for Southern Democrats: he was a devout Catholic, opposed to Prohibition, linked with New York City's Tammany Hall political machine, and the son of Irish and Italian immigrants. His Wall Street connections also had Smith viewed by poorer Southern whites as a "Gold Democrat". Whilst it is generally thought that the South would have accepted a man possessing one of those characteristics, the combination proved a bitter dose for many of Florida's loyal Democrats. Many Florida Protestants believed Smith's election would endanger religious liberty and lead to the Pope controlling the White House. More critically, the Southern Baptist Convention similarly said that Much of this anti-Smith political program was led by the Jacksonville Baptist Association, joined by the Indian River Missionary Baptist Association, Seminole Baptist Association, Peace River Baptist Association, Alachua Baptist Association, and the Florida Baptist Association in issuing similar resolutions at their 1928 annual meetings. The Methodist Episcopal Church took the same viewpoint, and it was Bishop James Cannon who stood behind militant "drys" to organize the "Anti-Smith Democrats" in Asheville, North Carolina, pledging to keep the country dry against Smith's support of modifying the Volstead Act. The leader of the defense of Smith was Senator Duncan Upshaw Fletcher who argued that Smith was a "throroughgoing Democrat" and that the Republican Party was the party who had, in typical "Solid South" style, denounced the Southern people as rebels and traitors. Echoing this, several Florida judges said it would be better to have a Catholic with some religion in the White House than a Republican with none. Smith's strongest supporter, Chief Justice William H. Ellis, also argued that the GOP was hypocritical in its support for Prohibition, and that because religious tests for elective office were forbidden by the Constitution, Smith would be unable to fill these offices with only Catholics. For Ellis, the election of Smith was the only way the Democratic Party could maintain itself. The Suwanee Democrat indeed argued that Hoover's Quaker faith meant he could not be elected President because it believed that Hoover's religious would not permit him to fight for his country and commanded racial equality in a state whose electorate was all-white. Polls During the months between the beginning of the campaign and the actual vote, a number of newspapers – including the Orlando Sentinel and the St. Petersburg Times – utilized voting machines to take a sample ballot. All these polls,