REPUBLICANS: Mr. Willkie’s Man Farley

REPUBLICANS Mr. Willkie’s Man Farley

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GOPoliticians last week were sure that the thing they had dreaded all along had come to pass: the holy-rolling crusade of Wendell Willkie had gone sour.

The first rumor to get around was that Wendell Willkie was just a super-hawker who had sold the Republican Convention a bill of goods. Last week, spreading rapidly through professional ranks was the belief that maybe Willkie was only a fatter, louder Alf Landon. When was he going to settle down and tend to his muttons—to winning an election for the Republican Party? Groaning Republicans saw Franklin Roosevelt, looking as insouciant as a gambler with a sure thing, planted before a backdrop of big guns, while Vice-Presidential Candidate Wallace anointed him the only true St. George. In Washington Republican politicians fumed with frustration. As GOPropaganda in an ironic vein, Missouri’s Congressman Dewey Short croaked: “Franklin Roosevelt is not running against Wendell Willkie. He’s running against Adolf Hitler.” Many a GOPolitician moaned privately: “With Willkie a poor third.” Polls showed that Willkie vas ho’.dmg his own, momentarily. He still drew curious crowds. But these things failed to cheer many Republican politicians. In their gloomy minds, they recalled the black year of 1936 when Alf Landon had had an early lead in polls. In 1928, the whole U. S. turned out to see Al Smith roll by, with cigar, brown derby, wisecracks, East S:dese ard all. As one sad Old Guardsman pontificated to another: dead whales on flat cars also attract crowds.

The pessimism of professionals sprang from simple instinct. They had not wanted Willkie in the beginning. But for nine weeks they had tried to show him loyalty, proffer their service and support, make suggestions, consult. Some of them had been waved in & out of Colorado Springs for a smile, a handshake, a drink. Many —like William (“Bill”) Ditter, chairman of the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee—had never been consulted at all. Others—like Henry Fletcher, the Republicans’ general counsel, who had gone to Colorado Springs with a 14-page legalistic essay on how the G. O. P. could get around the Hatch Act limit of $3,000,000 on national-campaign spending—had been shown the door. How could anyone so politically insensible win the biggest political game of all? Up & down the corridors professionals wailed that a renegade Democrat, rammed down their throats, was wrecking the first real chance of a G. O. P. national victory in eight bitter years.

Renegade Democrat. If Candidate Willkie had any inkling of all this, last week, he showed small concern. The only gloom in Rushville, Ind. was a deep, cool shade beneath black walnut and apple trees, out in back of t ie 80-year-old worn brick house on Harrison Street which he had rented as a temporary residence. Wearing carpet slippers, Willkie lolled under the trees, supremely confident of victory.

He has always had the conviction that he could get along without the help of the boys in the back room. He figures that there are 16,000,000 Republicans with nowhere else to go. His has been the idea, by & large, that politicians are apt to fall all over their own feet. Said he: “The fact that I got the nomination proves that.” To overheard squawks he remarked: “I’m a different kind of an egg than the pros ever dealt with and they don’t know just what to make of it.” He insists he has made no political commitments and the gloom of the politicians bears him out. But politicians looking for promises of jobs still bob up. To Willkie that is significant: “They would not be worrying about their reward if they didn’t think I was going to win.”

Last week he rocked and talked on the front porch of the house on Harrison Street, visited his temporary office over the Rexall Drug Store on Main Street, and, as casually as the postman, popped into the Lollis Hotel, where newsmen gathered. He made plans for a new barn, began negotiations for six acres along Mud Creek to add to his farm. Many a sweating, earnest hour he spent dictating, readying campaign speeches. He answered the incessantly ringing telephone with a Hoosier slur: “Thiz-Wennel-Willkie,” talked to non-professional aides, to his amateur adviser, Russell Davenport, to his professional agent, Joe Martin, Republican National Chairman, who rang him up almost daily.

He made news by denouncing the Overton-Russell amendment to the Senate’s Conscription Bill (see p. 13), declared: “Conscription of wealth, compared with the conscription of men, is just a catch phrase. That is the kind of logic that converts a chestnut horse into a horse chestnut.” Thrice within two days he called upon silent, aloof Mr. Roosevelt to say what he thought. He renounced the support of Father Coughlin. “If I understand what his beliefs are … he is opposed to certain people because of their race or religion.” He taxed the President with fumbling defense, recommended a chairman to coordinate the work of the National Defense Advisory Commission, suggested a new Cabinet seat: Secretary of Aeronautics. He called vigorously and repeatedly upon the President to meet him toe-to-toe.

Something Missing. By all this Republican professionals were not impressed. They were practical men. They didn’t believe that talk could win a political fight and they feared Amateur Willkie was going to lose their party an election. And whose party was it, anyway? Yet Willkie was obviously the hardest-hitting extemporaneous, day-by-day debater of public issues whom Republicans have had for a candidate since Roosevelt I.

In their gloom over their candidate’s unprofessional behavior, Republicans overlooked the fact that in the much admired art of stealing headlines, Willkie had so far proved a fair enough match for Franklin Roosevelt. Nor did Willkie draw crowds by being a curiosity. He was neither a whale nor a Tammany East Sider who said “raddio.”

Yet GOPoliticians were not crepehanging for the pleasure of it. Their instinct told them that something was lacking in the Republican campaign. Nine weeks after nomination Willkie had done very little about setting up the kind of political organization they understood. Politicians who have learned their trade from the bottom up know that elections are won in the wards and precincts, that sweating ward heelers have to get out the voters, that district leaders have to get the ward heelers to work, and somebody has to stir up the district leaders to go about the job.

If Wendell. Willkie had had as much political experience and acquaintance as Professional Franklin Roosevelt, he might have got some of the strings of organization into his own hands. Lacking it, he badly needed an equivalent of Franklin Roosevelt’s Man Farley.

Yankee in the West. To fill that need, Willkie ten days after his nomination induced stocky, bright-eyed, black-browed Joseph William Martin Jr. to be his national chairman. Joe Martin walks on sure political feet.

Eldest son of eight children in the family of a North Attleboro, Mass, blacksmith, Joe Martin began his career 50 years ago peddling papers. He turned down a scholarship at Dartmouth to go to work as a reporter, finally bought minority ownership of the North Attleboro Chronicle. With a sudden passion for politics, he got himself elected to the Massachusetts Legislature. Scotch-Irish, he talked a familiar language in Massachusetts. In 1925 he went to Congress, where he still perches —in appearance a typical small-town New England politician—scrupulous, honest, popular, potent.

Well known and respected is Joe Martin’s skill as a legislator. Republican floor leader in the House since 1939, he whipped a frazzled Minority into a tough Opposition. Washington correspondents last year, in a LIFE poll, picked him ablest Representative in Washington. Not so well known, but indisputable, is his skill as a political mechanic. He knows intimately all the gears, spark plugs, grease cups in the machine. As chairman of the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee in 1938, he toured the country, helped get 80 new Republicans elected to the House.

No backslapper, he knows first names and how to handle district leaders. He runs his machine by persuasion and tact. If there is any man who can do for the Republican Presidential candidate what James A. Farley did for Franklin Roosevelt, it is Joe Martin. Roosevelt’s Ed Flynn is an earthy politician whose experience is highly practical but largely limited to The Bronx.

Martin’s disadvantage is that Martin starts the race with a creaking, long inactive machine, while Flynn inherited a racer, not only in working order but tuned up for eight years by Master Mechanic Farley.

Last week, while Willkie in Rushville was girding himself for his campaign tour, which he will open Sept. 16 with a speech at Coffeyville, Kans., Joe Martin scurried cross country. He had a politician’s reason for absenting himself from Washington at the moment when the Burke-Wadsworth Conscription Bill was being debated. Willkie favored the draft, but groups of Martin’s French, Italian, Portuguese and Yankee constituents in Massachusetts are all for “Joe” and “agin getting shot.” But his best reason was that he had to see the men who count in politics—usually only three or four from every State—the men who make the local organizations tick.

Flying at night over Bonneville Dam in a transport plane, he cracked brightly to the stewardess: “Let’s turn the lights out.

If we’re going to take all these things over we’d better have a good look at them.” At the fruit-packing town of Hood River, Ore., he wandered into a garage, a service station, a machine shop, talked politics without revealing his identity. He explained: “That way I can check up on the local crowd if they’re handing me any baloney.” He called it “sampling.” He listened to Vice-Presidential Candidate Charles Linza McNary make his acceptance speech in Salem, Ore., went to a barbecue, conferred with droves of politicians, took pulses, talked by longdistance telephone to other State leaders. In his rumpled Panama, with an upturned brim, he did some more sampling, and emplaned for Seattle. Before he left he told interviewers that Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, North and South Dakota would vote for Willkie & McNary. Montana, Nevada and Washington were in doubt. That was also able Mr. Farley’s effective technique—not claiming everything in sight, speaking to everyone with as much candor as possible.

Martin made another prediction. Said he of Willkie’s campaign: “Without question this will be the most comprehensive campaign ever attempted by any man.” How did he get along with the Republican candidate? Said Joe with truth: “He’s got a lot more natural judgment than a lot of politicians.” In Seattle he received a steady stream of visitors. Republicans, who staged a “Joe Martin Night” for him, paraded him through the city and rallied around 3,000 strong to hear him make a speech at the Civic Auditorium. Local Democrats, who had seen no signs of life among Seattle Republicans for 25 years, were flabbergasted. By the time he left Washington he decided the State was safe.

From Seattle he flew to San Francisco, where a crowd of about 200 greeted him.

Bobbing out of the plane, he asked good-naturedly: “Did you ever see such a bunch of expectant postmasters?” He talked to Herbert Hoover and huddled with chieftains of all four factions in California’s wrangling GOParty. He left San Francisco declaring that Willkie had “a fighting chance” in a State which has been counted in Democratic columns. In Los Angeles, he hobnobbed with party workers, committeemen. Congressional aspirants. At week’s end, looking worn out, he hopped a plane for Fort Worth, Tex.

Joe Martin was doing a good and conscientious job, but whether he was another Jim Farley, Mr. Willkie would have to wait and see in November.

Shots in the Locker. Under Willkie orders, and Joe Martin’s directions, was National Committee headquarters in Chicago in the hands of John D. M. Hamilton, an able executive who is largely responsible for the fact that the Republican Party did not start this campaign with a back-breaking deficit. Working with Executive Hamilton was 6 ft. 3 in., 33-year-old Governor Harold Edward Stassen of Minnesota. His job: to do the politicking in the western campaign.

The eastern campaign was being run from the committee’s Manhattan office; its campaign manager was wiry, 4 2-year-old Sam Pry or Jr., Connecticut State boss, ex-lightweight boxer, businessman, big-game hunter. In his office Mr. Pryor scowled, mugged, chewed his pipe, sweated, conferred with waves of visitors, planned a political safari. Said Mr. Pryor last week, giving the impression of a man waiting for the signal to set off a howitzer: “Wait until after September 15.” Strictly amateur, the Associated Willkie Clubs, whooped up by 28-year-old Lawyer Oren Root Jr., were under full steam in over 900 cities.

Last of the national groups, but not the least important in Willkie calculations, was the Democrats-for-Willkie National Committee—a pasture to which Willkie-ites hoped to lure Democrats who had kicked over old fences, were jogging around with no place to go and bellow.

Directors, all bona fide Democrats: Educator Alan Valentine, president of the University of Rochester; redheaded John Hanes, ex-Under Secretary of the Treasury in the New Deal; Lewis Douglas, ex-New Deal Director of the Budget. Press agent for the organization is big-time Publicityman Leo Casey, who handled Tom Dewey’s campaign for Governor of New York. Mr. Hanes expressed their sentiments last week in two eruptive sentences: ”Eight years of him already! Put him in another four . . . and our children will have Roosevelts for Presidents too.” Straws in the Wind. Last week poll statistics showed a teetering balance between Democrat and Republican voters.

Conclusions, drawn on a hairline, depended upon which way hopes lay. Last State by State Gallup poll showed Roosevelt leading in 28 States. Willkie in 20—a loss of four States for Willkie since a poll early in August. Willkie retained a lead in electoral votes (284-10-247).

Calculators, who gave the G. 0. P. a basic strength of 16,000,000 votes in the national balloting, estimated that the number of independent votes floating around the U. S. was roughly 9,000,000.

Republicans need some 6,000,000 of those votes to win in November.

The States where those votes lie thickest are Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, New York, Massachusetts, North Dakota, Rhode Island. New Jersey, Wisconsin, Connecticut. Willkie could take cheer from the fact that the last Gallup poll gave him all but one of those States.

(Exception: Connecticut.) But a shift of a few per cent in a majority of them would still change the picture.

— *Taken last year when they attended the opening of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.