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The presidential election of 1884 is regarded as one of the dirtiest in American history. It pitted Democratic New York Governor Grover Cleveland, a corruption reformer, against Republican Senator James G. Blaine. The presidential campaign turned on the morality of the candidates. The Democrats assailed Blaine charging that he had wrongfully profited while in Congress from railroad-road interest, stating, “Blaine! Blaine! James G. Blaine! Continental liar from the State of Maine!” Two weeks after Cleveland won the Democratic Party’s nomination, the Republicans found a chink in “Cleveland’s moral armor.” Maria Halpin, a 35-year-old widow, made the headline by declaring that Cleveland, a bachelor, was the father of her illegitimate ten-year-old son, Oscar Folsom Cleveland. Republican media had a field day. They subsidized massive distribution of a published song mocking Cleveland entitled: “Ma! Ma! Where’s my pa?”
Cleveland’s panicked campaign staff wired him for instructions. Remarkably, Cleveland wired back, “Above all, tell the truth.” Cleveland admitted that as a bachelor he, and some friends, had kept company with Maria. In accepting parental responsibility, Cleveland stated, “The boy could be mine.” Privately, although Cleveland was unsure of the child’s paternity, he accepted parentage rather than burden the other potential fathers, including Oscar Folsom (his law partner and father of Cleveland’s future wife), all of whom were married. In naming the child Oscar Folsom Cleveland, Maria was apparently not sure herself whether the child’s father was Folsom or Cleveland. Cleveland’s remarkably candid admission “caught the fancy of the electorate and did much to defuse the issue.”
The final blow to Blaine’s campaign came when a Republican spokesman referred to the Democrats as “the party of Rum, Romanism and Rebellion.” Blaine did not object to the description. “Irish Catholics, deeply offended by the religious slur, turned out in record numbers to help defeat Blaine.” The Democrats also had the last laugh. After their victory, they responded to the Republican-backed song, “Ma, ma, where’s my pa?” with “Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha!”
Sources: William A. DeGregorio (The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents); Wesley O. Hagood (Presidential Sex – From the Founding Fathers to Bill Clinton).
