Anti-Roosevelt forces back Byrd
By Brooks Smith, United Press staff writer
Chicago, Illinois –
Nearly 100 votes were pledged today to Senator Harry F. Byrd for the Democratic presidential nomination by angry Southern delegates who knew that their protest against President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s renomination was futile but who made it anyway, shouting “This is liberty!”
Meeting last night on the eve of the convention, some 300 Southerners jammed a hotel ballroom here and noisily approved a resolution opposing any platform plank which called for social equality between the races and demanding restoration of the two-thirds rule.
Guffey in picture
The resolution, offered by Wright Morrow, a Houston, Texas, delegate, called for “a return to the principles of constitutional government as held by Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson and Woodrow Wilson,” denounced attempts to enact anti-poll tax legislation and demanded that the federal government leave the states free to fix voting regulations.
Meanwhile, Southern sentiment remained divided on the Vice Presidency.
Georgia Governor Ellis Arnall conferred with Senator Joseph Guffey (D-PA) soon after arriving and announced that Georgia would cast her 26 votes for Henry Wallace as planned. He said “things look brought for the Vice President.”
Tennessee backs Cooper
Tennessee pledged her 26 votes to Governor Prentice Cooper as a favorite son and South Carolina planned to support War Mobilization Director James F. Byrnes.
Monroe Redden, chairman of the North Carolina Democratic Executive committee, said he was more optimistic than ever before over the chances of Governor J. M. Broughton for second place on the ticket. Numerous delegates, including those from Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota and Pennsylvania, had expressed interest in Mr. Broughton and several had said they would vote for him, Mr. Redden said.
Several states, such as Texas, postponed action on whom to support for Vice President, waiting to see “how the situation jells.”
The Texas delegation’s action was hailed by John U. Barr, national chairman of the Draft-Byrd-for-President campaign, as “overwhelming proof to the New York communists that the Democratic Party of the South is determined to have no further truck with any alien minority.”
Mr. Barr said:
We Democrats can’t win with Roosevelt and the only hope we have lies in Harry Flood Byrd of Virginia – young, courageous and without the taint of all the sour connections that have put our party in the woeful disrepute it now suffers.
Louisiana’s 22 votes and Mississippi’s 20 were pledged to Mr. Byrd under the unit rule. Mr. Byrd will also get scattered support from Florida and possible South Carolina and Virginia.
The Southern revolt does not threaten the renomination of Mr. Roosevelt but the danger of a bolt in the Electoral College remained. The Texas group has warned that its electors will be free to vote as they please if the National Convention fails to meet its demands. Similar sentiment was found in the Louisiana delegation where Louis Riecke of New Orleans, a Democratic elector, said he would bolt the President if the South fails to get adequate consideration by this convention.