Before Donald Trump, Grover Cleveland served nonconsecutive terms as president

As a sitting president, he lost his reelection bid, his political career seemingly over. Then, amid accusations that his successor's administration had led the nation to the brink of economic ruin, he soundly won an unlikely reelection campaign to again become president.

If you think his name is Donald Trump, think again.

He was Grover Cleveland, the one-time Democratic governor of New York and, before Tuesday's election, the only candidate elected to nonconsecutive terms as U.S. president.

A fiscal conservative who battled Gilded Age politics and corruption, Cleveland served as the 22nd president of the United States from 1885 to 1889 and the 24th from 1893 to 1897.

He also survived a myriad of political onslaughts. Among them, according to historians: an allegation of fathering a child out of wedlock when he was a bachelor — though the historians note Cleveland urged his aides to "tell the truth" when asked about it.

Cleveland was a lifelong bachelor until his first term as president when he married Frances Folsom, 21, a woman 27 years his junior — making him the only president to get married in the White House.

Cleveland lost the 1888 presidential campaign to Republican Benjamin Harrison, grandson of the ninth U.S. president, William Henry Harrison — though Cleveland actually won the popular vote.

One of nine children of Richard Falley Cleveland, a Presbyterian minister, and Ann Neal, Stephen Grover Cleveland was born in Caldwell, New Jersey, on March 18, 1837, and was forced to leave school upon the death of his father in 1853. Nevertheless, Cleveland went on to clerk for a law firm in Buffalo and was admitted to the New York bar in 1859. He hired a substitute to serve for him upon being drafted to serve during the Civil War, claiming he needed to care for his mother, a common practice at the time, according to historians.

Cleveland became an assistant district attorney in Erie County, then served as the Buffalo area's county sheriff. In 1881, Cleveland ran for mayor of Buffalo — and won election "easily," according to the encyclopedic source Britannica.

"As Buffalo's chief executive, he became known as the 'veto mayor' for his rejection of spending measures he considered to be wasteful and corrupt," Britannica said.

That tough anti-corruption stance meant Cleveland failed to gain the backing of New York City's Tammany Hall during his bid, just one year later, for governor. Cleveland won anyway, by more than 200,000 votes, continuing a meteoric rise that would make him the Democratic nominee for president in the race against James G. Blaine, of Maine, in 1884.

"Grover Cleveland was a man whose entire political ascent was driven by the idea that he was an incorruptible figure in a deeply corrupt age," said Troy Senik, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush and author of "A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland."

The official White House website profile of Cleveland cites his vigorous pursuit of policies barring special favors, from his veto of a bill to appropriate funding for seed grain to drought-stricken farmers in Texas to private pension bills to Civil War veterans whose claims proved fraudulent.

"He lived up to that reputation in office, constantly battling special interests and vetoing more pieces of legislation than all prior presidents combined," Senik added.

But Cleveland also could be "strategically withholding when it suited him," Senik said, referring both to his being "credibly accused" of fathering the child out of wedlock and to his hiding "from the public an invasive cancer surgery that threatened to kill him while the country was in the midst of a massive depression," during his second term.

Burdened throughout his second term by that economic depression, Cleveland, Britannica noted, "negotiated with a syndicate of bankers headed by John Pierpont Morgan to sell government bonds abroad for gold," adding: "The deal succeeded in replenishing the government's gold supply, but the alliance between the President and one of the era's leading 'robber barons' intensified the feeling that Cleveland had lost touch with ordinary Americans."

The argument? That he cared more about big business than working-class folks.

As Cleveland historian and political science professor at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, Daniel Klinghard said Thursday: "There was a weird relationship there, between saying, 'I'm representing the people,' that he's a reformer ... while his supporters were actually pretty wealthy guys — merchants, businessmen; all, as he ultimately has this public facade."

"The interesting thing," Klinghard added, "is that at the time it was remarkably like our time: global trade, labor issues; political violence ... intense partisan competition between the parties."

Having weathered the cancer scare, Cleveland retired to Princeton, New Jersey, becoming a lecturer and trustee at Princeton University.

He died on June 24, 1908. He was 71.

By John Valenti

john.valenti@newsday.com

John Valenti, a reporter at Newsday since 1981, has been honored nationally by the Associated Press and Society of the Silurians for investigative, enterprise and breaking news reporting, as well as column writing, and is the author of “Swee'pea,” a book about former New York playground basketball star Lloyd Daniels. Valenti is featured in the Emmy Award-winning ESPN 30-for-30 film “Big Shot.”