On Nov. 5, President-elect Donald Trump became only the second president in U.S. history to win two nonconsecutive terms in office.
Thus emerged one of the election’s biggest casualties: President Grover Cleveland, who no longer holds the sole title as the only president to serve two nonconsecutive terms in office. However, the similarities don’t stop there — several parallels can be drawn between the careers of Cleveland and Trump, though just as many differences.
Here is the story of Cleveland and how it relates to Trump.
Beginnings and 1884 campaign
Cleveland was born in 1837 in New Jersey, making him of military age during the Civil War. As with Trump, he was later dogged by controversy over his moves to avoid combat, in his case by hiring a substitute to fight in his place during the war.
Despite being born in New Jersey, Cleveland, like Trump, would make a name for himself in New York.
After a career in law, he served as the sheriff of Erie County, New York, where he personally hanged two criminals. He moved up to become the mayor of Buffalo in 1881 and the governor of the state of New York from 1882-1885.
In each position, Cleveland became known for his honesty and no-nonsense attitude toward corruption. This image combined with his physical image — nearly 6 feet tall and 300 pounds, gave him the nickname “Ugly Honest.”
Cleveland opted to run for president in the 1884 election, winning the Democratic nomination. The 1884 general campaign was remarkably similar to the 2016 election, dominated by respective attacks on each candidate’s personal character. As with Trump, allegations of sexual misconduct were paramount against Cleveland.
Cleveland portrayed the Republican James Blaine as corrupt, while Republicans unearthed allegations that Cleveland had raped a woman and fathered an illegitimate child, then institutionalized her (Cleveland’s most recent biography, published in 2022, rejected the allegations, positing that the woman was manipulated into making the rape allegation in a single affidavit, which she later disavowed).
Cleveland was also dogged by his decision to buy his way out of serving in the Union Army during the Civil War, and his personal hanging of two criminals while sheriff, garnering him the nickname “the Hangman of Buffalo.”
One tipping point for Cleveland was a famous gaffe from Blaine — one of the first recorded “October Surprises” in U.S. history. On Oct. 29, Blaine attended a reception of Protestant ministers, at which one stated that he wouldn’t support the Democrats, a party characterized by “rum, Romanism, and rebellion” — a dig at the Irish and Catholics.
Blaine never commented on the remarks directly, but the incident incensed the growing number of Irish and Catholic immigrants into turning out for Cleveland. The election was decided with New York going to Cleveland by just 1,149 votes.
As with Trump in 2016, Cleveland was able to overcome the scandals to be elected president. He won the popular vote by slightly over 20,000 votes, and the Electoral College 219 to 182.
The decisive factor was the cultivation of “Mugwumps,” Republicans who voted for Cleveland out of frustration with Blaine’s perceived corruption. A decisive factor in 2016 was the cultivation of many former Democrats who either voted for Trump or stayed home out of frustration with the perceived corruption of former State Secretary Hillary Clinton.
First Term
Cleveland’s first term as the 22nd president of the U.S. was distinguished by an unwavering commitment to his principles, often to his detriment in the eyes of the public. He earned the wrath of public opinion when he vetoed the expansion of military pensions and then vetoed federal aid for farmers affected by a drought.
Perhaps the biggest difference between Trump and Cleveland was the issue of tariffs. At a time when tariffs were fashionable, Cleveland was against them, compared to Trump who is for them at a time when they had largely gone out of fashion.
His stance against tariffs grew over time, clearly articulated during his second reelection campaign when he argued that tariffs were the “robbery of the great majority of the American people for the benefit of the few.” He believed that the government had no Constitutional right to raise tariffs aside from limited cases. The stance earned him the ire of industrialist Republicans and factory workers, who would rally in 1888.
One similarity between Cleveland and Trump was a general commitment to noninterventionism. Cleveland rolled back some of the imperialist initiatives of his predecessors.
First reelection campaign
The election of 1888 was much different than that of 1884, lacking the personal character focus in favor of economics and a new ethnic angle.
Tariffs were the foremost issue of the 1888 election, as Cleveland had pushed to lower them from their Civil War levels. Though it would help consumers, such a move threatened to jeopardize American industry, earning Republican nominee Benjamin Harrison the support of industrialists and factory workers alike.
The growing Irish Catholic vote, which had turned out for Cleveland in 1884 over the “rum, Romanism, and rebellion” scandal, turned against him in 1888 over another “October Surprise.”
Like Trump, Cleveland’s second election was dominated by allegations of foreign interference — in the former case by Russia, the latter by the British Empire.
The conflict between tariffs and free trade took on an ethnic component — free trade was favored by the British Empire, earning supporters of the practice allegations of sympathy with London. Cleveland felt compelled to take a more aggressive stance towards Canada to offset allegations of British sympathies, something that came undone due to what would become known as the “Murchison letter.”
California Republican George Osgoodby, writing under the name “Charles Murchison,” wrote to then-British Ambassador Lionel Sackville-West, claiming to be a British native who sought to vote for Britain’s interests in the election. When asked who would best support London’s interests, Sackville-West replied that Cleveland was their best bet.
Republicans quickly jumped on the letter, with Republican operatives printing thousands of copies and distributing them widely. The Irish vote was incensed, flocking back towards Harrison. The scandal is credited by many historians with tipping the election away from Cleveland — though he won a plurality of the popular vote, he lost the Electoral College vote 233-168.
Though defeated, his wife had full confidence in their return. According to Mental Floss, she supposedly remarked to a servant, “Now, Jerry, I want you to take good care of all the furniture and ornaments in the house, for I want to find everything just as it is now, when we come back again … four years from today.”
Unlike Trump, who remained politically active to the extent that he maintained control over the Republican Party throughout his time between terms, Cleveland took the opposite approach. He declined to comment on Harrison’s policies for the first three years, much in contrast to Trump. He remained largely mum about a second run until campaign season when he began articulating his views.
1892 campaign
The 1892 campaign once again focused on economics, with tariffs taking the spotlight, specifically the 1890 McKinley Tariff. New to the 1892 election was the issue of federal spending, which reached $1 billion for the first time during Harrison’s administration.
Another major issue, and one major difference between 1892 and 2024, was the then-hot debate of the gold standard vs bimetalism — Cleveland supported the former and Harrison the latter.
The Democrats got the better on the two issues, winning a landslide victory in the 1890 midterm elections. As in 2024, the party occupying the White House was ravaged by infighting. Many Republicans were dissatisfied with Harrison’s performance, but ultimately decided to go with him.
In contrast to Trump’s crushing primary victory in 2024, Cleveland narrowly won his primary in 1892.
One unique feature of the 1892 election was the prominent featuring of third parties, primarily the left-wing populist People’s Party, which won 22 electoral votes and 8.6% of the popular vote.
In the end, voters were won over by Cleveland’s economic policies and dissatisfaction with Harrison’s administration, handing him the Electoral College and popular vote. Cleveland made history as the first president in U.S. history to win two nonconsecutive elections — a feat not recreated for 132 years.
Final Term
Trump has yet to take office, so comparisons with Cleveland currently end with the second election. The president-elect probably hopes that he won’t experience parallels with Cleveland following the second election.
While Cleveland’s first term has been described as uneventful, the second was anything but. In the first year of his second term, the U.S. was hit by the Great Panic of 1893, the worst economic crisis experienced by the U.S. until the Great Depression. He retained his skepticism of government relief from his first term, largely refusing to aid those affected by the crisis.
Cleveland’s hesitation to provide substantial federal aid and the failure of tariff reductions to help the economy resulted in a Republican landslide in the 1894 midterm elections, a loss that Democrats would take a generation to recover from.
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Cleveland’s handling of the infamous Pullman Strike shattered the Democrats’ relationship with labor interests. Dozens were killed or wounded after Cleveland ordered the National Guard to put down the strike, which had led to riots in several areas.
The Democratic Party began to shift toward bimetallism, something heavily opposed by Cleveland. By the end of his term, Cleveland was deeply unpopular, both within his party and among the public. He refused to endorse the Democratic presidential candidate for 1896, William Jennings Bryan.
