Stokes: New Dealers heartened by wins in South
Roosevelt’s true strength not shown
By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer
Birmingham, Alabama –
Any lingering doubt about the standing of President Roosevelt and the New Deal along the Southern front was dispelled by the victories here and in Florida of Senators Lister Hill and Claude Pepper.
Everything in the unexpurgated edition of the Southern political catalog was hurled at the New Deal Senators, including wads of big money and the racial issue.
For that reason, the effect of their victories will spread over the country, reviving the hopes of Democrats and New Dealers for success in the presidential election.
Republicans were not pleased by the Alabama-Florida returns, the United Press reports. Senator Homer Ferguson (R-MI) said:
There are still a lot of people who won’t vote against Santa Claus, although there aren’t so many as there used to be.
Big anti-New Deal interests elsewhere had anxious eyes on this state and Florida and there is evidence that they had their finger in the situation through absentee-owned holdings.
But those who work in the mines and mills still have the most votes.
Both Senators knew they had been through a tough fight. Their margins were not too comfortably large. They learned that there is a substantial percentage of their constituencies dissatisfied with New Deal domestic trends.
Largely anti-vote
Neither Senator had particularly attractive or effective candidates in opposition, and it was largely an anti-vote.
In assessing the strength of this protest vote, however, it must be kept in mind, in trying to apply it as a formula outside the south, that the vote in both states is not truly representative of the whole people. This is especially true in Alabama, where the poll tax disenfranchises many thousands of voters. Florida has no poll tax and therefore cast a much larger vote, though it has only two-thirds as many people as this state.
Stayed at home
The vote here in Alabama was light. Farmers are behind with their work here, and apparently many of them stayed at home Tuesday.
President Roosevelt’s personal popularity in both states undoubtedly had an appreciable effect. Both Senators capitalized it to the limit, that and the war. Yet their vote did not represent by any means the full Roosevelt strength.
Those who deplored injection of the racial issue in the campaigns are hopeful that the defeat of those who raised it will minimize it in politics hereafter elsewhere in the South.