The Tammany leaders professed to accept this decision. The state convention, when held, had the air of an open convention. They cast about for a candidate, and settled on Sulzer. Without inconveniencing Tammany, he had been able to make something of a reputation as a political progressive. He had professed a great attachment for social reforms, the kind which Roosevelt in Washington and Wilson in New Jersey had made popular. He had built up a reputation as a friend of the common man, and in New York he was still “strong with the East Side.” Tammany manipulated the “open convention” at Syracuse, and Sulzer was nominated for Governor. I had followed Sulzer’s career with a good deal of interest. Though I did not approve of his capitalizing politically his friendship for a racial element, I felt, nevertheless, that he had been a useful public servant; and he had been successful with me, as he had been with many other political independents, in making me believe that he was sincerely interested in the cause of civic reform. Consequently, I greeted him cordially. Sulzer began the conversation by thanking me for “what I had done in helping him and bringing about his nomination.” This was a polite generality as, of course, I had had no hand in that enterprise, except that I had been a party to the “hands-off” policy of the National Committee, and also, that I had shared in the request of the Committee to McAdoo not to accept this nomination which some of his friends were trying, with some hope of success, to secure for him. We had felt that it was his duty to stay in the national campaign, as McCombs was still incapacitated by illness. Sulzer then went on to express the wish that I would be of use to him after he was elected. He spoke in glowing terms of the reputation Governor Wilson had made by his reforms in New Jersey, and expressed an ambition to make a similar record as Governor of New York. He confided to me the clairvoyant’s prophecy of his future and declared that he believed that the path to the Presidency lay in championing “the cause of the people.”