What was unusual about the election of 1912 when taft ran for reelection?
It was a three-way contest. Teddy Roosevelt had been president for almost eight years since the assassination of McKinley, so he proposed that William Howard Taft be nominated to run as a Republican. Taft won, but within a year Roosevelt was unhappy with the course of his administration, which reversed Roosevelt’s progressive path. So in 1912 Roosevelt decided to run against Taft as soon as the Republican convention had renominated him. His supporters convened and formed the Progressive party (nicknamed “Bull Moose” after T.R.), while the Democrats nominated Woodrow Wilson, the governor of New Jersey. Because the Republican voters were thus divided, Wilson won, T.R. came in second, and Taft ran a poor third.
