When upwards of 2,000 delegates and other visitors come to the Indiana State Republican Party convention this weekend, they'll have a high standard to match.
For months now, we've been telling you this weekend would be the first statewide Republican convention held in Fort Wayne. We were wrong. Republicans gathered in Fort Wayne for a statewide convention 122 years ago, and they made swift business of it. They wrapped up their voting in a single day -- a Tuesday, as it happened -- in the Princess rink downtown, renovated just in time for the convention.
Craig Leonard, a historian who was researching the work of 19th century architects recently, came across coverage of the June 28, 1892 convention in both The Fort Wayne Gazette and The Fort Wayne Sentinel.
Much more decision-making power was held by party conventions then than in the days after primary elections enabled voters by the thousands or hundreds of thousands to pick party candidates directly. Delegates to the 1892 convention picked candidates for statewide offices, including governor, and ratified elements of the national platform.
Politics was a sport that drew more crowds in those days, too. Leonard noted that coverage of the 1892 convention said that Republican leaders had to threaten to clear the hall to make room for all the credentialed delegates waiting to get inside.
