Theodore Roosevelt

Roosevelt's two years as New York governor from 1899 were short but substantive: a tax on public utility franchises, a strengthened civil service and tighter regulation of tenement sweatshops, enough to alarm the state's Republican boss Thomas Platt. Platt helped push him into the vice-presidency in 1900 to get him out of Albany, a move that put him one assassination away from the White House. The national career was, in part, a party's attempt to sideline a reforming governor.