Election 1944: Pre-convention news

[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?

[NormanStewart]

Völkischer Beobachter (May 28, 1944)

Sensationeller Entscheid des US-Senats –
Ein Rüffel für Roosevelt

Lissabon, 27. Mai –
Roosevelt mußte in einem aufschlußreichen Einzelfall vor streikenden Arbeitern kapitulieren. Er erhielt gleichzeitig von seinem eigenen Senat einen Rüffel, da das juristische Untersuchungskomitee des US-Senats nach den nun abgeschlossenen Untersuchungen über seinen Verfassungsbruch durch die militärische Beschlagnahmung des Chikagoer Großwarenhauses Montgomery Ward & Co. entschied, daß der US-Präsident künftig seinen Exekutivbefehlen den Beweis der Verfassungsmäßigkeit hinzuzufügen hätte. Danach muß Roosevelt fortan bei jedem Exekutivbefehl die entsprechende Ziffer der US-Verfassung oder eine diesbezügliche Kongreßverfügung angeben.

Dieser Entscheid hat in den Vereinigten Staaten großen Staub aufgewirbelt. Die Angestellten des Warenhauses Montgomery hatten seinerzeit die Arbeit niedergelegt, da die Gesellschaft sich weigerte, einen abgelaufenen Tarifvertrag mit einer Gewerkschaft wieder zu erneuern. Der US-Präsident stellte darauf kurzerhand den bestreikten Betrieb unter Militärverwaltung, um die Wiederaufnahme der Arbeit zu erzwingen. Seine Anordnung stand jedoch im Widerspruch zu der Verfassung der Vereinigten Staaten, nach der Roosevelt zu diesem Vorgehen gegen einen Privatbetrieb, um den es sich bei dem Montgomery-Konzern handelte, nicht ermächtigt war. Es bleibt dahingestellt, wie weit der US-Präsident sich nun dem Entscheid des Senats fügen wird.

Die Republikaner sehen in dieser Schlappe Roosevelts eine hervorragende Chance für sich und wollen sie für ihre Propaganda zur nächsten Präsidentenwahl ausnützen. Sie kündigten in sensationeller Aufmachung die „Photographie des Jahres“ an. Das Bild soll einen alten Mann darstellen, der, grimmig dreinschauend und mit gefalteten Händen, von zwei US-Soldaten aus seinem Konzern herausgetragen wird. Der alte Mann ist Sewell Avery, der Vorsitzende des von Roosevelt vergewaltigten Montgomery-Ward-Konzerns. Er wurde gewaltsam aus dem eigenen Betrieb entfernt, da er sich weigerte, der Entscheidung, des Kriegsschlichtungsamtes nachzukommen.

Dieses Bild soll nun allen Amerikanern ein warnendes Beispiel dafür sein, was sie von Roosevelt in Zukunft zu erwarten haben, nämlich: Vergewaltigung, rücksichtslose Unterdrückung und unverschämte Einmischung des New Deal in die Rechte des amerikanischen Bürgers. Die Republikaner wollen diesen Propagandafeldzug unter dem vielsagenden Motto führen; „Dasselbe kann dir passieren.“

Um den skandalösen Zwischenfall in Chikago will die Republikanische Partei in Ihrer Wahlpropaganda weitere Punkte gegen Roosevelt konzentrieren wie etwa die Unzufriedenheit der Hausfrau über die Art der Rationierung, die Einstellung der Farmer gegen die übergroße Bürokratie, wie überhaupt das entsetzliche „Durcheinander und Querschießen bei den Kriegsanstrengungen in der Heimat.“ Ganz scharf wendet sie sich gegen die Untüchtigkeit der künstlich aufgeblasenen Roosevelt-Verwaltung, die den Krieg nur verlängere.