The Pittsburgh Press (September 9, 1946)
Dewey has eye on ’48 in race for re-election
Size of plurality is issue this fall
By Charles T. Lucey, Scripps-Howard staff writer
NEW YORK – With most political observers here it isn’t a question of whether Gov. Thomas E. Dewey will be re-elected over Sen. James M. Mead, the Democratic nominee for the New York governorship. They believe Mr. Dewey will win.
The question is: How big a plurality can Mr. Dewey roll up in a show of popular strength that will bolster his expected bid for the 1948 Republican presidential nomination?
Despite his 1944 defeated by President Roosevelt, Gov. Dewey, if re-elected this fall, would be virtually certain as a frontrunner among GOP presidential aspirants. Anyone who can carry New York State, with its 47 electoral votes, always has a claim on the nomination.
Margin is important
Some of the governor’s friends say he may win by 500,000 votes out of about four million votes cast. Neutral observers believe 250,000 or 300,000 would be nearer; there are some who say the margin might be only 100,000 or 150,000.
“If Mr. Dewey wins by only 100,000,” one of his political opponents says, “then he has won the office but not the election.”
Mr. Dewey’s friends aren’t saying much about 1948. It would hardly be smart politics now. But few doubt he will be a candidate. Being re-elected governor offers him no honor he hasn’t had before, and he could make much more practicing law than the $25,000 he gets as governor. Hence, it is reasoned, he really is shooting at 1948.
He speaks philosophy
The governor’s Saratoga acceptance speech last week contained some governmental philosophy applying as readily to the national as to the state picture. He spoke of blazing new trails in social progress and asserted the state is created for the individual and not the individual for the state. He criticized the Democratic Party as lacking basic philosophy and charged it with taking us into a “controlled and regimented society.”
On the Democratic side, the inspiration to defeat Mr. Dewey lies not only in the pleasing prospect of taking over a state government, but in eliminating him from the national scene in 1948.
Sen. Mead is a friendly, reasonable man, well-known throughout the state, and both he and ex-Gov. Herbert H. Lehman, Democratic candidate for the Senate, have been good vote-getters in the past.
Dewey’s stock high
But Mr. Mead is seeking the governorship at a time when Mr. Dewey’s political strength has shown a surprising rebound from a low point after his defeat in 1944, and when the popularity of the national Democratic administration at Washingion has been declining.
Gov. Dewey’s friends rate the early months of this year as the most notable phase of his public life thus far. For 20 years, when Al Smith and Mr. Roosevelt lived, any Republican had to take second place to them as New York’s best-known citizen. Now Mr. Dewey has the spot, his friends assert, and he profits by it.
Observers here agree it is too early to say just how strong will be the bid Mr. Dewey will make for the GOP nomination in 1948. Some say that if he isn’t the nominee, he’ll have enough strength to say who will be.