POLITICAL NOTES: Points West

Governor Thomas E. Dewey hustled his family on board a train at Albany for a trip west. Ostensibly, the trip was a vacation to visit his wife’s family in Sapulpa, Okla., his mother in Owosso, Mich, and to show his sons some of the grandeur of the West. Actually, as eleven reporters traveling with him knew, it was a chance to confer with dozens of G.O.P. national committeemen, make news at the Governors’ Conference in Salt Lake City, and line up Dewey delegates for the Philadelphia convention next June. Tom Dewey at last was out in the open.

His strategy was clear. Up till now he had been able to sit quietly in the wings at Albany, while congressional rivals and free-speaking Harold Stassen performed before a critical audience. But now it was time to start moving. Dewey needed a blitz win on an early ballot. On every successive vote the chances of a deadlock with someone like Bob Taft would increase the danger of a dark horse.

At St. Louis, Dewey gave his strategy a trial whirl. After a brief conference, Missouri’s National Committeeman Barak T. Mattingly unhesitatingly announced that Tom Dewey would be nominated on the first ballot. He said that Dewey was already assured of 420 of the approximately 547 votes he needed to win, that Missouri was overwhelmingly eager to follow the Dewey standard. For the rest of his “vacation,” Tom Dewey would do his best to make that spirit contagious.