Yellow Dog Democrat (1882)

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Grant Barrett's HATCHET  JOBS AND HARDBALL: THE OXFORD DICTIONARY OF
AMERICAN POLITICAL SLANG (2004) has 1883 for "yellow dog."
...
There were special elections yesterday in New York City, including one for
the Assembly seat of the Democrat who defeated me for Manhattan Borough
President. In that District, the Republican candidate got 9% of the vote  yesterday.
It was said today that even if the Democrats had run a yellow  dog...
...
...
...
13 July 1882, Washington Post, pg. 2:
_California Democrats in Convention._
>From the San Francisco Examiner.

The whole course and current of the convention's thoughts and acts was an
earnest, determined opposition to monopoly of all kinds, which was crystalized
into an adamantine wall to check the encroachments of the great transportation
 monopolies of the State. It was spitefully said by a railroad lobbyist at
San  Jose that if a yellow dog mounted the platform and bayed at the railroad
the  convention would at once nominate the dog for any office that he choose to
ask.  Personal pique and prejudice blinded that lobbyist to the real fact of
the case,  yet his words may be accepted as a tribute to the earnest
anti-monopoly feeling  displayed.

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