The Pittsburgh Press (September 12, 1944)
Nye charges plot to ‘buy’ defeat
Veteran sought as foe, he says
Washington (UP) –
Senator Gerald P. Nye (R-ND) charged today that Joseph B. Keenan, former Assistant Attorney General, offered a disabled veteran of World War I $110,000 to run against him for the Republican senatorial nomination this year.
The offer, Mr. Nye charged in a Senate speech, was made in the presence of another North Dakota Senator whom he did not identify.
North Dakota’s other Senator is Republican William Langer, long a bitter foe of Me. Nye in North Dakota politics.
Mr. Nye said the offer was made Sept. 14, 1943, when the disabled veteran, Fay Dewitt of Minot, North Dakota, was in Washington en route to a national convention of disabled American war veterans.
Mr. Langer told the Senate, however, that:
The statement that J. B. Keenan ever offered anyone a single dollar to defeat the Senator from North Dakota is completely false.
Visited with Senator
Mr. Nye said Mr. Dewitt and Charles Gray of Bismarck, North Dakota, visited that day with “one of their Senators in his office.” During the conversation, Mr. Nye continued, if was said that Mr. Dewitt was affiliated, with the Masons, Elks, American Legions, Veterans of Foreign Wars and Disabled War Veterans.
The Senator, Mr. Nye said, requested that he be permitted to hold Mr. Dewitt’s membership cards for a few hours, promising to return them that evening to Mr. Dewitt’s rooms.
That evening, according to Mr. Nye, the Senator went to the hotel bringing with him a “Mr. McSheehan” or a “Mr. Keenan” who, Mr. Nye said, was “Joseph B. Keenan, native of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, resident of Cleveland, Ohio, who under Attorney General Cummings [former Attorney General Homer S. Cummings] became first Assistant Attorney General.”
‘White House connections’
Mr. Nye said Mr. Keenan, when asked his interest as a Democrat in the Republican senatorial race, said he was “a Democrat with White House connections interested in seeing Senator Nye’s defeat.”
Mr. Keenan, Mr. Nye said, offered to finance the Dewitt campaign to the extent of $110,000, of which $10,000 was to be paid on the spot.
Mr. Dewitt and his companions – who, besides Mr. Gray, included Neal E. Williams (a special Assistant Attorney General of North Dakota), Andy Nomland, Oscar Winters, and Howard Shirley (all of Grand Forks) – “administered a verbal lashing to the proposition to buy a candidate for the Senate,” Mr. Nye said.