‘Dewey Smear’ charged by Ickes
New York (UP) –
Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes last night charged that Governor Thomas E. Dewey was waging a campaign which has been a “sly but deliberate effort” to capitalize on anti-labor and anti-Semitic sentiment in the United States.
Mr. Ickes asserted that the “Dewey Smear” was “in the Republican tradition” and was the method used to defeat the late Al Smith for President in 1928.
Secretary Ickes said:
Governor Smith happened to be a Catholic. It was in that same year and on that issue that I left the Republican Party never to return. A Protestant myself. I resented the injection into a political campaign of a religious issue.
Speaking at a Madison Square Garden rally sponsored by “Everybody for Roosevelt,” the secretary said Mr. Dewey and his followers have reiterated that CIO Political Action Committee Chairman Sidney Hillman was “Russian-born or Lithuanian-born” and have referred to his “rabbinical training.”
Anti-Roosevelt talk booed off air
Houston, Texas (UP) –
Senator W. Lee O’Daniel (D-TX) was booed off the air last night in an anti-Roosevelt speech at the Houston City Auditorium.
Mr. O’Daniel, speaking over a Texas chain of stations, was interrupted throughout the speech by boos, catcalls and hisses from the audience.
Toward the end of his address, Mr. O’Daniel was forced to surrender the microphone to John H. Crooker, a leader and spokesman for the Texas Regular (anti-Roosevelt) Democrats.
Mr. Crooker shouted:
I am ashamed of the people of Harris County [Houston] for this disgraceful conduct. This is the most disgraceful scene I’ve ever seen in my life. This gang of ruffians came here to break up this meeting.
You can guess for yourself who sent them, but the right of free speech shall prevail.
Senator O’Daniel said he was not campaigning for the Dewey-Bricker ticket. He was on the last lap of a Texas-wide anti-Roosevelt tour.