1914 Mexican elections

U.M.P. nominee Victoriano Consalus.

The 1914 Mexican elections took place in February 1914 for the purpose of choosing the President and Congress of the United States of Mexico. It resulted in the election of the United Mexican Party candidate, Secretary of State Victoriano Consalus of Durango, over the Liberty Party candidate, Senator Albert Ullman of California.

The dominant issue during the election was the growing threat to Mexico posed by Henri Fanchon, the belligerent President of France. Fanchon was a follower of the Moral Imperative who believed that by defeating Mexico in war and freeing that country's Negro slaves, he could establish French control over South America and put France at the head of a new international reformist order. Fanchon laid the groundwork for his proposed war in 1913 by raising the question of French-owned businesses in Mexico that had been expropriated in the 1880s by Chief of State Benito Hermión. Fanchon expected Franco-Mexicans in Tampico to rise up against the Mexican government and ally with the Moralistas, a Mexicano guerrilla movement dating back to the 1870s.

Incumbent President Anthony Flores had created a new political party, the United Mexican Party, during his two terms in office. When Flores announced that he would not be running for a third term, Consalus, his Secretary of State, was the obvious choice to succeed him as leader of the U.M.P. Sobel describes Consalus as "well-known, flamboyant, and shrewd." Like Flores, Consalus was half-Mexicano and was dedicated to raising the living standards of the Mexicano poor in the southern states of Durango and Chiapas. Consalus was able to run on the general prosperity of the Flores years.

Liberty Party nominee Albert Ullman.

The opposition to Flores had revived the pre-Hermión Liberty Party. The new incarnation of the party, like the old, was opposed to slavery, was isolationist, and opposed the political power wielded by Kramer Associates, the largest company in the world and the dominant power in the Mexican business world. The Libertarians were under no illusions about their chances of beating Consalus, and they lacked a charismatic candidate. The Libertarian convention chose Senator Ullman, a former history professor from Kinkaid University who had been elected to the Senate in 1908. Sobel describes Ullman as young, able and intelligent, but no match for Consalus.

President Flores met with both candidates prior to the election to discuss possible responses to the French challenge. According to an account that was subsequently leaked to Mexican newspapers (almost certainly by Consalus), Ullman favored a conference with Fanchon, and considered some of the French leader's criticisms of the U.S.M. to be somewhat justified. Consalus by contrast wished to order a partial mobilization of the Mexican military, transfer elements of the Pacific Fleet to the Caribbean and outside the Kinkaid Canal, and station troops within the French quarter of Tampico.

On election day, Consalus, as expected, won 61% of the popular vote and majorities in every state except Arizona and Mexico del Norte.

The 1914 Mexican Presidential Election

State	Ullman votes	Ullman %	Consalus votes	Consalus %	Total votes
Arizona	1,104,302	57.9%	804,394	42.1%	1,908,696
California	1,839,450	31.7%	3,954,809	68.3%	5,794,259
Chiapas	1,004,947	39.4%	1,545,454	60.6%	2,550,401
Durango	934,206	32.5%	1,940,205	67.5%	2,874,411
Jefferson	1,695,320	38.0%	2,767,304	62.0%	4,462,624
Mexico del Norte	943,203	57.7%	690,304	42.3%	1,633,507
U.S.M.	7,521,428	39.1%	11,702,470	60.9%	19,223,898

In his inaugural address on 16 February, President Consalus gave a short speech that was limited to generalities such as the promise of "a better life for all our people." However, in discussing foreign policy, he was more direct. "Our land has had more than its share of war. Its history has been written in blood. From the days of the Conquistadores, to the North American Rebellion, through the Rocky Mountain War and the bloodshed of the Hermión dictatorship, we have suffered. We want no war, and so we prepare for combat sadly, hoping it will not fall to this generation to suffer the fate of its ancestors."

For his part, after the election Ullman noted that "not since 1857 -- over half a century ago -- has a Libertarian occupied the Presidential Palace. Our last successful candidate, Hector Niles, was elected when the public turned against the Rocky Mountain War. Perhaps it will take a similar tragedy to get us back in office."

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Sobel's sources for the 1914 Mexican elections include Alexander Flinders' The Road to War: The Fanchon Proposals (London, 1934); and Charles Adkins' A History of the United Mexican Party (Mexico City, 1959) and Always the Bridesmaid: The Liberty Party, 1851-1960 (Mexico City, 1961). Election results are from the U.S.M. Statistical Abstract, p. 113.