Election 1944: Washington Columns

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (July 24, 1944)

Heath: Dewey prepares to conduct blitz campaign

By S. Burton Heath

S. Burton Heath, writing a series of articles from Albany, is substituting for Peter Edson, regular conductor of the Washington Column, who is absent from Washington for a few days.

Albany, New York –
A short campaign and probably a red-hot one is beginning to shape up as Governor Dewey prepares methodically for his attempt to break President Roosevelt’s lease on the White House.

Both the Republican candidate and his campaign manager, National Chairman Brownell, declined to hint about details. They say nothing definite has been decided yet.

I think it is safe to prophesy that the Dewey campaign will begin soon after Labor Day; that it will include one – probably no more – major swing around the circuit; that it will rely heavily upon radio.

For the next month and a half this campaign probably will resemble a “pony war.” President Roosevelt will be busy as Commander-in-Chief. His supporters will taunt Governor Dewey with inaction. Mr. Dewey will go about his chores in person and through a lot of lieutenants who will appear to have a “passion for anonymity” and reticence.

But when the storm does break early in September it will be of blitz proportions, and there will be activity enough for two months to satisfy the most ambitious.

There are a number of reasons for a short campaign, and the war ranks as No. 1. Skilled politicians believe that the public would resent a long siege of oratory and travel in the midst of all-out war. Nor is it necessary for Governor Dewey to set as hard a pace as for a candidate less well known at the outset. He does not need to take weeks to introduce and identify himself; he can start right in selling his bill of goods.

This does not mean that the remainder of July and the month of August will be wasted. Quite the contrary. They are already being utilized efficiently.

Focus on 26 states

The campaign, as has been pointed out, is planned around the 26 states that have Republican Governors and which, in the aggregate, cast about 60 more electoral votes than Mr. Dewey would need to win.

Each of these states has an aggressive, successful GOP organization which elected its governor, and in turn has been strengthened by him. Each has candidates for Senate and House seeking election and reelection.

Mr. Dewey has talked with National Committee members and state chairman from all the states. He is meeting all 26 Republican Governors in St. Louis. State by state, delegations of Congressional candidates are calling on him.

These visitors have been leaving the executive chambers loud in their praise for Mr. Dewey. They are in position to go before their constituents and remark, casually:

“As Tom Dewey said to me–” or, perhaps oftener: “As I said to Tom Dewey–” That builds them up with the folks at home. It also builds up Candidate Dewey.

Possible blitz plan

Meanwhile, skilled assistants who have campaigned with Mr. Dewey in other years are quietly gathering material for the blitz in September and October, whipping it into shape, giving the candidate opportunity to know before he starts into the field what he has and how it can best be used.

Obviously, there will have to be one trip to the Pacific Coast. Naturally that would take one route – perhaps the northerly one – going, and another route – perhaps the southerly – returning. There would be stops at major cities for speeches and conferences and handshaking.

It is too early to be certain, but that one trip, plus perhaps visits to two or three major Eastern cities, and the use of radio, might constitute the campaign.

Radio will be used heavily in any event. The GOP feels that for the first time since Franklin Roosevelt entered the scene, he will be up against a skilled orator who can meet him on the air without a handicap. Every attempt will be made to capitalize on Mr. Dewey’s radio personality.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (July 25, 1944)

Heath: Dewey’s visitors go away visibly impressed

By S. Burton Heath

S. Burton Heath, writing a series of articles from Albany, is substituting for Peter Edson, regular conductor of the Washington Column, who is absent from Washington for a few days.

Albany, New York –
The Dewey personality is working up here – and like a bit of yeast tossed into the brew, it is turning a heterogeneous collection of casual ingredients into a potentially powerful liquor whose flavor seems to appeal to many.

In other words, Candidate Dewey is busy right now making friends: Dispelling any idea that he is an autocrat who gets nasty if he can’t have his own way, and whipping anti-Roosevelt parts into a pro-Dewey machine.

Most of Mr. Dewey’s visitors since his nomination have of course, been Republican officeholders, aspirants or party leaders, who are stuck with the GOP candidate at least until Nov. 8, whether they like him or not. They would not be expected, in this political season, to leave his presence breathing smoke and fire and hurling anathemas.

But capital correspondents, whose business it is to know when a politician is being political and when he is sincere, think that the enthusiasm of Governor Dewey’s conferees thus far has been from the heart.

Variety of callers

The Dewey appointment book, since he accepted the nomination, shows four types of callers. There have been members of his official family visiting him on state business. There have been newspaper, magazine and radio representatives ranging from the men assigned to his office to top executives of the biggest publications coming to get acquainted or to arrange for special articles.

There have been a few individuals who have come to discuss policies, issues, strategy, organization and party financing – such persons, for example, as National Chairman Brownell, National Financial Chairman Kemper, former National Chairman Spangler (now party general counsel).

And finally, there have been Republican members of both houses of Congress, who are being invited by state delegations. These practical, down-to-earth, 24-hour-a-day politicians provide an acid test of the Dewey personality. That is particularly true because the earlier ones from Vermont, Massachusetts and Connecticut leaned strongly to Wendell Willkie until the 1940 candidate pulled out of this race. When I went through New England last winter, some of these people couldn’t see Dewey for Willkie.

The Congressional members and aspirants all are running for office themselves this year, except for an occasional senator. When they get back home, they go out through the countryside seeking votes. Their job here is to determine for themselves whether their own fortunes will be advanced by plugging Mr. Dewey assiduously for the White House or by giving him lip service as a formality and playing lone hands thereafter.

Personality rings bell

The impression gained by political observers is that without exception these people are going away with the idea that they can serve themselves and their party best by going all out for Candidate Dewey.

As they put it, with apparent sincerity, they are “inspired… impressed… completely overwhelmed by the force of his personality.”

Veteran Congressman James W. Wadsworth of New York, more articulate than many, summed up the general reaction when he said:

I am greatly impressed with the Governor’s vigor. He travels a straight road. He fills the atmosphere of discussion with vigor. It’s very refreshing and encouraging.

That, of course, is the purpose of this preliminary phase of the Dewey campaign – to make friends, to send apostles back to the hustings enthusiastically singing praise of the presidential candidate while he is preparing thunderbolts to launch at President Roosevelt during and climaxing two months of the campaign.

Thus far the system seems to be working. There will be nothing muscle-bound about the fervor with which those who have come to Albany thus far will talk Dewey to their constituents back home.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (July 26, 1944)

Heath: Soldier vote issue tackled by Governor Dewey

By S. Burton Heath

S. Burton Heath, writing a series of articles from Albany, is substituting for Peter Edson, regular conductor of the Washington Column, who is absent from Washington.

Albany, New York –
When Governor Dewey denounced the CIO Political Action Committee the other day, without naming it, for criticizing the New York soldier vote law, he was striking at one phase of what many Democrats think may reelect President Roosevelt – the Commander-in-Chief issue.

Democrats claim and Republicans fear that the great bulk of the uniformed vote will go to the President because his war leadership is considered a known quantity while that of Mr. Dewey would have to be taken on faith and hope. Similar considerations may influence the votes of many stay-at-homes who have men in the Armed Forces.

The Democratic campaign will play that issue to the limit in every ramification Chairman Hannegan and his fellow strategists can discover or devise in hope of confirming servicemen and their relatives in their supposed pro-Rooseveltism.

As one approach, Governor Dewey’s refusal to go along on the federal ballot for servicemen is being exploited. Here, thus far, the CIO left-wing pro-Roosevelt organization appears to be doing most of the ball carrying. It is Governor Dewey’s contention that the “Citizens Non-Partisan Committee for the Servicemen’s Vote” is a CIO left-wing front with a thin window-dressing of Democrats and anti-Dewey Republicans.

Method in New York

New York State has 1,100,000 men and women in the Armed Forces. For them, contending that the federal ballot could not legally be counted under the state constitution. Governor Dewey and the Republican Legislature provided a simple method of voting.

All that the serviceman need for is send to Albany, direct or through family or friends, his name, his pre-service street address (to determine his election district) and his service address to which the ballot is to be mailed.

He will be sent exactly the same ballot he would use if he were voting at home, which he is to mark and mail back to Albany, whence it will be sent to the voter’s home election district for counting.

Last year, 62,000 New York servicemen asked for ballots and 42,000 of them actually voted – two out of three. The State War Ballot Commission estimates that 250,000 of New York’s absent servicemen are underage; some are aliens and others will not trouble to apply. If 350,000 should ask for ballots, the commission would expect, on the basis of last year’s result, about 200,000 votes.

In a close election, that number could easily decide whether New York’s 47 electoral votes shall go to President Roosevelt or Governor Dewey. Mr. Dewey lost the governorship in 1938 by 64,394, and Herbert Hoover carried New York in 1928 by only 103,481 votes.

It’s dynamite

What is considered more important – if the Democratic CIO coalition could persuade all servicemen and their families and friends that Governor Dewey, fearing the service vote, is trying to keep soldiers and sailors from voting, their action might easily decide the result in several other states.

For that reason, Governor Dewey is trying to get across his contention that it is as easy for New York servicemen to vote under his law as under the federal; and that whereas there can be no question about the legality of votes cast under his law, federal ballots might be tossed out.

He claims that, for the sake of embarrassing him, the CIO-PAC, through a front, is perpetuating a fraud upon the soldiers and sailors by trying to hand them the federal ballot.

In time of war a court might hesitate to toss our soldiers’ ballots because they did not include every office at stake in the soldiers’ home districts, but only the four officers for which the federal ballot provides.

The CIO says, “Take a chance.”

Governor Dewey says:

Let’s be sure that those who do vote shall have their ballots counted.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (July 27, 1944)

Heath: Mr. Dewey gets help in writing his speeches

By S. Burton Heath

While Peter Edson is absent from Washington, Mr. Heath’s series from Albany is being substituted.

Albany, New York –
During the next three months you are going to hear and read a lot of speeches by Thomas E. Dewey as the campaigns for the Presidency. You may be interested to learn how these will be prepared. I can give you a pretty good idea.

Let’s suppose that Governor Dewey has accepted an invitation to speak in your city on a certain date.

He will call into conference about half a dozen men. They will probably include Eliott Bell (former member of The New York Times editorial board and for several years Mr. Dewey’s personal adviser on financial matters), James C. Hagerty (former political reporter for that paper), Paul Lockwood (longtime intimate friend and associate), John Burton (since 1938 Mr. Dewey’s chief research assistant), Charles Breitel (his former law partner), Hickman Powell (writer who has been associated with every campaign Mr. Dewey has made).

Mr. Bell is now his superintendent of banks, Mr. Hagerty his executive assistant, Mr. Lockwood his secretary, Mr. Burton his budget director, Mr. Breitel his counsel, Mr. Powell is research specialist on farm problems for the GOP National Committee.

Free-for-all

To this group, Mr. Dewey may present a very tentative first draft of the projected talk. More probably he will tell them in broad terms what he proposes to say. If any disagree, there may be a free-for-all without gloves until substantial accord can be attained.

Then one or more of the subordinates will volunteer or be asked to prepare a draft. If more than one is written, the best material from all will be combined by somebody – often Mr. Powell – into a single version.

One participant tells me:

There is no pride of authorship in the members of this group, though sometimes we will fight for a phrase of which we are proud.

This working version combines Mr. Dewey’s ideas (as modified, often, by the discussion) and the facts and figures obtained from or checked with the most accurate sources to be found. Mr. Dewey is a “bug” on checking all data.

There is another get-together on this draft. If the speech is to be a major opus, somewhere along the line four other men are liable to be called in. These are George Medalie (who first brought Mr. Dewey into public life), Roger W. Straus (mining expert and philanthropist), John Foster Dulles (expert on international affairs) and National Chairman Herbert Brownell.

As the campaign goes on other consultants will be added. A speech to be made in California, for example, would be taken up with one or more trusted advisers from that state; one for the Midwest would be gone over with persons who know at first hand the problems and sentiments of that region.

Mrs. Dewey enters

At about this stage Mrs. Dewey looks over the draft. One regular participant cannot recall a single speech which she did not see shortly before the final version was prepared. Nor is her part perfunctory. She makes suggestions as to both content and form, and often they are taken.

At last, a draft, now pretty well worked to correct length, is taken by Mr. Dewey into seclusion. From it as raw material he dictates – or writes in longhand with pencil on legal-size ruled yellow paper pads – his own words. He may, and often does, lift a smooth phrase intact – Mr. Powell and Mr. Burton are good at catchphrases, but so is Mr. Dewey himself. Some of the best are his own.

He dictates or writes methodically and meticulously. His principal editing job consists of chopping long sentences into shorter ones and arranging his phrases so that when delivered they will fit into the rhythm of his speaking style.

The acceptance speech was a partial exception to this procedure. He started on that Tuesday morning, locked in a room in the Executive Mansion. That evening he went over it with Messrs. Bell, Lockwood, Powell and Hagerty and smoothed it out on the plane flying to Chicago.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (July 28, 1944)

Heath: Truman ‘appeals’ to Governor Dewey’s masterminds

By S. Burton Heath

While Peter Edson is absent from Washington, S. Burton Heath is writing a series of articles on the campaign plans of the Republican presidential candidate.

Albany, New York –
Dewey strategists would have been delighted if the Democrats had renominated Henry Wallace for Vice President. They profess to feel that Mr. Wallace could have attracted no votes that President Roosevelt will not get anyway, and would have alienated enough to have helped Governor Dewey’s cause materially.

But don’t get the idea from this that the choice of Senator Truman discouraged the Dewey entourage. Quite the contrary. When the President’s he-is-my-beloved-friend letter sent Mr. Wallace’s prospects tumbling to about two degrees above freezing, almost everybody around the State Capitol held his breath least by inadvertence he should chill the ensuing boomlet for Senator Truman.

Before the campaign is very old, the public is going to be reminded of Senator Truman’s political debts to the notorious Pendergast machine in Kansas City. The text of the Missouri Senator’s tribute to his benefactor, after Boss Pendergast had been sent to the penitentiary for his proved crimes, will be given wide distribution.

This, however, is not the Achilles’ heel that pleases the Deweyites most. Paradoxically enough, the real reason GOP lads think a Roosevelt-Truman ticket was made to order for Governor Dewey’s big guns is the splendid job the Truman Committee has done checking war contracts and their fulfillment – the very job that made Truman a national figure and won him the vice-presidential nomination.

Damaging witness

Dewey researchers, even before they begin checking the committee’s reports word by word, are certain that its findings can be used to make Senator Truman their most damaging witness against his running mate.

The Truman Committee hearings and reports unquestionably would have been combed anyway for ammunition in support of the GOP contention that President Roosevelt has badly mismanaged war production. But the blessing that the Democratic Convention placed upon the Missouri Senator’s work is counted upon to make this material the more devastating.

It will no longer have to be presented as the findings of a statesman who, though a Democrat, might be considered hostile to Mr. Roosevelt. It now becomes a reluctant indictment drawn by the Democratic Party’s alternate choice for President by one of the three men with whom President Roosevelt said he would be glad to run for reelection.

The line of attack opened up by Senator Truman’s selection is broader than that which would have been available if Vice President Wallace had won out.

In the latter case the major argument would have been that Mr. Wallace himself is unfitted in capacity and temperament to succeed to the President, if anything, should happen to Mr. Roosevelt.

Triple-threat attack

With Senator Truman, the approach has three spearheads:

• Senator Truman’s indebtedness to one of the worst big city machines in recent political history.

• The findings of Mr. Truman can be used against Mr. Roosevelt’s conduct of the home front.

• The contention that when the Democrats discarded Henry Wallace and his four years of experience, they knocked the props out from under their own don’t-change-horses argument for a fourth term.

Even Senator Barkley, with the record of his recent short-lived break with the President and their harsh interchange of invective, did not seem to the Deweyites to offer them so much ammunition as does Senator Truman.

It cannot be said that the Republicans around here were fully satisfied with the doings of the Democrats in Chicago. They would have preferred another Madison Square Garden fiasco, like that which gave President Coolidge a walkover in 1924.

But they aren’t complaining. The Southern delegations came through better than the GOP dared to hope. And the nomination of Senator Truman was pleasing, and – foolishly or not can be determined in November – the Deweyites seem very cheerful.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (July 29, 1944)

Heath: GOP waits for Willkie to hop on bandwagon

By S. Burton Heath

While Peter Edson is absent from Washington, Mr. Heath’s series from Albany is being substituted.

Albany, New York –
Apparently, Governor Dewey is either impervious or oblivious to the strain, if any. Perhaps Wendell Willkie is, too. But a lot of lay Republicans and probably some Democrats wish something would break the existing impasse and disclose what part the 1940 standard-bearer is going to play in the 1944 election.

Polls, primaries and the party convention appeared to demonstrate that the Republican electorate preferred Governor Dewey to Mr. Willkie. Nevertheless, there is a very large segment that respects the latter highly, and a substantial body of voters with whom his stand, if not compelling, might be influential.

Governor Dewey shies away from any attempt to get him to discuss the Willkie situation. It should be noted, however, that he does so without prejudice, leaving the door open for Mr. Willkie to do this year what Mr. Dewey did in 1940.

Then, it will be recalled, Mr. Dewey appeared to have the nomination pretty well sewed up. At the last minute, an almost evangelical wave swept Mr. Willkie into the candidacy and left Mr. Dewey gasping on the shore.

Among politicians and newspapermen, it was no secret that Mr. Dewey was burned to a crisp. For a few days he sizzled, off the record except for one betrayal of confidence. Then he calmed down and went to work for the man who had done him out of the nomination.

Lent advisers

When Mr. Willkie’s early campaign threatened to explode from the lack of management, like a tanker of aviation gasoline hit by a torpedo, Mr. Dewey gave leave of absence to his personal publicity man, Lemoyne Jones, to help out. He lent the services of his personal adviser on government finance, Elliott V. Bell, now his superintendent of banks.

He took to the stump for the Willkie ticket, making two speeches near New York City and two midwestern trips in the course of which he spoke in Saginaw, Pittsburgh, Peoria, Caldwell (Idaho), Kansas City and Cleveland.

The grounds for personal bitterness between the two men were no less then than they are now; the bases of their philosophical disagreement were probably greater inasmuch as Mr. Willkie was a foremost interventionist while Mr. Dewey at that time leaned against intervention.

Therefore Republicans, including many of Mr. Willkie’s more ardent adherents in 1940 and up to the time he stepped out of this year’s race, wonder what formula can be found for bringing the two men together now, for the good of the party, and, as they see it, for the good of the country.

Democrats want breach

Democrats and other Roosevelt supporters hope that the present breach can be kept open or even widened. They would like to see Mr. Willkie bolt back to his old party or take an ostentatious walk for the duration of the campaign.

Realists doubt that this will occur. Conceding that Mr. Willkie is utterly sincere and would subordinate personal advantage to principles, they insist that he would lose every possibility of putting across his beliefs if he were either to bolt or to walk. They point, as evidence, to the innocuous desuetude in which Al Smith and John W. Davis now stagnate politically.

The difficulty appears to be in finding a way to establish the first contact without embarrassment to either man. Deweyites appear to feel that their leader went as far as he well could when, at his first press conference after the nomination, he was asked: “Will Mr. Willkie be invited into conference on campaign strategy?”

He replied:

I certainly hope to consult all leaders of the Republican Party and receive the benefit of their advice.

“Including Willkie?”

“Certainly,” said Mr. Dewey.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (August 4, 1944)

Heath: ‘Little Steel’ formula may be scrapped by FDR

By S. Burton Heath

Mr. Heath visited Pittsburgh last Monday when Governor Dewey was here. This column is the result of his visit. Peter Edson, who regularly writes the Washington Column, is on vacation.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania –
The subject did not come up publicly white Republican presidential candidate Dewey was here. But it is a pretty safe bet that one topic that business visitors brought up, in their private conference with Mr. Dewey, was the steelworkers’ wage negotiations.

There are many here who feel very certain, off the record, that the demand of Phil Murray’s union for a 17-cents-an-hour raise will go to President Roosevelt about mid-October and will be decided between then and Election Day. In that case they expect that the steel workers will get a raise of from five to ten cents an hour – which would bust the stabilization program wide open.

The background is this, in brief:

Most of the contracts were “open end.” That is to say, they were perpetual until a specified notice of intention to terminate them had been given. Such notice was given last year and the unions now are working in effect without a contract.

May find subterfuge

President Roosevelt assured Mr. Murray that if the men kept at work under the terms of the old contract, any increases granted within the limitations of the stabilization formula would be made retroactive. That, in the words of one observer, was “doubletalk.” There can be no raises within the limitations of the stabilization formula. Any raise, however small, breaks through the formula.

But the union people do not think that the President promised such a thing to no powerful an organization of his strongest supporters without intending to make good in some fashion. One way would be to find a subterfuge by which the men could be paid for something they do now without pay – such as going into the mill, punching the clock and walking to their posts of duty.

The importance of the steel wage negotiations is evidenced by the time and labor that have been devoted to it already. There have been almost five months of public hearings, completed in mid-July, before a fact-finding panel of the WLB, during which around a million words of testimony were recorded in some 4,000 pages of stenographic transcript.

The case is important because it was in the steel industry that the stabilization formula for wages – a cost of living adjustment of 15 percent above the scale for Jan. 1, 1941 – was evolved.

Formula broken

That formula has been broken in a number of instances on the theory that an adjustment was being made in favor of the previously underprivileged. No such excuse can be made in steel, because the formula assumes either that steelworkers were not discriminated against or that the cost-of-living adjustment relieved any discrimination.

If the President concedes anything here, it will mean that he, personally, will have discarded the Little Steel Formula. In the opinion of many, that would mark the end of any firm, realistic struggle against inflation.

Nevertheless, few believe that he will be able to resist. After all, Mr. Murray is not only head of the steelworkers; he is head of the whole CIO. The CIO sponsored and finances the Political Action Committee, which is so influential in Democratic circles that top party and administration leaders from Vice President Wallace down sneaked up fire escapes to get Sidney Hillman’s okay on what they planned or wanted to do at the Democratic National Convention.

Dewey filled in

It is considered doubtful whether the case can be kept from the President until after election – whether, if the race is close, he will dare go to the polls with the Murray union’s demands undecided. Nor do realists think that, two weeks or a month before Election Day, he will send the union away empty-handed.

Pennsylvania being a doubtful state with the second highest electoral vote in the country, the implications of this situation are important to the Republicans. It is pretty much a certainty that Governor Dewey has been given a fill in, so that he can be prepared, when the time comes, to make all possible capital out of whatever course the President may take.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (August 5, 1944)

Heath: Republicans in Missouri hopeful about election

By S. Burton Heath

Mr. Heath’s report from St. Louis replaces the Washington Column usually written by Peter Edson, who is on vacation.

St. Louis, Missouri –
Republicans, who have feared that their party was throwing away Missouri’s 15 electoral votes by internal bickering, are encouraged by the primary defeat of Democratic Senator Bennett Champ Clark.

Governor Purest C. Donnell, who won a rather overwhelming victory in the GOP primary against the Mattingly organization candidate for the U.S. Senate, is considered a colorless campaigner, but is very strong in the rural regions and is expected to make a first-class race.

The simultaneous victory of the Mattingly candidate for the GOP gubernatorial nomination, Jean Paul Bradshaw, may help to heal the wounds between National Committeeman Barak T. Mattingly and Governor Donnell, and result in an all-out Republican effort on behalf of the whole party ticket.

Paradoxical conflict

Senator Clark’s defeat by Attorney General Roy McKittrick emphasized a paradoxical internal conflict In the Democratic Party which is very pleasing to Republicans.

McKittrick was running on a pro-Roosevelt platform calling attention to Senator Clark’s alleged isolationism and his frequent differences with the president. The CIO’s Political Action Committee worked for McKittrick. Seemingly the primary resulted in a victory for the New Deal elements in the state Democracy.

But the President’s personally-selected National Chairman, Robert Hannegan, was for Senator Clark. So was Mr. Roosevelt’s running mate. Senator Truman. And the CIO was forced to back McKittrick very cautiously, so that, If Clark had won, the PAC would not have been on bitter record against a candidate (Mr. Clark) whom it would then have had to rapport in order to help hold down the Dewey-Bricker vote in Missouri.

Intense fight

McKittrick got enough votes out of this cross-current to win the nomination, but many observers feel that he will make a weaker candidate, in November, than Senator Clark would have been, and that the Roosevelt-Truman ticket will be the loser because of the New Deal CIO victory in the primaries.

On the Republican side the fight between Governor Donnell and Committeeman Mattingly’s organization was intense and acrimonious. It was so bad, indeed, that at the state convention last spring, the Republican Governor was given no part – not so much as a courtesy introduction – in his own party’s proceedings.

It did not, however, concern or affect allegiance to Governor Dewey. Both the Governor and the committeeman were staunch protagonists of Mr. Dewey’s nomination, which will make it the easier for them to bury the hatchet – now that each has one of the two top places on the state ticket – and pun together for party victory in November.

May shift to GOP

It was really in part because of this fight, and the strained relations it produced, that the convention of the country’s 26 Republican governors was brought to St. Louis at this time. To avoid embarrassment arising from the fight Governor Dewey, at the last minute, interpolated a visit to Springfield. Illinois, for Missouri primary day, instead of coming directly here from Pittsburgh as he had planned, and stopping in Illinois on the way home.

Missouri is the most populous of the border states, and now, as things appear to be turning out, is considered as probably the most, likely to shift this fall to the GOP electoral column.

It is not, by any means, a walkover. If it can be delivered – against the special efforts that will be made by those two eminent Democratic Missourians, vice-presidential candidate Truman and National Chairman Hannegan – the victory will be a bright feather in the caps of the Republican organization.