Stokes: Cross currents
By Thomas L. Stokes
New Haven, Connecticut –
Connecticut poses a complicated problem in the presidential campaign this year, with confusing cross currents that battle and worry both Republican and Democratic campaign managers.
They are similar to those found elsewhere in the East, but seem accentuated here in a more compact area. Republicans are concerned about some hitherto staunch party adherents – older people and parents – who appear inclined this year to desert to President Roosevelt because of the war. Democrats are disturbed over a disaffection in foreign national groups – Italians and Poles chiefly – and the slowly developing hostility to New Dealism among the native population with individualistic impulses.
When it is all analyzed and sifted down, best judgment is that President Roosevelt has a slight edge as of today over Governor Dewey to capture the state’s eight electoral votes, which become important this year because of the indicated close fight. Mr. Roosevelt carried Connecticut by 56,000 in 1940, in a total vote close to 800,000. It is expected to be slimmer this year if he makes it. Republicans claim Governor Dewey will break the Roosevelt clinch.
Rural areas solidly GOP
Democratic strength is concentrated in the industrial towns and cities. Small town and rural Connecticut is almost solidly Republican, with the old Yankee stock still a predominant influence.
Democrats find encouragement in the large number of new voters in the cities, indicating a record turnout on Election Day, despite the absence of many in the service. “Making” of voters, as they call it in local idiom, is now going on. The state has permanent registration, with only newcomers required to register.
The CIO’s Political Action Committee is doing a good job in registration and it has stirred Republicans to intense activity. The CIO is given credit by old-line Democratic leaders, some of whom are not New Dealish personally.
These leaders explain that local labor leaders seem to realize that they are “on the spot” to deliver this year, having talked a good election in times past. They’ve got to prove their worth to the rank and file, as well as to regular party leaders with whom they are seeking to affiliate themselves in the organization.
Offsetting this labor advantage, which counts in the cities, there is the handicap to the Democrats m defections among Italians and Poles, a sizeable voting population.
Resentments invoked
Both sides are busy working these foreign nationals, among whom there are resentments of various sorts, involving United States and Allied policy toward their homelands.
Among the Italians too, particularly the older ones, there is reported a peculiar resentment, economic in derivation, because the Army has taken the young men in the family who are supposed traditionally to contribute to the support of the old folks. Some of these young men were doing very nicely in war plants before they were called to the Army. There is among Italians here, too, a residue of Fascist sympathy with the Mussolini regime in Italy.
Democrats are worried about the Italian and the Polish vote but try to discount its effect. They claim they will Go as well among the Italians as in 1940, when President Roosevelt carried the state despite his “stab-in-the-back” speech, which was then fresh in the minds of Italian voters. Democrats count on many younger Italians to vote Democratic.
A sampling indicates there are some Republicans of old Yankee stork who plan to vote for President Roosevelt for the first time this year, because of the war. But how substantial this may be is just as much of a question as how deep will be defections among Italians and Poles from the Democratic ticket.