Al Smith
American statesman and governor (1873–1944)
Alfred Emanuel Smith (December 30, 1873 – October 4, 1944) was an American politician who served as the 42nd governor of New York from 1919 to 1920 and again from 1923 to 1928. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the party's presidential nominee in the 1928 presidential election, losing to Republican nominee Herbert Hoover in a landslide.
The son of an Irish American mother and a Civil War–veteran Italian American father, Smith was born and raised on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City, near the Brooklyn Bridge. He resided in that neighborhood for his entire life. Although Smith remained personally untarnished by corruption, he—like many other New York Democrats—was linked to the notorious Tammany Hall political machine that controlled New York City politics during his era. Smith served in the New York State Assembly from 1904 to 1915 and was the speaker of the Assembly in 1913. He also served as the sheriff of New York County from 1916 to 1917. He was first elected governor in 1918, lost his 1920 bid for re-election, and was elected again in 1922, 1924, and 1926. Smith was the foremost urban leader of the efficiency movement in the U.S. and was noted for achieving a wide range of reforms as governor.
Smith was the first Catholic to be the nominee for the U.S. presidency of a major party.
The public source identifies “Al Smith” as american statesman and governor (1873–1944). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Smith, American and statesman.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q430714. VIAF identifies the subject as 50466729. The Library of Congress control number is n50016436. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1873, 1944, 1919 and 1920.
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This entry incorporates text from “Al Smith” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.