1912 United States presidential election in New Jersey California, and the Republican nominees, incumbent President William Howard Taft of Ohio and his running mate incumbent Vice President James S. Sherman of New York. Wilson carried New Jersey with a bare plurality of 41.20% of the vote to Roosevelt's 33.60%, a victory margin of 7.60%. Taft came in third place with 20.53%. Coming in a distant fourth was Socialist candidate Eugene V. Debs, who took 3.69%. Like much of the Northeast, New Jersey in this era was a staunchly Republican state, having not given a majority of the vote to a Democratic presidential candidate since 1892. In his initial
William Howard Taft using Georgia marble. Taft lobbied for the western stone, and the matter was submitted to the Commission of Fine Arts, which supported Taft and Bacon. The project went forward; Taft would dedicate the Lincoln Memorial as chief justice in 1922. In 1913, Taft was elected to a one-year term as president of the American Bar Association (ABA), a trade group of lawyers. He removed opponents, such as Louis Brandeis and University of Pennsylvania Law School dean William Draper Lewis (a supporter of the Progressive Party) from committees. Taft maintained a cordial relationship with Wilson. The former president privately criticized his