The Times’ EPIC coverage

In 1934, the nov­el­ist, muck­raker and so­cial­ist Up­ton Sin­clair waged an un­likely cam­paign for gov­ernor of Cali­for­nia, win­ning the Demo­crat­ic Party’s nom­in­a­tion and the right to chal­lenge the Re­pub­lic­an nom­in­ee, Frank Mer­ri­am.

Sin­clair ar­gued for sweep­ing gov­ern­ment in­ter­ven­tion in­to the eco­nomy to com­bat the Great De­pres­sion with the slo­gan “End Poverty In Cali­for­nia,” EPIC for short. While Sin­clair ul­ti­mately lost, the forces that or­gan­ized against him set the tem­plate for today’s polit­ic­al con­sult­ants, ac­cord­ing to an art­icle in The New York­er by Jill Lepore.

Be­low is a sample of how The Times covered the cam­paign.