Election 1944: Pre-convention news

[NormanStewart]

Völkischer Beobachter (May 21, 1944)

Tarnungsmanöver auf Befehl Moskaus –
Auflösung der US-Kommunisten

dnb. Genf, 20. Mai –
Wie Reuters meldet, soll die seit 25 Jahren bestehende Partei der US-Kommunisten den einstimmigen Beschluß gefaßt haben, sich als politische Partei aufzulösen. Daß diese angebliche Auflösung nur aus Tarnungsgründen erfolgt, geht aus dem weiteren Inhalt der Meldung hervor, wonach dafür eine neue, nicht politisch aufgezogene Organisation gebildet werden soll.

Genau wie seinerzeit bei der Auflösung der Komintern wird also auch nur das Firmenschild geändert, um unter einem neuen Namen umso ungestörter die Befehle Moskaus ausführen zu können.

Da weite Kreise der USA den Kommunismus ablehnen, wird auch Herr Roosevelt erfreut sein, daß die Kommunisten, die unter Verzicht eines eigenen Kandidaten für die Wiederwahl des Kriegshetzers und politischen Freundes im Weißen Hause stimmen werden, sich ein neues Mäntelchen anziehen wollen, das Roosevelt ermöglicht, sich noch mehr als bisher für die Jünger Stalins einzusetzen, nachdem seine Frau schon vor längerer Zeit als erste Kommunistin bezeichnet wird.

[NormanStewart]

The Brooklyn Eagle (May 21, 1944)

New Liberal Party lines up for Roosevelt and Wallace

World peace unit plank is adopted

The new Liberal Party, organized by former right-wing leaders of the American Labor Party and allied groups as the nucleus of a potential national liberal party, threw itself once into the 1944 national campaign yesterday by voting by acclamation to nominate President Roosevelt for a fourth term.

The action, climaxing a two-day convention in the Hotel Roosevelt in Manhattan, was voted by 1,124 delegates who. shortly afterward, also now chose by acclamation Vice President Wallace as their nominee for reelection. The same method was used to vote the renomination of Senator Robert F. Wagner for a new six-year term in Washington.

Claim 400,000 votes

Convention spokesmen predicted at the close of the proceedings the new party would poll 400,000 votes lor Roosevelt. The new party comes into existence less than 60 days after former right-wing leaders of the ALP withdrew from the latter organization after a losing primary fight in March which involved the issues of party control and alleged ALP domination by Communists and their so-called fellow travelers.

Under the state election laws, the new political group, in order to place the names of the President, Vice President and Senator Wagner on the ballot, must nominate by petition as an independent party. Its nomination of the Roosevelt-Wallace ticket will require 12,000 signatures of state voters, with at least 50 from each county.

A demonstration of between 10 and 15 minutes was staged when President Roosevelt’s name was presented to the delegates in a nomination speech by Samuel Shore, vice president of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, the most powerful union group behind the new party.

Delegates parade

Horn-tooting, cowbell-ringing, banner-waving delegates paraded around the main ballroom, in which the convention was staged, and went into a similar demonstration later when the nomination was made.

Mr. Shore said:

In hours heavy with uncertainties, we need men who are unswerving in their certainty of principle, their devotion to justice, their loyalty to ideals. Small men cannot perform great tasks – no matter how big their ambition or how wealthy their backers.

The speaker placed the President’s name before the delegates without a reference to a “draft” movement.

O’Leary endorses choice

Joseph V. O’Leary, former State Controller, made a seconding speech. The convention howled with laughter later when Prof. William Withers of Queens College, in another seconding speech, declared:

It is a privilege to second the nomination, not of an Ohio Governor, not of a naval officer from Minnesota, not of a Pacific war commander, not of a man in a blue serge suit, but of a real liberal, the greatest of them all, Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The nominations came after the convention, at its morning session, had adopted a declaration of the need for the formation of the new party and a program containing 12 planks.

The plank dealing with foreign policy called for the immediate creation of a United Nations Council and the post-war creation of a permanent international organization with power to maintain peace and carry out its decisions. One of the specific recommendations was for the formation of an “effective system of international policing to suppress aggression.”

Rejects isolationism

The plank rejected “isolationism and imperialism for American” and warned against alliances of the big powers, declaring that after the war there must be collective security and world organization.

The platform also included planks on a post-war economic policy; the transition from war to peace economy; democracy and equality; labor’s rights, agriculture, cooperatives, civil rights, education, housing, social security and civil liberties.

Prof. John L. Childs of Teachers College, Columbia University, was elected party chairman. Alex Rose was chosen chairman of the party’s administrative committee, and 21 members were named as vice chairmen, including Andrew R. Armstrong and Alexander Kahn of Brooklyn. The vice presidents include Mr. Dubinsky of the Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union.

[NormanStewart]

Browder: FDR retirement would be disaster

The recent visit of Father Stanislav Orlemanski, Polish-American Roman Catholic priest, to Moscow means “the opening of a final opportunity for the [Polish] government-in-exile to purge itself of its anti-Soviet personnel and policies and merge into the new Polish government which will undoubtedly arise,” Communist leader Earl Browder said yesterday.

Speaking at the opening session of the Communist Party’s final convention as a political party, at the Riverside Plaza Hotel in Manhattan, Browder declared that the American Communists would support President Roosevelt for a fourth term and added that the President’s retirement now, if it were to come, “would be a disaster to our country.” That is so generally recognized, he declared, that “Republicans-for-Roosevelt clubs are springing up all over the country.”

Browder announced dissolution of the Communist Party as such and said it would carry on as “a new non-party organization through which we expect to contribute to the common cause of the progressive majority of the American people,” under a new name such as the American Communist Association or American Communist Political Association.

[NormanStewart]

Heffernan: On Americans without a candidate

Sometimes I wonder if this presidential campaign, like that of 1940, will find Americans of my turn of mind without a candidate for the Chief Magistracy.

There have come to my desk letters from supporters of Mr. Roosevelt who say that they are against a fourth term but that the Republican Party offers no acceptable candidate against the present incumbent. There have come letters from readers who say that, although they are not satisfied with Governor Dewey, whose mobility of sentiments is already a target for New Deal attack, they would vote for a piebald puppy rather than for Roosevelt again.

Then there are others who, like myself, base their political action on these points:

• Desire for a return of constitutional government.

• A two-term limitation on the presidential tenure.

• This polity pronounced by Washington and a guiding influence of our foreign policy up to President Wilson’s time: “It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.”

The quotation is from Washington’s Farewell Address.

People of my mind realize that we are in this war, that our bravest and best blood is being shed on a hundred fields, and that extrication when the cannon cease their thunders will not be a matter of easy and immediate process. We shall have to aid the other powers involved to enforce peace where force is necessary and to persuade it where persuasion is possible.

But that still can be attained, we think, without the permanent alliances which Washington considered ruinous to our government, and which if we make them, will create a constant drain on our manhood and wealth and a continuous irritation of our domestic politics and a continuous depreciation of the value of our way of life.

Our opposition to President Roosevelt is the result of the lack of correspondence of performance with profession. The campaign speeches of the last presidential campaign seem like words floating in air against the American boys on foreign fields today. And even before the war the domestic policy of the administration has been a strange commentary on this from his 1935 Message to Congress:

Continuous dependence on relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive of the national fiber. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.

We are now confronted with the strong probability that Mr. Dewey will be the Republican candidate. His 1940 addresses, which were strongly non-intervention, are at odds with his present-day declarations on national policy. But if he be the candidate, we shall find ourselves forced either to vote for him or for the continuance in office of the New Deal and the consequent obsequies of the Constitution of the United States.

[NormanStewart]

Völkischer Beobachter (May 22, 1944)

Eine wohlverdiente Unterstützung –
Die Bolschewisten stimmen für Roosevelt

vb. Wien, 21. Mai –
Aus Washington meldet das Reuters-Büro, die Generalversammlung der nordamerikanischen kommunistischen Partei habe zum erstenmal in der Geschichte dieser Partei beschlossen, keinen eigenen Präsidentschaftskandidaten aufzustellen. Earl Browder, der Sekretär der Partei, erklärt in diesem Zusammenhang, daß die amerikanischen Kommunisten sich für die Wiederwahl Roosevelts einsetzen würden, denn ein Abgang Roosevelts würde ein Unglück für das Land sein.

Selten hat ein Präsidentschaftskandidat soviel dafür getan, sich die Unterstützung einer anderen Partei zu sichern, wie es bei Herrn Präsidenten Roosevelt und bei den amerikanischen Kommunisten der Fall ist. Außer dem britischen Premierminister hat Stalin niemandem so viel zu verdanken wie dem gegenwärtigen Präsidenten der Vereinigten Staaten. Dank der mächtigen Hilfe Nordamerikas herrscht der Bolschewismus heute bereits in Nordafrika, dringt er immer weiter in Süditalien vor, ist ihm gerade noch Nordnorwegen und Kiel angeboten worden, soll ihm für die Zeit nach dem Kriege Polen, das Baltikum, der Balkan, die Tschechei und schließlich ganz Mittel- und Westeuropa gehören. Es ist nur in Ordnung, wenn Stalin für so viel selbstlose Hilfe auch einmal einen Gegendienst leistet. Das Bündnis zwischen britisch-amerikanischem Kapitalismus und östlichem Bolschewismus findet durch die Empfehlung der kommunistischen Partei Nordamerikas an ihre Mitglieder und Wähler eine neue Steigerung.

Dieses Bündnis hat in der gleichen Sitzung der Partei noch eine höchst aufschlußreiche Deutung erfahren. Nach seiner Mitteilung über die Haltung der Partei in der Frage der Präsidentenwahl erklärt Browder weiter, auch die Kommunisten müßten die Einigkeit in den Vereinigten Staaten fördern. Man müsse die Politik von Moskau und Teheran beschützen. Deshalb dürften die Kommunisten nicht die Frage des Sozialismus in einer Form auswerten, die die nationale Einigkeit gefährden könnte. Er sagte: „Wenn irgendjemand das bestehende kapitalistische System in den Vereinigten Staaten als freies Unternehmertum zu bezeichnen wünscht, so haben wir nichts dagegen.“ Nach einigen wohlwollenden Bemerkungen für die breiteren Schichten der Bevölkerung fügt Browder hinzu: „Wir erklären in aller Offenheit, daß wir bereit sind, unsere Mitarbeit zu gewähren“ – und schließlich gab Browder noch den entscheidenden Satz:

Wir ziehen im Wahljahre 1944 keine politische Trennungslinie hinsichtlich irgendwelcher Form oder Fragen des freien Unternehmertums.

Man kann nicht deutlicher ausdrücken, wie sehr sich die Börsengrößen der Wall Street und die Machthaber des Kreml geeinigt haben, um in der ganzen Welt ihr Spiel mit verteilten Rollen zu spielen. Man kann aber auch nicht deutlicher den Völkern die Lehre erteilen, daß es nicht genügt, eine dieser beiden Mächte zu zerschlagen, sondern daß man sie beide treffen muß, wenn man die Welt wirklich befreien will.

[NormanStewart]

The Brooklyn Eagle (May 22, 1944)

President to get complete physical checkup this week

Washington (UP) –
President Roosevelt will go this week to the Naval Medical Center at Bethesda, Maryland, for a complete physical checkup.

Mr. Roosevelt’s physician, VAdm. Ross T. McIntire. felt sure the examination would show the Chief Executive is back in good physical shape following a month’s vacation in South Carolina and as the result of a new, easier work routine at the White House.

Results of the checkup were expected by many of Mr. Roosevelt’s political supporters to cinch his decision to seek reelection. Many Democratic leaders, at least, were planning in that direction, and the final physical answer from the Naval Hospital this week was expected to remove from many of their minds all doubt as to his plans.

The medical checkup itself will be brief, probably not requiring more than a couple of hours of the President’s time, because McIntire already has much of the information that goes into such an examination. No hospital stay will be involved and Mr. Roosevelt will be away from his office only for a comparatively brief period – probably for part of a morning or an afternoon.

To guard against any loss of progress made during his South Carolina rest, McIntire has put President on a “take-it-easy” schedule, which is being followed every day. The President has abandoned his habit of doing business and engaging in conferences while eating lunch from a tray at his desk. He is now seeing very few callers in the afternoon and, in general, his routine has been lightened after 11 years of a hard-driving dally schedule.

[NormanStewart]

LIFE (May 22, 1944)

Editorial: Advice to the Republicans

Before stampeding to Dewey, the delegates should consider the claims of the Midwest

As a magazine, LIFE is neither Democrat nor Republican. If and when this magazine comes out for a candidate in the 1944 campaign, it will do so from a nonpartisan base. Thus, in giving some advice to the Republican Party, which we now propose to do, we are not adopting that party, or asking it to adopt us. We are giving it the kind of advice which any outside has the right to offer to any party whose affairs are, after all affected with a public interest.

The delegates to the Republican National Convention seem at the present moment to be hellbent on nominating Governor Dewey as fast as possible and then hellbending home. This may turn out to be a good thing for them to do. But our advice is: think it over. A case can be made that the best thing the Republicans can do is nominate a Midwesterner. And not only the best thing for the Republicans, but – more to the point – the best thing for the country in case they win the election.

The Republican renascence

The average delegate entraining for Chicago next month knows there is a widespread reaction against Washington bureaucracy, against OPA, against 12 too-exciting years of personal and theatrical government. he figures it’s a Republican year, so what the hell. It is true that this may be an anti-Roosevelt year. But if it is also a Republican year, what made it so? What and who revived the Republican Party? How does it happen that the anti-Roosevelt sentiment, instead of skulking through the streets, has a respectable vehicle?

The mainspring of the Republican renascence is the Midwest. Here, in the birthplace of the Republican Party, the land of corn, wheat and Lincoln, the Republican renascence got its start. Since 1938, the Midwest has been returning Republicans to Congress in an ever-widening stream. It gave Willkie 68 of his 82 electoral votes in 1940. Even those Midwestern states that went for Roosevelt that year went Republican in their state governments. To be sure, other sections did their share to keep the party together, notable New England. Nevertheless, the spearhead of Roosevelt’s Congressional opposition is 22 senators from the Midwest. The Midwest is the one section which can be counted on to go Republican this year.

For that very reason, many leading Republican politicians feel that it is unnecessary to take the Midwest’s mood into account. They concentrate their calculations on the problematical East and West. Hence: “Dewey and Warren.” Although the Midwest would support this ticket, it would rather have some recognition for its years of loyalty and hard work. But quite apart from that, there are serious national reasons why a Midwesterner, if the country goes Republican, should take the responsibility that goes with the victory the Midwest will have earned.

Whoever is President during the next four years will not have an easy time. While he is trying to conclude the peace treaties with one hand, the other will have to deal with a turmoil of demobilization. For a while the economic pie will be smaller; inevitably there will be renewed bitterness over who gets what. In that bitterness, group and sectional rancors will come boiling to the top.

Of sectional prejudice, the Midwest has perhaps a little more than its share. At its worst, it is suspicious of foreigners, of the East, of big cities (including its own), of Wall Street and of Big Business. The only thing the Midwest completely trusts is itself. The Midwest is just like the rest of America, only more so.

How can the Midwest be kept at its best during the next four dangerous years, instead of at its worst? By giving it responsibility, which is the surest antidote to prejudice. With 22 Senators, the Midwest is bound to exercise a great deal of power, of it does not enjoy responsibility commensurate with this power, it may become more self-sufficient, self-regarding and exclusively regional than ever.

Republican foreign policy

Among the serious consequences of such a withdrawal would be its effect on U.S. foreign policy. This would be the first target of the Midwest’s suspicions.

A lot has happened in the last few weeks to change the Republican position on foreign policy. Soon after Willkie’s withdrawal from the race, Governor Dewey came out for Secretary Hull, Governor Bricker came out for post-war credits abroad, and both came out for a joint peacekeeping deal with Britain, Russia and China. Meanwhile Senator Taft has written a blueprint for a new League of Nations and, of course, ex-Governor Stassen went on record with his famous seven-point program way back in January 1943. Throw in progressives like Senators Ball and Burton and throw out the Illinois crowd (who though powerful are not candidates) and you emerge with a wholly new Republican orientation: its leaders, even without Willkie, are all on record against anything that could remotely be termed “isolation.”

Now, the Midwest is the old home of isolation. The Midwest today is not against America’s participating in world affairs; but it is still very skeptical about any program of participation that has been offered to it to date. It is still isolationist in a relative sense; it is capable of supporting an active foreign policy, but only after its doubts about the motivation of that policy are completely removed. And the doubts of the Midwest spring from its prejudices – its suspicions of all foreigners and their supposed influence on the East.

A vocal handful of diehard Willkieites may say, “The Midwest is hopeless. No appeasement!” That is tantamount to saying that on foreign policy, the Republican Party without Willkie has no case.

But the Republicans have a foreign policy case. Their case is that internationalism will be not so much an issue as a fact of post-war life. Given this fact, U.S. foreign policy should be one of enlightened and responsible selfishness. Their case is not that Roosevelt is too inclined to make commitments, but that he cannot make his commitments stick. Congress will probably be Republican and certainly anti-Roosevelt; therefore, only a Republican President can make any foreign policy responsible and effective.

The Republican case is that when a Republican President sits down with Stalin, Churchill, Chiang Kai-shek and whoever else, the meeting will get somewhere; for Stalin et al. will know that the presidential signature on a treaty will not be written in vanishing ink.

Keep it clean

But if this is a good case for a Republican President, why is it not an even better case for a Midwestern Republican President?

If a Republican foreign policy were administered by a Midwesterner, its selfishness would never be open to doubt. For the Midwest trusts its own – especially those whom it has elected to office. With both the selfishness and the responsibility of our foreign policy assured, the debate could then be conducted on one level only: is it enlightened? This debate will go on forever. Our problem will be not to end it, but to keep it on this high plane.

The best way to keep it on this high plane is to stage it at the corner of Main and Elm. To the Midwestern eye, America is merely an extension of these two streets, and maybe the Midwest is right. In any case, they are long, straight streets, and they can lead to all parts of the world.

By naming a Midwestern candidate, the Republicans will assure the country that the great post-war debate will not degenerate into a sectional brawl. Yet to name a Midwesterner would not turn the Republicans into a sectional party, or an isolationist party, or otherwise narrow its base. There are at least four candidates – Bricker, Burton, Stassen, Taft – who are not only representative Midwesterners, but also men with a national viewpoint, and an expressed realization of America’s need to participate in world affairs.

The political case for Dewey is a strong one: his state is doubtful, while the Midwest is not, and any party has to figure things very closely when it is up against The Champ. But the delegates to Chicago will perform a patriotic service if they delay the stampede at least long enough for the Midwest’s case to be heard.

[NormanStewart]

The Brooklyn Eagle (May 23, 1944)

ALP names union chief for Congress

Municipal workers head chosen to make race in new 14th

James V. King, president of the CIO-affiliated State, County and Municipal Workers, has become the first member of the American Labor Party to be entered as a candidate in Brooklyn’s 1944 Congressional race, it was learned today.

Petitions designating him to run in the new 14th Congressional district, as established under the State Reapportionment Act, have been placed in circulation with the leaders setting 10,000 signatures as their goal. The district is one of several in Brooklyn, where the ALP outranks the Republicans as the runner-up to the Democrats in strength.

The new district has no Representative in Washington now and must elect one for the first time in November. This has produced a wide and open field to the Democratic, Republican and Labor parties, with the latter becoming the first to reach a definite agreement on its candidate. The district consists of the new 2nd and 16th ADs and includes Coney Island, much of the area which touches Gravesend Bay south of 16th Avenue and a large part of the Kings Highway section.

Ready to fight

The ALP’s selection of King is regarded as the first confirmation of the party’s determination to fight both the Democrats and Republicans, in certain districts, if necessary, in order to win a share of Brooklyn’s legislative offices. Although the party in recent years endorsed numerous Democratic and a more limited number of Republicans, no ALP member now holds an elective office from Brooklyn.

The only Democrats who have been assured to date of ALP endorsements for reelection are Irwin Steingut, the Democratic minority leader in the Assembly at Albany, and Rep. Emanuel Celler. A “limited number” of others will be endorsed, according to ALP leaders, with such backing being based on the candidates’ support of President Roosevelt’s fourth term and his New Deal administration policies.

Rayfiel mentioned

The Democratic leaders controlling their party’s slate in the 14th Congressional district have reached no decision on their choice. They are Kenneth F. Sutherland, the Coney Island leader, and Joseph B. Whitty of the 2nd AD. However, the name of Assemblyman Leo F. Rayfiel has been prominently mentioned.

King is one of the ALP’s most experienced members in legislative procedure. He has gone frequently to Albany, where he has appeared at legislative hearings in support of progressive legislation. As legislative spokesman for the State, County and Municipal Workers, he has been active to obtain an adjustment in the wage standards of thousands of low-paid state hospital workers.

[NormanStewart]

Browder seeks to extend basis of Communism

Communists, by dissolving their political party and reorganizing under the name of the Communist Political Association, hope to gain collaboration with “broader circles” of American life, Earl Browder, general secretary of the Communist Party of America since 1930 and president of the newly-formed association, said at the close of the Communist convention yesterday in the Riverside Plaza Hotel in Manhattan.

Browder, elected to head the new association by acclamation, explained that the political party has been an obstacle to such collaboration. He added that other obstacles remain such as “the Red scare and anti-Communist ideology fostered by Hitler’s propaganda organization.”

In placing Browder’s name in nomination, William Z. Foster, veteran lender, described the first president of the new association as “one of the finest agitators and educators” America has produced.

Commenting on German criticism of the Communists’ reorganization, Browder said he was happy the Communists had “displeased Berlin.”

“It was as I expected and predicted,” he said, referring to a Nazi DNB broadcast that assailed the new setup as a move to stop criticism of United States and Russian collaboration.

The broadcast stated that Berlin political circles viewed dissolution of the party as a “technical maneuver” to stifle attacks by President Roosevelt’s enemies against the “Roosevelt-Bolshevist coalition.”

‘Comrades’ no longer

In his closing address to the convention, Browder addressed his audience as “Ladies and Gentlemen,” dispensing with the customary Communist greeting “Comrades.”

A national committee of 40 members and 20 alternates will govern the new association. Among those elected as members of the committee, which includes all 27 members of the governing body of the dissolved party, were City Councilmen Peter V. Cacchione and Benjamin J. Davis Jr.

[NormanStewart]

Editorial: Success of Wallace’s mission would enhance his prestige

The circumstances attending Vice President Wallace’s departure on his mission to China and Siberia make it possible to speculate with somewhat more certainty upon prospects for his renomination in July. When the announcement was first made some weeks ago that the Vice President would be out of the country at a significant time there was a hasty disposition to see in it a portent of political doom. President Roosevelt, it was assumed, had reached the decision that Mr. Wallace was not a political asset and that the cause of a fourth term would be served best by looking around for another running mate, one who would placate the conservative South, where there have been disturbing rumblings of discontent.

The possibility of Mr. Wallace’s retirement has brought a number of potential candidates for the vice-presidential nomination to the forefront but today Mr. Wallace looms somewhat larger upon the political scene than in the past and there is in consequence diminishing probabilities of his being replaced.

As the President’s personal representative to an Allied nation which has been waging a war for freedom for the last seven years and which has earned the right to a strong voice in the peace and in the future of Asia, Mr. Wallace undertakes a mission whose success will enhance his stature. It is unquestionably true, as the President said in his announcement, that “Eastern Asia will play a very important part in the future history of the world’” and that “forces are being unleashed there which are of the utmost importance to our peace and prosperity.”

This is not a junket nor is it a scheme cunningly designed to eliminate Mr. Wallace from the political scene at a time when his fortunes will hang in the balance. It is a mission planned to meet a definite need which is essential to the winning of the war and to the establishment of a satisfactory peace.

The Allied leaders have been charged frequently with thoughtlessness with respect to China’s interests and there is some justification for the charge. Preoccupation with the more pressing challenges of the Pacific and of Hitler’s Europe has operated to the neglect of China, whose needs have been great and whose sacrifices and sufferings cannot even be comprehended by their Allies.

It is important that we know more about China and that we bring to her plight a more practical and sympathetic concern. “The Vice President.” Mr. Roosevelt has said, “because of his present position and his training in economics and agriculture, is unusually well fitted to bring both to me and to the people of the United States a valuable first-hand report.”

The personnel of a carefully selected staff must be recognized as a further indication that the mission is one which is intended to accomplish purposes vital to a nation which has endured much in the struggle for a peaceful world.

Mr. Wallace’s opponents will not find it easy to make political capital of his trip to Siberia and China, particularly when there is the probability that he will return in time for the Democratic National Convention in mid-July. The developments are in his favor.

[NormanStewart]

The Brooklyn Eagle (May 24, 1944)

4th term splits Democrats in Texas session

Austin, Texas (UP) –
A split over the fourth term issue divided Texas Democrats into rival camps today and provided the party with what appeared to be its first convention fight.

The break occurred at the party’s state convention yesterday when the pro-Roosevelt faction, headed by A. J. Wirtz, former Under Secretary of the Interior, bolted from the meeting and held a rump session, naming a separate group of delegates to the national convention.

Under the usual convention procedure in disputes of this kind, the Credentials Committee will have to decide in advance of the balloting for nominations which delegation to seat. Texas has 48 votes at the convention.

Split over pledge

The split resulted from the question of pledging electors to support the Democratic national ticket, regardless of its composition.

A resolution which favored a return to the old party plan of nominating the candidates for President and Vice President by a two-thirds majority rule and declaring that states and parties had a right to fix their own election rules precipitated the break.

According to the terms of the resolution, if the national convention did not approve the proposals, the delegates would be free to cast the state’s 48 votes for any Democrats “holding views in accord with those here expressed.”

FDR group bolts parley

The pro-Roosevelt faction bolted the meeting and held a rival convention, naming a full slate of delegates.

Governor Coke R. Stevenson was invited to head the main convention’s delegation to Chicago and former Governor Dan Moody was named its chairman.

A resolution adopted by the pro-Roosevelt group declared that the original convention was an “usurpation and manipulation by enemies of the Democratic Party procured by delegates from Texas’ four largest counties, a large part of whom supported the Republican candidate for President in 1940.”

[NormanStewart]

Three groomed for Twomey’s seat in Senate

Assemblymen Rudd, Smolenski, Gittleson considered by party
By Joseph H. Schmalacker

Three Democratic legislators were being considered today for their party’s nomination to succeed Senator Jeremiah F. Twomey of Greenpoint, who has announced that, after nearly 30 years of service at Albany, he does not intend to run for another term. The three are Assemblymen John Smolenski, who now represents Greenpoint in the lower branch of the Legislature; Roy H. Rudd of the Bushwick section and Harry Gittleson of Williamsburg.

According to word from Leader Frank V. Kelly’s office at Democratic headquarters, no immediate decision on the choice is expected. It may be deferred until a number of other pending Democratic designations are ironed out.

The chief one in the latter group is the designation for the $22,500 judgeship in the County Court. The judicial office must be filled at the November election lor a 14-year term because of the death of Judge Peter Brancato. Judge Nicholas Pinto, a Republican, is the temporary incumbent by virtue of appointment by Governor Dewey.

McGuinness for Smolenski

Assemblyman Smolenski’s name has been advanced for the Senatorship with the backing of Greenpoint leader Peter J. McGuinness. Greenpointers have also talked of booming Walter Carley, chairman of the Greenpoint district committee, but Carley has eliminated himself. He has been aide to Twomey for 14 years and is minority secretary of the Senate Finance Committee at Albany, of which Twomey was formerly chairman.

Democratic insiders said the seniority factor would be an important, though not necessarily controlling one, in deciding the race. From this standpoint Rudd, Smolenski and Gittleson are closely bunched. Rudd entered the Assembly in 1937. He was followed in 1938 by Smolenski. Gittleson served his first term in 1938 and, after an interruption of service, returned in 1941.

Greenpointers said Smolenski rates high consideration because he ranks as one of New York State’s outstanding Polish-Americans, whom the Democrats are anxious to keep in line for President Roosevelt. Estimates place the Polish-American vote in Greenpoint at 5,000.

Rudd strong in 20th

On the other hand, Rudd carries the 20th AD for the Democrats in his Assembly campaigns, although the Bushwick district is inclined to go Republican in presidential and gubernatorial election years. He has a strong following among taxpayer groups.

Gittleson, however, is rated as one of the Democratic Party’s most skillful debaters against the Republican majority in Albany. Republican majority members, although they follow the strict party line when votes are cast on the roll call, applaud Gittleson when he has finished a full-dress debate on civil rights issues.

Twomey’s old senatorial district has been revised under the state Reapportionment Act so that it now extends from the East River and Newtown Creek as far as the upper Bushwick section. The Democratic leader in Bushwick is the veteran James W. Tuomey. Gittleson’s leader is Dr. Joshua H. Friedman, whose district, according to pre-presidential straw polls, is one of the strongest New Deal areas in Brooklyn.

[NormanStewart]

Editorial: What’s in a name?

The American public has been officially informed, to the accompaniment of all the excitement of a party convention plus the usual paraphernalia of a huge Madison Square Garden rally, that the Communist Party is dead! Yes, honest to goodness dead, and Comrade Browder would presumably swear it on a stack of Bibles if he felt that would lend any plausibility to his story. But knowing it wouldn’t, he didn’t.

At any rate, that’s his story and he’s stuck with it. Orders from Moscow, you know. Just as when he changed overnight in 1940 from being anti-Roosevelt and pro-Hitler to pro-Roosevelt and anti-Hitler when he got unexpected orders from Moscow.

If he received orders from the same source tomorrow to start propaganda for a peace settlement with Japan and a movement for the removal of Eisenhower if he didn’t start his invasion by next Tuesday morning, there is little doubt in most American minds as to what Mr. Browder would do.

Anyway, the Communist Party in America is now dead, according to Browder and Stalin, and, we presume, all the fellow travelers are delighted. In its place stands the Communist Political Association – pure as driven snow.

Americans with any memory will remain unimpressed. This new Red outfit will be 100% Russian as its predecessor has always been. It will stand for American policies and ideas only as long as they meet with Stalin’s approval. And it will bear close watching just as the Communist movement always has, regardless of the name it may adopt to suit its own selfish purposes.

[NormanStewart]

Brooklyn Eagle (May 25, 1944)

State opens drive against vote frauds

Herlands appointed to set up permanent nonpartisan bureau
By Joseph H. Schmalacker

A sweeping drive to block ballot frauds was opened by the state today when William B. Herlands, Mayor La Guardia’s former Commissioner of Investigations, was called in by Nathaniel L. Goldstein, the Attorney General, to organize a new Election Frauds Bureau in the State Law Department.

The new bureau, authorized by the Legislature under a $50,000 appropriation, will be permanent and will be formed on nonpartisan lines, Mr. Goldstein announced.

Herlands, a former Brooklyn resident, who is now living in Manhattan, was appointed by Mr. Goldstein as the bureau’s organizer with the rank of Special Deputy Attorney General at a salary which will be at the rate of $750 a month. His assignment will be part-time and he will continue to maintain his private law offices.

Must guard sanctity of ballot

Mr. Goldstein said:

While Americans on the battlefield are fighting a war to preserve democracy, we on the home front must vigilantly guard the sanctity of the ballot so that the vote of the soldier in the field and the civilian at home may be properly protected. The right to vote for candidates of one’s own choosing, the secrecy of the ballot and an honest count of the votes cast lie at the very root of our form of government. These rights must be preserved, even though we may differ as to candidates and issues. It is more important that our elections be conducted free from fraud and according to law than that any particular candidate should win.

Mr. Goldstein said Democrats as well as Republicans would be named to staff the new bureau. The appropriation to permit the new agency to be organized was urged upon the Legislature last winter by Mr. Goldstein. This was after a special report had been submitted to him by J. Edward Lumbard Jr., a special deputy who headed an investigation of election frauds last year.

The investigation was centered in Albany and other large population areas, including Brooklyn, where a spot-check last year uncovered evidence of considerable election irregularities. The Brooklyn investigation was in charge of A. David Benjamin, a special deputy.

Herlands familiar with task

Mr. Herlands, before his appointment in the La Guardia administration, was chief assistant to Governor Dewey while the latter was making his investigation of rackets in New York County. He resigned as Commissioner of Investigations March 1.

Attorney General Goldstein said Mr. Herlands was familiar with election law problems and that he and Mr. Lumbard prosecuted a number of election officials for ballot frauds committed in 1932.

[NormanStewart]

Governor Warren shies away from nomination

Washington (UP) –
A telegraphic inquiry to Governor Earl Warren brought an explanation today that “obligations here in California” cause him to shy away from the 1944 Republican vice-presidential nomination.

But Warren did not say he would not accept the nomination if offered. Political observers believe the vigorous boom on his behalf will continue to develop and that he would be a welcome running mate for any likely Republican presidential nominee, including Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York.

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Students name Dewey in mock GOP session

Nominated on the first ballot as the Republican candidate for President at a mock GOP national convention staged in two sessions for 3,000 students at Manual Training High School, 7th Avenue and 5th Street, today. Governor Dewey, nevertheless, failed to carry his home state when the booming voice of Roy Bredholt, third-year student, as convention secretary, called the roll of states.

New York’s 93 delegates split its voting strength three ways, casting 46 votes for Governor John W. Bricker of Ohio, 37 for Dewey and 10 for Navy LtCdr. Harold E. Stassen. The big laugh of the roll call was Oregon’s “14½ votes for Dewey and half a vote for Stassen.”

On the shoulders of Mr. Dewey as the convention’s nominee would rest the burden of leading this nation “out of the wilderness and spiritual chaos,” according to Gordon White, “a gentleman from Alabama,” who was elected permanent chairman. Tumultuous applause greeted Dewey’s nomination by 774 votes (only 523 were required). Stassen was a poor second with votes of 154 delegates and Bricker trailed with 127 votes.

Assails New Deal

This nation can’t be run on “promises” of what will be done for the people, said keynoter Ward De Silva in a voice of authority. The New Deal “in its bureaucratic way,” he declared, has “forgotten the rights of industry.”

In placing Dewey’s name in nomination, Joan Abbrancati noted opponents’ claim that New York’s Governor is “too young” and then proceeded to show what “this young man” has done.

The party platform, presented by Joseph Tesoriero, recorded its opposition to a fourth term favored an organization of all the nations for “collective security” and promised simplification of the tax system.

[NormanStewart]

3rd party aim is disavowed by Hillman

The Congress of Industrial Organizations has no intention of using its Political Action Committee to create a third party, but intends to work within the major parties solely for the support of “liberal, win-the-war candidates” and the reelection of President Roosevelt, according to Sidney Hillman, chairman of the committee.

Hillman said today that the committee has a fund of about $700,000. He declared the 5,500,000 CIO members would not be under any compulsion to vote the committee’s choices, but described the CIO as the largest voting bloc outside either of the two major parties.

Hillman said:

All we are conducting is an educational campaign. We give our members the records of Congressmen so that they may vote intelligently.

Immediate aim of the committee, he said, is to “get our members to register – we don’t ask that they register Democratic: we are interested in getting them to qualify to vote.”

Hillman credited the committee with having purged Martin Dies from Congress and with the capture of the American Labor Party in New York State. Hillman is the state chairman of the party.

He declared the committee’s books are open to inspection and ridiculed Governor Bricker’s charges that the committee has $5,000,000 allocated for a fourth-term drive.

Because only 28,000,000 votes were cast in the last Congressional election, Hillman said, his committee would attempt to mobilize war workers who have migrated from their homes. He estimated New York State had lost 1,000,000 workers and indicated this aided the Republicans.

He declared that the CIO had no further “purge list” but other CIO leaders placed Senator Taft high on such a list.

[NormanStewart]

The Brooklyn Eagle (May 26, 1944)

CIO political group plans June meeting

Washington (UP) –
The CIO Political Action Committee, which has already endorsed President Roosevelt for a fourth term, plans to call a national conference in Washington in mid-June to chart his program for the 1944 political campaign, it was disclosed today.

A CIO spokesman said more than 300 delegates – the committee’s regional and state directors and field officers, as well as Political Action representatives of CIO affiliates – were expected to attend the conference on the eve of the Republican and Democratic national conventions.

The defeat or retirement of three of its foes on the Dies Committee has focused attention on the CIO committee, and its activities were blamed by Senator Rufus C. Holman (R-OR) yesterday for his recent defeat in the Oregon Republican primaries.

The CIO committee and New Dealers employed unlimited financial resources to wage an “effective smear campaign” to throttle his bid for renomination, Holman told the Senate.

The committee said the June meeting would “outline labor views on issues which will decide 1944’s crucial elections” and would prepare a platform calling for full production and full employment the post-war period.

The conference is also expected to give further attention to the organizational problem of getting workers to register and to vote – a problem which has been given heavy emphasis during the early stages of the committee’s work. CIO leaders have blamed the political lethargy of labor for what they interpreted as an anti-labor trend in the 1942 and 1943 elections. They have been cheerful over the result of recent primaries.

Spokesmen for the Political Action Committee have looked upon those results as evidence that their drive to mobilize the labor vote was being successful.

[NormanStewart]

GOP nominates Gwinn for Congress race

White Plains, New York –
Assemblyman Jane H. Todd of Tarrytown was out of the race today for Republican candidate for Congress from the newly-created 27th Congressional district, which is so heavily Republican that a party nomination is considered equivalent to election.

At a meeting of the Westchester County Republican Committee, held in the Eastview Junior High School last night, Ralph W. Gwinn of Bronxville was formally designated for candidate from the 27th while Ralph A. Gamble of Larchmont was named for the nomination from the 28th.

Miss Todd sat on the platform with Livingston Piatt, county leader, when the nominations were made, and Mrs. Virginia Morrison of Elmsford, who had supported Miss Todd, seconded the nomination of Gwinn.

[NormanStewart]

The Brooklyn Eagle (May 27, 1944)

Wives must show they are entitled to absentee vote

Although their husbands are entitled to vote in the fall elections under laws in this and many other states which provide, in substance, that no person gains or loses residence through entrance into military service, large number of wives of servicemen have lost their voting privileges because of the closing of homes to take up temporary quarters near army camps and naval stations.

To obtain an absentee ballot under the New York election laws, a wife must certify in person mat she will be unavoidably absent from the state election day because of duty or obligation imposed by business or professional activities. While it is reported most election boards are interpreting this provision liberally and tend to accept applications for absentee ballots, in the case of wives who have given up apartments or homes to live near their husbands it is held they are no longer residents. Thus, they are ineligible to vote.

Residence requirements in this state are one year in the state, four months in the county, city or village and 30 days in the election district.

[NormanStewart]

Heffernan: Has the Democratic Party no Mirabeau?

Some years ago, when President Roosevelt proclaimed himself the Master, and the dictatorial trait in his character began to manifest itself, my comment was a quotation of the servant of Louis XVI of France to his royal master: “It is not a riot, sire, it is a revolution!”

Now Mr. Roosevelt, for whose election Sidney Hillman’s CIO Committee on Political Action is prepared to spend millions of dollars, is styled the Commander-in-Chief, a title which he has a right to assume with respect to the Army and Navy but which none of his predecessors cared to accept in place of the honored one of President of the Republic.

There have been leaders of the Democratic Party which his Communist and New Deal adherents captured who have tried to prevent his leading us, in the words of John W. Bricker, down the road to state socialism. Farley tried it, Carter Glass tried it, John Garner tried it and Senators Wheeler and Byrd tried it.

But the claptrap of the New Deal political bravos, the prizes offered to labor in the form of a temporary orgy with paper money, backed by the taxing power of an administration that will tax to the bone; all these have prevailed. Mr. Roosevelt, his health permitting, will be the candidate again. And the public opinion polls recently published indicate that he has an edge on Governor Dewey, the presumptive Republican nominee.

And once more from that tragic story of the French Revolution which was the first step in the downward road to the abyss in which unhappy France now finds herself, I quote from what Malouet of the dying Mirabeau:

He was on the point of rendering great service to the state: shall I tell you how? By confessing to you his faults and pointing out your own; by preserving to you all that was pure in the Revolution and by energetically pointing out to you all its excesses and the danger of those excesses; by making the people affrighted at their blindness and the factious, at their intrigues.

Has the Democratic Party no Mirabeau?