The Pittsburgh Press (July 10, 1944)
Roosevelt on spot on Wallace fate
Ultimate control of party at stake
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer
Washington (UP) –
Vice President Henry A. Wallace returned today from his 23,000-mile roundtrip to Asia, and the White House announced that he would confer this afternoon with President Roosevelt, who must decide whether Mr. Wallace will be on the Democratic ticket again this year.
The necessity of so deciding confronts Mr. Roosevelt with one of the momentous problems of his career – whether it compel the Democratic National Convention to renominate the Vice President. The convention starts July 19 in Chicago.
On his return here, as on his arrival in Seattle yesterday, Mr. Wallace had nothing to say about his own political destiny. He issued a statement that he was glad to be back and said that “this is the first time I have liked Washington weather.”
In a 20-minute radio address in Seattle, he had urged a “New Deal” for China and close collaboration between this country and “the new world of the Northern Pacific and Eastern Asia.”
It was reported in Seattle that Mr. Wallace has made no plans to attend the Democratic convention.
Mr. Roosevelt’s ability to control the convention and to have Mr. Wallace on the ticket is unquestioned.
What the President must decide is whether it would be wiser to avoid the bitterness that Mr. Wallace’s renomination would create or to accept some other running mate who might surrender to the Conservative Democratic organization if Mr. Roosevelt died in office and were succeeded by the Vice President.
That is about all there is to the uproar about Mr. Wallace, although in the public dispute now raging over the vice-presidential nomination there is little if any acknowledgment that all hands are thinking about ultimate control of the party organization.
1940 bitterness recalled
Mr. Roosevelt is 62 and if reelected, he would be 66 on leaving office. The possibility of his death in office, therefore, is something both he and his Democratic opponents consider in approaching the vice-presidential problem.
Mr. Roosevelt rammed the former Iowa Republican down the throat of the 1940 Democratic Convention with the explanation that he wanted a man of “that turn of mind” on the ticket with him. The compelling factor, however, was the President’s intimation that he would not accept the nomination himself unless Mr. Wallace was on the ticket.
It was a bitter show in 1940, with Mr. Wallace sitting grimly on the platform, blistering under the boos and clutching the speech of acceptance which he was never permitted to deliver.
Identical conditions today
Almost identical conditions now prevail except that the anti-fourth-term, anti-Wallace forces are more angry this time. They have been frustrated in their effort to get rid of Mr. Roosevelt and have settled upon Mr. Wallace as a compromise sacrifice.
The final pre-convention gesture of opposition to Mr. Wallace came over the weekend from the Virginia State Democratic Convention which instructed delegates to Chicago to vote against his renomination. The delegates have no presidential instructions.
No one here doubts that Mr. Roosevelt will control the convention in every respect. But it is equally certain that there will be bitter minority opposition not only to Mr. Wallace, but to the President’s renomination.
Some may take a walk
The Credentials Committee will seethe in contests, notable whether pro- or anti-Roosevelt delegates from Texas shall be seated. The South wants to restore the rule requiring nominations be made by a minimum two-thirds majority. There is angry fear in the South that the Northern Democrats, allied with labor and controlling great city organizations, will try to write into the platform a commitment on racial equality.
It is possible that some delegates may take a walk – as Senator Ellison D “Cotton Ed” Smith (D-SC) did in 1936 when a Negro preacher offered a convention prayer. But the majority of the delegates will vote for Mr. Roosevelt’s renomination, unless he forbids it, and for anything else he wants, including Mr. Wallace – if he wants him.
Oregon to vote for Wallace
Washington (UP) –
Willis Mahoney, former mayor of Klamath Falls, Oregon, and Democratic candidate for Senator from Oregon, predicted today that a majority of delegates to the Democratic National Convention from his state will vote for the renomination of Vice President Henry A. Wallace.
Mr. Mahoney also predicted that President Roosevelt will “overwhelmingly carry the Pacific Northwest” if he seeks a fourth term.
Although Mr. Wallace’s name did not appear on the ballot in the May Democratic primary in Oregon, some 11,800 Democrats wrote his name in for the vice-presidential nomination, Mr. Mahoney said.
