-American Conference in Lima, Peru. However, Landon declined a position in Franklin Roosevelt's Cabinet because he made his acceptance contingent upon the President's renunciation of a third term.Mayer 1966
After war broke out in Europe in 1939, Landon fought against isolationists such as America First Committee who supported the Neutrality Act; he feared it would mislead Nazi Germany into thinking the United States was unwilling to fight. In 1941, however, he joined isolationists in arguing against lend-lease, although he did urge that United Kingdom be given $5 billion outright instead.
After the war, he backed the Marshall Plan, while opposing high domestic spending. After the communist revolution in China, he was one of the first to advocate recognition of Mao Zedong's China, and its admission to the United Nations, when this was still a very unpopular position among the leadership and followers of both major parties.
In 1961, Landon urged the United States to join the European Common Market. In November 1962, when he was asked to describe his political philosophy, Landon said: "I would say practical progressive, which means that the Republican party or any political party has got to recognize the problems of a growing and complex industrial civilization. And I don't think the Republican party is really wide awake to that." Later in the 1960s, Landon backed President Lyndon Johnson on Medicare and other Great Society programs.
On December 13, 1966, Landon gave his first "Landon Lecture" at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas. Landon's lecture, titled "New Challenges in International Relations" was the first in a series of public issues lectures that continues to this day and has featured numerous world leaders and political figures, including seven U.S. presidents (Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush).
Landon addressed the Republican National Convention in 1976 in Kansas City. "Alf Landon, Republicans' Beloved Loser, Dies at 100", Los Angeles Times, October 13, 1987.
Nine days after his birthday, Landon was hospitalized at Stormant-Vail Regional Medical Center after complaining of internal pain. He was treated for a gallstone and a mild case of bronchitis and returned home on October 10.The Salina Journal, October 13, 1987, page 1 Landon died in Topeka on October 12, 1987, at 5:25 p.m., thirty-three days after celebrating his hundredth birthday, and is interred at Mount Hope Cemetery in Topeka. At the time of his death, he was survived by his second wife, Theo Cobb.
Landon's daughter, Nancy Kassebaum, was a United States Senator from Kansas. Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1978, she was re-elected in 1984 and 1990. Her second husband was her former Senate colleague Howard Baker, of Tennessee (1925–2014). Landon's nephew was actor Hal Landon Jr.
Republican primary for Governor of Kansas, 1934
Kansas gubernatorial election, 1934
Republican presidential primaries, 1936
1936 Republican National Convention
1936 United States presidential election
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