Jean Edward Smith

by FDR

  Roosevelt’s first skirmish for the presidential nomination erupted unexpectedly with the ultraconservative, Al Smith–appointed leadership of the Democratic National Committee. Acting on Smith’s behalf, party chairman John Jakob Raskob and his deputy, former Treasury assistant secretary Jouett Shouse, sought to preempt the 1932 Democratic platform by having the National Committee commit the party to the repeal of Prohibition and support for the hyperprotectionist Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930.* Aside from staking out the ground to facilitate Smith’s renomination (Smith had already endorsed the tariff11), Raskob and Shouse hoped to embarrass Roosevelt and drive a wedge between him and the rural wing of the party. Neither the chairman nor his deputy believed that FDR, as governor of New York, would dare break with Smith.12 And to support the proposed platform, even to acquiesce and remain silent, would surely alienate those southern and western Democrats who were flirting with Franklin—men like Cordell Hull, Burton K. Wheeler, and Harry F. Byrd of Virginia—all of whom were militantly dry and even more vehemently antitariff.13

  Raskob proved too clever by half. Instead of splitting Roosevelt from his potential southern and western supporters, the party chairman gave FDR the opportunity to consolidate his coalition. When news of Raskob’s preemptive plan leaked from Washington, Roosevelt placed himself at the head of the opposition. Hull feared that Raskob wanted to align the Democratic party with the economic policies of Herbert Hoover. Byrd was incensed at Smith’s power grab. Traditionally, party platforms are drafted at the national convention, and both Hull and Byrd asked Roosevelt to intervene. “I am appealing to you to prevent an action which I understand is contemplated by the National Democratic Committee,” wrote Byrd. “The Democratic Committee has no right to make a platform for the party,” he said. Byrd told Roosevelt the move would divide Democrats and pave the way for Hoover’s reelection. “I know you have the interests of the party at heart just as much as I have, and I feel you understand our Southern condition better than many other leaders. Prompt action on your part will be necessary.”14

  Once again Roosevelt had been handed a golden opportunity. “You are absolutely right,” he wrote Byrd. “The Democratic National Committee has no authority, in any shape, manner or form, to pass on or recommend national issues or policies.”15

  Before breaking with Smith, Roosevelt asked the party’s former nominee to rein Raskob in. “I do not know what the plans for next Thursday’s meeting of the National Committee are,” FDR wrote, “but the more I hear from different parts of the country, the more certain I am that it would be very contrary to the established powers and precedents of the National Committee, were they to pass resolutions of any kind affecting party policies at this time.”16 Smith did not reply but two days later held a press conference at which he declared he could see no objection to the National Committee expressing whatever opinion it wished.17

  The battle lines were drawn. Having observed the amenities, Roosevelt opened fire. He instructed Farley to convene a special meeting of the New York State Democratic Committee in Albany on March 2. That morning, at a breakfast meeting in FDR’s bedroom, Louis Howe, Ed Flynn, and Farley drafted a resolution endorsing Roosevelt’s position that the National Committee had no authority to commit the party on any issue arising between conventions. The resolution was introduced by Flynn that afternoon and carried unanimously.18

  With three days remaining before the National Committee would meet, Roosevelt, Farley, and Howe worked the phones, lining up proxies from committeemen who would not be present. When Farley took the train to Washington on March 4, he held enough proxies to defeat Raskob’s motions 2 to 1. Raskob recognized the inevitable, withdrew his proposals before a vote, and hunkered down before an onslaught of southern righteousness. Farley, seated next to Hull at the meeting to make a point, lay back and said nothing. “I think on the whole the meeting did no harm,” Roosevelt wrote Buffalo’s Norman Mack afterward. “The thing we must work for now is the avoidance of harsh words and no sulking in tents.”19

  For Roosevelt, Raskob’s ill-fated maneuver proved a godsend. From that time on, Hull wrote in his Memoirs, the southern leaders took Roosevelt seriously and rallied round him as the one candidate who could deliver them from the Smith-Raskob alliance.20 FDR shared the antitariff sentiments of the South and West, and on Prohibition he was damp: neither wet nor dry but in favor of leaving the question to the states. That was satisfactory to most southerners.21

  While Farley dealt with the National Committee in Washington, Louis Howe worked to raise money for the fledgling campaign. FDR had not yet announced, but already contributions were flowing in. Old friends were first off the mark. In March 1931, Henry Morgenthau, Sr., William H. Woodin, and Frank C. Walker, a New York attorney, got the ball rolling with gifts of $5,000 [$60,000 currently] each. Herbert Lehman, Basil O’Connor, Jesse Straus, Ed Flynn, and Joseph P. Kennedy quickly followed suit. Sara chipped in her share, as did publisher Robert W. Bingham of the Louisville Courier-Journal (later FDR’s ambassador to Great Britain).* The entertainment industry, represented by the moviemaker Harry M. Warner and Broadway impresario Eddie Dowling, did its share as well. James W. Gerard, who had defeated FDR for the Democratic senatorial nomination in 1914, was a particularly generous contributor, always ready to open his checkbook when a campaign payroll came due. Colonel Edward M. House, whose New York apartment was across the street from the Roosevelt home on East Sixty-fifth, was also an early contributor.22

  At the end of March, Jesse Straus commissioned a presidential poll of delegates and alternates who had attended the 1928 Democratic convention. Purportedly, Straus conducted the poll without FDR’s knowledge.23 Opinion polling was in its infancy in 1931, and the results garnered front-page coverage throughout the country. Roosevelt was the undisputed front-runner. Of the forty-four states that responded, FDR led in thirty-nine.24 Smith led in three (Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Delaware); Governor Albert C. Ritchie was Maryland’s favorite son, as was Senator Joseph T. Robinson in Arkansas. Among the 844 delegates who responded, Roosevelt was favored by 478; Smith by 125; the industrialist Owen D. Young of General Electric by 75; Ritchie by 39; Robinson by 38; and Newton D. Baker of Ohio, Woodrow Wilson’s secretary of war, by 35.25

  Straus commissioned four more polls that spring among Democratic businessmen, bank presidents, and corporate directors. All showed Roosevelt well ahead—surprising, given FDR’s identification with the rural, progressive wing of the party and the conservative, probusiness stance of both Smith and Young. A nationwide survey by twenty-five Scripps-Howard newspapers that summer indicated that Roosevelt was not only the Democratic front-runner, but would defeat President Hoover in the general election.26

  Buoyed by Straus’s polls, Roosevelt decided it was time to troll for delegates. He asked Ed Flynn to be his emissary and undertake a cross-country tour to confer with party leaders. Flynn demurred. “I realized my own limitations. I was not an easy mixer. I was no greeter or hand-shaker. I felt I could do nothing effective by merely going into a state in which I knew no one.”27 At Flynn’s suggestion, FDR turned to Farley. A born salesman and political drummer, Farley was the best possible delegate hunter Roosevelt could have chosen.*

  At the end of June 1931 Farley embarked on a whirlwind tour of eighteen states west of the Mississippi. The trip coincided with the annual convention of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, which was meeting that year in Seattle. Farley was an enthusiastic Elk, and the convention provided plausible cover for the journey. His itinerary was plotted by Roosevelt on a Rand-McNally map of the United States, and Howe provided the necessary introductions to national committeemen and state chairmen. The trip, Farley wrote later, “did more than anything else to give me a grip on national politics. I always look back upon it as a sort of graduation from the political minor league.”28

  In nineteen days, Farley met more than eleven hundred local Democratic leaders. The message he heard everywhere was the same: Democrats wanted a winner. Farle
y found a smattering of support for Young and Ritchie and a few ardent Catholics for Smith, but Roosevelt was the overwhelming favorite. “Farley,” said William Howes, the Democratic committeeman in South Dakota, “I’m damned tired of backing losers. In my opinion Roosevelt can sweep the country, and I’m going to support him.”29

  Farley passed the good news to Roosevelt. “I am satisfied, Governor, that the leaders want to be on the bandwagon. I have also discovered that there are a lot of Democratic candidates for Governor and state offices who believe there is a real chance of winning with you as the nominee, and they feel absolutely no hope if anyone else is named; so these potential candidates are your strongest boosters.”30

  While Farley cultivated Democrats in the West, FDR courted the South. That summer he hosted visiting delegations from Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee at Warm Springs and met repeatedly with Georgia’s governor, the young Richard Russell. “As far as the South goes,” said Senator William J. Harris of the Peach State, “it is all Roosevelt.”31 By the fall of 1931, Roosevelt had secured the support of Senators Pat Harrison of Mississippi, James Byrnes of South Carolina, and Cordell Hull of Tennessee. Georgia, which considered FDR an adopted son, was solid for Roosevelt, and the Democratic organization in Alabama leaned that way as well. “The situation is very odd and my friends in the South and West strongly advise me to let things drift,” FDR wrote his friend James Hoey in September, “as the great majority of States through their regular organizations are showing every friendliness towards me.”32

  If there was an Achilles heel in the Roosevelt campaign, it was the health issue. Already FDR’s opponents were circulating unfounded gossip concerning his condition. In April 1931 Time magazine joined the chorus, repeating the rumor that while Roosevelt might be mentally qualified for the presidency, he was “utterly unfit physically.”33 FDR was jolted. He had undergone a rigorous physical examination by a bevy of insurance doctors six months before, and his health was excellent. Yet the whispering campaign continued. “I find that there is a deliberate attempt to create the impression that my health is such as would make it impossible for me to fulfill the duties of President,” he complained to his old friend Hamilton Miles. “I shall appreciate whatever my friends may have to say in their personal correspondence to dispel this perfectly silly piece of propaganda.”34

  Again, events played into Roosevelt’s hands. Earle Looker, a respected national journalist who just happened to be a Republican, challenged FDR to undergo a medical examination to prove “you are sufficiently recovered to assure your supporters that you could stand the strain of the Presidency.”35

  Roosevelt accepted the challenge immediately.36 Dr. Lindsay R. Williams, director of the New York Academy of Medicine, was asked to select a panel of eminent physicians, including a brain specialist, to conduct the examination.* In addition, Looker was invited to visit Albany unannounced and observe the governor whenever he wished and as often as he wished.

  The panel examined Roosevelt at his East Sixty-fifth Street town house on April 29, 1931. “We have today carefully examined Governor Roosevelt,” they wired Looker. “We believe that his health and powers of endurance are such as to allow him to meet any demand of private and public life. We find that his organs and functions are sound in all respects. There is no anemia. The chest is exceptionally well developed, and the spinal column is absolutely normal; all its segments are in perfect alignment and free from disease. He has neither pain nor ache at any time.… Governor Roosevelt can walk all necessary distances and can maintain a standing position without fatigue.”37

  Looker’s personal observations coincided with the specialists’ findings. Three times he called on FDR unannounced and spent the day and part of the evening with him. “I observed him working and resting,” Looker wrote. “I noted the alertness of his movements, the sparkle of his eyes, the vigor of his gestures. I saw his strength under the strain of long working periods. Insofar as I had observed him, I came to the conclusion that he seemed able to take more punishment than many men ten years younger. Merely his knees were not much good to him.”38†

  During one of his unannounced visits Looker asked Eleanor if she thought FDR could stand the strain of the presidency.

  “If the infantile paralysis didn’t kill him, the Presidency won’t,” ER replied.39

  Looker published the medical findings in Liberty magazine. At five cents a copy, Liberty was the nation’s leading mass-circulation journal, with Theodore Dreiser, Ernest Hemingway, and William Faulkner occasionally gracing its weekly pages. “From the specialist examination, as well as from my own observation,” wrote Looker, “I am able to say unhesitatingly that every rumor of Franklin Roosevelt’s physical incapacity can be unqualifiedly defined as false.”40 For the Roosevelt campaign, Looker’s article could not have been more opportune. Howe ordered 200,000 reprints, sending a copy to every name on the numerous mailing lists Farley had assembled.

  Throughout the autumn of 1931 Farley and Howe continued their canvassing for delegates; FDR rested briefly at Warm Springs; and Raskob and Shouse took another run at the platform. At the end of November the party chairman announced he was polling the 90,000 contributors to the 1928 campaign on the question of Prohibition preparatory to the next meeting of the Democratic National Committee on January 9, 1932.41 It was a rerun of the March 5 battle, with Farley scurrying for proxies and forcing Raskob to back down once again. With Roosevelt’s southern and western allies in firm control of the National Committee, Chicago was selected as the site of the 1932 convention.* In an even more impressive display of muscle, Robert Jackson of New Hampshire, a staunch Roosevelt supporter, was elected to the vacant position of national secretary—Farley’s first but very obvious move to wrest control of the party machinery from Raskob.42

  On Saturday, January 23, 1932, FDR announced his candidacy—carefully timed to gain maximum coverage in the nation’s Sunday-morning newspapers.43 The announcement coincided with the Democratic Territorial Convention in Alaska, which had just instructed its six delegates to the National Convention to vote for Roosevelt under the unit rule.44 Alaska was the first jurisdiction to select delegates in 1932, and Farley had taken pains to ensure the Roosevelt campaign launched on a high note.45 The following week, county caucuses met in Washington State and instructed delegates to the state convention to back Roosevelt, who won all sixteen votes.

  Roosevelt’s quick success energized the opposition. Al Smith announced his availability on February 6. He would not campaign for the nomination, said Smith, but “If the Democratic National Convention, after careful consideration, should decide it wants me to lead I will make the fight.”46 Raskob and Shouse, heading their own Stop Roosevelt movement, encouraged states to send uninstructed delegations to Chicago or to back favorite sons. There was no way to defeat Roosevelt before the convention, but it might be possible to deny him the two-thirds vote necessary for nomination. When Farley announced Roosevelt’s candidacy on January 23, he claimed that FDR had the solid support of 678 delegates—a thumping majority but still 92 short of the 770 that would be required.47 If the anti-Roosevelt forces could prevent a first-ballot victory, they might deadlock the Convention and force a compromise choice. The logic of the Stop Roosevelt movement carried a built-in incentive for favorite sons to join the race. If the Convention deadlocked, any one of them might emerge as the nominee.

  For Roosevelt it was a question of momentum: Could he roll up delegates fast enough to prevent favorite sons from sprouting in the hinterland? In 1932 seventeen states chose delegates through presidential primaries; the others used various forms of conventions. After Washington, the next state to choose was Oklahoma, which in convention instructed its twenty-two delegates to vote for its governor, “Alfalfa Bill” Murray, a rustic Plains populist—Will Rogers without the humor—who had no chance of winning the nomination but who might eat into FDR’s strength in the West.

  The first primary state was New Hampshire, on March 6, where Roosevelt a
nd Smith went head to head. The Northeast was considered Al Smith country, and the Happy Warrior anticipated an easy victory.48 Instead, it was a landslide for Roosevelt—with all the attendant publicity. Howe and Farley, aiming for a knockout, spent more money in New Hampshire than any other state. Roosevelt was supported by the state Democratic organization and cruised to victory with 61.7 percent of the vote, taking all eight delegates. FDR’s margin of victory might have been even larger had not a late-winter blizzard in the northern part of the state reduced voter turnout. Four days after the sweep in New Hampshire, FDR carried the Minnesota convention, winning all twenty-four delegates and prompting Smith’s supporters to storm out, hold a rump session, and pick a rival delegation. This was little concern to Farley and Howe since Roosevelt would have a clear majority in Chicago, and when push came to shove the Roosevelt Minnesota delegation would be seated.49

  North Dakota voted next. Smith was not on the ballot (his campaign manager failed to file the necessary petitions), but Governor Murray had qualified and Alfalfa Bill was expected to do well, his plainspoken appeal falling on receptive farm belt ears. “Roosevelt may have the politicians,” Murray told his brother George, a North Dakota farmer, “but I will have the people.”50

  This was the first face-off between Roosevelt and Murray, and FDR went all out. He dragooned Senator Burton K. Wheeler from nearby Montana to spearhead his campaign,51 relied on the state organization to turn out the vote, and vowed to provide emergency relief for western farmers if elected. Like New Hampshire, North Dakota was another landslide. Roosevelt polled 62.1 percent of the vote and won nine of the state’s ten delegates. Equally significant, voter turnout was three times greater than expected, suggesting that large numbers of Republicans had crossed over to vote in the Democratic primary.52 The size of FDR’s victories in New Hampshire and North Dakota reflected not only his attractiveness as a candidate but the finely crafted campaign organization Howe and Farley had put together. They did not miss filing deadlines, they worked closely with Democratic leaders in states that were friendly, and they did not forget the precinct workers in the trenches.* Roosevelt faced Murray again in Nebraska, West Virginia, Oregon, and Florida and won by increasingly lopsided margins.