Joseph B. Ely
| Joseph Buell Ely | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| 52nd Governor of Massachusetts | |
|
In office January 8, 1931 – January 3, 1935 |
|
| Lieutenant |
William S. Youngman Gaspar G. Bacon |
| Preceded by | Frank G. Allen |
| Succeeded by | James Michael Curley |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
February 22, 1881 Westfield, Massachusetts |
| Died | June 13, 1956 (aged 75) Westfield, Massachusetts |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Profession | Attorney |
Joseph Buell Ely (February 22, 1881 – June 13, 1956) was an American lawyer and Democratic politician from Massachusetts. As a conservative Democrat, Ely was active in party politics from the late 1910s, helping to build, in conjunction with David I. Walsh, the Democratic coalition that would gain an enduring political ascendancy in the state. From 1931 to 1935, he served as the 52nd Governor. He was opposed to the federal expansion of the New Deal, and was a prominent intra-party voice in opposition to the policies of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In 1944 he made a brief unsuccessful bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Joseph Buell Ely was born in Westfield, Massachusetts, to Henry Wilson Ely and Sarah Naomi Buell Ely. His grandfather, Joseph Miner Ely, was one of the founders of Westfield's important whip industry, and his father, a lawyer, was active in Democratic party circles in heavily Republican western Massachusetts. Ely attended local schools, and then Williams College, where he helped organize student support for William Jennings Bryan in the 1900 presidential election. He graduated from Williams in 1902, and then received a law degree from Harvard Law School in 1905. He returned to Westfield, where he joined his father's law firm. In 1906 he married Harriet Zelda Dyson, a schoolteacher; they had one son.
Governor David I. Walsh appointed Ely to serve as District Attorney for the Western District of Massachusetts in 1915; he was elected in his own right to this position the next year, serving until 1920.
Ely was active in the state Democratic Party, and was in 1922 put forward as a candidate for Governor of Massachusetts; he placed a distant third in the primary, which was won by John "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald. In 1924 he was delegate to the national Democratic convention, where he supported the Progressive Al Smith. In 1926 he was tapped by the party leadership as a candidate for Lieutenant Governor, but lost the primary in an unusual quirk. His primary opponent, Harry Dooley, had been asked to withdraw so that the party could present an ethnically diverse and geographically balanced ticket, but his name remained on the ballot, and he ended up winning the nomination because of the support of Irish Americans. Dooley offered to surrender the nomination in favor of Ely, but the latter refused, believing the means to be an embarrassment. Ely again supported Smith at the 1928 Democratic National Convention.
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