The Pittsburgh Press (September 14, 1944)
Both parties ban racial issues
New York (UP) –
The Democratic and Republican parties today condemned the use of racial or religious intolerance as a political weapon in the presidential campaign.
The party statements, by Democratic National Committee Chairman Robert E. Hannegan and his GOP counterpart, Herbert Brownell Jr. were issued in connection with the nation conference of Christians and Jews.
The Democratic statement said the election “must be consistently a democratic performance” untainted by “the racial and religious differences and the hatreds which our Fascist enemies have erected upon them,” the statement added.
The Republican statement declared that any disqualification because of race or religion was abhorrent to the party.
It cited recent statements of Governor Thomas E. Dewey “in denunciation of political adventures who in the hope of personal aggrandizement have tried to stir up religious and racial bigotry in its various forms” and said that all Republican candidates were “committed by faith and deep conviction to comity and understanding among our various faiths and to the equality and dignity before man and government of all people of whatever creed or origin.”