1933 Virginia gubernatorial election


The 1933 Virginia gubernatorial election was held on November 7, 1933, to elect the governor of Virginia.

Background

The 1900s had seen Virginia, like all former Confederate States, almost completely disenfranchise its black and poor white populations through the use of a cumulative poll tax and literacy tests. So severe was the disenfranchising effect of the new 1902 Constitution that it has been calculated that a third of those who voted were state employees and officeholders.
This limited electorate made post-disenfranchisement Virginian politics controlled by a political machine based in Southside Virginia and led by Thomas Staples Martin until his death in 1919. Progressive "antiorganization" factions were rendered impotent by the inability of almost all their potential electorate to vote. Unlike the Deep South, historical fusion with the "Readjuster" Democrats, defection of substantial proportions of the Northeast-aligned white electorate of the Shenandoah Valley and Southwest Virginia over free silver, and an early move towards a "lily white" Jim Crow party meant Republicans retained a small but permanent number of legislative seats and local offices in the western part of the state, although in many areas – like in Tennessee during the same era – the parties avoided competition by an agreed division over local offices.
Following the final challenge to hard lily-white control of the state GOP, the small number of black voters in the state were excluded from turning to the rival Democrats by a 1924 party ruling that only qualified whites could vote in the primary. This produced a series of court cases that would see Virginia's white primary permanently invalidated in 1930 without a Supreme Court challenge.

Establishment of the Byrd machine

Whilst the state's white primary was challenged in federal court, Harry Flood Byrd, first elected Democratic central committee chairman in 1922, would be elected Governor in 1925 and implement significant reforms, most importantly a "short ballot" which reduced the number of elected officials to three. Byrd's coattails would allow John Garland Pollard to be elected Governor despite the divisions caused by opposition to Al Smith in the 1928 presidential election. Pollard's win confirmed Byrd's supremacy within Virginia politics, although he had a reputation for independence and was not closely identified with Byrd and his organization.
As Byrd would, except for the "Hundred Days" at the beginning of FDR's first presidential term, always cling to his belief in limited government or "pay-as-you-go", he would support as next Governor George C. Peery, whom he had previously helped "redeem" the "Fighting Ninth" congressional district in 1922. Peery would overwhelm his various opponents, and this election solidified a trend for the small turnout to be even less at the general election than at the Democratic primary.

Democratic primary

Candidates

General election

Candidates