Al Smith

An American politician who served four terms as Governor of New York and was the Democratic Party's candidate for president in 1928.

He was the foremost urban leader of the Efficiency Movement in the United States and was noted for achieving a wide range of reforms as New York governor in the 1920s. Smith was the first Roman Catholic to be nominated for president of the United States by a major party.

His political career was launched in 1895, when Tammany Hall—the New York City Democratic political organization—appointed him an investigator in the office of the city commissioner of jurors.