The 1914 California gubernatorial election was held on November 3, 1914. The election saw Hiram Johnson re-elected in 1914 as governor of California on the Progressive Party ticket, nearly tripling his vote total from the 1910 California gubernatorial election.
Johnson was first elected governor in 1910 as a member of the Republican Party. Dissatisfaction with the conservatism of the William Howard Taft administration led many Republicans to join former President Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive Party. Johnson then ran as the Progressive Party's vice-presidential nominee in the 1912 presidential election. Despite losing the election, and winning California by fewer than 200 votes, Johnson was supremely popular in California.
Hiram Johnson became the first governor of California to be reelected since John Bigler in 1853, although he would not serve out his second term, resigning in 1917 to assume the United States Senate seat he had won in 1916. This was the first gubernatorial election in which Kern County, Glenn County, Lake County, and Madera County did not back the Democratic candidate. It was also the first gubernatorial election since 1855 in which Colusa County, Mariposa County, and Merced County were not carried by a Democrat. This election ushered in a four decade period of Republican dominance in the state's gubernatorial races that was only interrupted once in 1938.
Progressive Party primary.
Early in 1914, it was not immediately clear if Hiram Johnson would run for reelection as governor, run for the upcoming senate seat, or retire from public office. On January 6, 1914 Johnson announced that he would indeed run for reelection under the banner of the Bull Moose Party. Following this announcement, Hiram Johnson and other members of the Bull Moose Party began a massive voter registration campaign, to get potential voters to register as Progressives.
Johnson officially kicked off his campaign in Los Angeles, where he gave a speech to a large crowd at the Simpson Auditorium. There was no party competition against the popular Hiram Johnson, as he ran for governor unopposed and secured his nomination on August 26, 1914.
Republican primary.
Early in the year, John D. Fredericks announced that he was willing to run for governor, but qualified the statement by stating that he was willing to acquiesce to another qualified candidate. The Republican party would fight an uphill battle due to losing the popular Hiram Johnson to the Progressive party. Republican stalwarts met at Santa Barbara in February of 1914, to discuss their strategy for the upcoming elections. Phillip A. Stanton and Leroy Wright lead the meeting, which was sponsored by Rudolph Spreckels.
Fredericks spent over $14,000 on his primary campaign, a considerable amount compared to his primary opponents. 12,000 of those dollars were contributed from outside sources.
General election campaign.
While the campaigns were traveling across the state to appeal to the voters, there were efforts behind the scenes to stop several candidates from appearing on the general election ballots entirely due to a quirk in the laws regarding California's primary system.
The state Attorney General Ulysses S. Webb, was asked by Frank C. Jordan, the Secretary of State to clarify whether candidates can be on the November ballot, if they lose a primary election. Webb ruled that 
"If a registered Progressive, seeking Republican and Democratic nominations, obtains the Progressive nomination, his name will go on the ballot, according to Webb's ruling, even though be loses the Republican and Democratic nominations. On the other hand, if he should lose the Progressive and gain both of the other nominations, he is out of the running and cannot even be an independent candidate."
As a result, members of the Republican Party threatened to file suit against the State if they allowed any progressive to run in the general election if they lost another party's primary, as the law indicated, "a candidate losing any party nomination shall not get on the November ballot."
This greatly concerned members of the Progressive Party, many of whom cross-filed as Republicans, such as John Eshleman and Friend W. Richardson.
References.
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