Background of news –
New York and the election
By Bertram Benedict
In the election in November, the state of New York will have 47 (17%) of the 266 electoral votes necessary to elect a President. This is more than the combined electoral vote of 12 other states. No wonder, then, that most of those who expect the election to be close are prophesying: “The man who carries New York will win,” nor that the Governor of New York now seems about to walk away with the Republican nomination.
For Mr. Dewey looks like a remarkably good vote-getter in New York, even if he was born and reared in Michigan. In 1938, he ran against Governor Lehman for the New York governorship and came within a hair’s breadth of winning. Mr. Lehman received 1,971,000 votes on the Democratic ticket and 420,000 on the American Labor Party ticket, for a total of 2,391,000. Mr. Dewey, receiving 2,327,000, was defeated by only 64,000 votes out of more than 4,700,000 cast.
In the same year, the two Republican candidates for U.S. Senator from New York (one for an unexpired term) lost by 438,000 votes and 355,000 votes, respectively. Two years before, the Republican gubernatorial candidate had lost by 521,000 votes. And in 1942, Mr. Dewey defeated the Democratic candidate and the American Labor Party candidate by a clear majority of 245,000.
Opposed by Willkie in 1942
Mr. Dewey received the Republican gubernatorial nomination in 1942 over the ill-disguised opposition of Wendell L. Willkie. When the state Republican leaders were obviously about to swing the party nominating convention over to Mr. Dewey, Mr. Willkie came out for a free-for-all nomination race, although disclaiming any ambitions for himself and any participation in a Stop-Dewey movement.
Mr. Willkie was understood to have warned the party leaders privately that Mr. Dewey would be defeated because of his alleged isolationism prior to Pearl Harbor. But Mr. Dewey got the nomination hands down.
Mr. Willkie himself had run well in New York against President Roosevelt in 1940. There Mr. Willkie had 48% of the major party vote, as against 45% in the nation as a whole. If one in every 25 New Yorkers who voted for Mr. Roosevelt in 1940 should vote for the Republican candidate this year, the Republicans will carry the state.
However, the fact that Mr. Dewey ran well for Governor does not necessarily mean that he will run as well for President in the Empire State. Alfred E. Smith was also a great gubernatorial vote-getter, but the state which sent him to the Governor’s Mansion in Albany four times (once in a Republican landslide year, 1924), would not vote to send him to the White House in 1928.
Yet while New York was voting against Mr. Smith as the Democratic presidential candidate, it was voting for Franklin D. Roosevelt as the Democratic gubernatorial candidate.
Hughes wins – but loses
In 1916, the Republicans nominated for the Presidency Justice Charles E. Hughes of New York, largely because he was expected to carry, in what looked like a close election, the state in which he had been elected Governor in 1906 and 1908. The expectation was realized, for Mr. Hughes carried New York by a substantial margin, but he lost the election by 23 electoral votes (Woodrow Wilson, the winner, lost his state, New Jersey).
That was really the only time since the Civil War in which the country did not vote as New York voted. True, in 1876, New York voted for its governor, Samuel J. Tilden, only to see Hayes elected, but probably Tilden was unfairly counted out; as it was, he had a popular majority.
If it is Dewey vs. Roosevelt in November, it will be the first time since 1904 (Theodore Roosevelt vs. Alton B. Parker) that both major party candidates have been New Yorkers. In the year 1884, Governor Grover Cleveland of New York carried the state and was elected President; in 1888, he lost the state and the Presidency; in 1892, he carried the state and the nation again.