About Joseph B. Ely
Joseph Buell Ely 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 of Massachusetts. 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. 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. Al Smith campaigned for Ely, who won the nomination by a narrow margin. Ely gave the convention speech formally nominating Smith, but shifted to giving lukewarm support to Roosevelt after the latter won the party's nomination. Ely comfortably won reelection in 1932, defeating Lieutenant Governor William S.
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