CIO political group plans June meeting
Washington (UP) –
The CIO Political Action Committee, which has already endorsed President Roosevelt for a fourth term, plans to call a national conference in Washington in mid-June to chart his program for the 1944 political campaign, it was disclosed today.
A CIO spokesman said more than 300 delegates – the committee’s regional and state directors and field officers, as well as Political Action representatives of CIO affiliates – were expected to attend the conference on the eve of the Republican and Democratic national conventions.
The defeat or retirement of three of its foes on the Dies Committee has focused attention on the CIO committee, and its activities were blamed by Senator Rufus C. Holman (R-OR) yesterday for his recent defeat in the Oregon Republican primaries.
The CIO committee and New Dealers employed unlimited financial resources to wage an “effective smear campaign” to throttle his bid for renomination, Holman told the Senate.
The committee said the June meeting would “outline labor views on issues which will decide 1944’s crucial elections” and would prepare a platform calling for full production and full employment the post-war period.
The conference is also expected to give further attention to the organizational problem of getting workers to register and to vote – a problem which has been given heavy emphasis during the early stages of the committee’s work. CIO leaders have blamed the political lethargy of labor for what they interpreted as an anti-labor trend in the 1942 and 1943 elections. They have been cheerful over the result of recent primaries.
Spokesmen for the Political Action Committee have looked upon those results as evidence that their drive to mobilize the labor vote was being successful.