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In Al Smith's time the question of whether the Church had too much influence or not was not a big issue. There was a lot of anti-Catholic feeling always in New York State, particularly upstate. That always had to be taken account of in the first campaign, and in the second campaign too, for Smith. It had to be very carefully taken into account in our organization of the campaign and in our approaches to the people upstate. The Democratic party had a strong branch upstate around Rochester, the Genesee and Wyoming valleys, coming down south from there, and some other parts too. They had old families who had always been Democrats. They would tell you they were Democrats since the time of Thomas Jefferson. They were that kind. They didn't always hold with William Jennings Bryan - many of them didn't. That was when they got the phrase Jefferson Democrats. They wanted to indicate they didn't approve of Bryan whom they thought of as a Populist. Those families were like the Van Schaicks and people like that - very, very substantial families who were the best people, so to speak. They were pretty strongly Protestant. There weren't any Catholics up there. For the most part the upstate Democrats were Protestants and not at all pleased at the prospect of a Catholic in the governorship. It was