For the New York state election, 1914, he organized the American Party as a spoiler, to defeat Martin H. Glynn, his former lieutenant governor who had succeeded him as governor and was running for re-election. Sulzer also attempted to gain the Progressive Party nomination for governor, but was defeated in the primary, partly due to the intervention of Theodore Roosevelt who, in a letter to all members of the party, declared "the trouble with Sulzer is that he does not tell the truth." However, Sulzer found support in the Prohibition Party which, on the basis of a speech he gave denouncing rum, nominated him for governor in 1914. He came in third, behind Republican Charles S. Whitman, who was elected governor, and Glynn, who was unseated. Sulzer thus claimed that the result was a moral victory, as the Democrats who had impeached him were swept out of power.