National Affairs: Full Steam in New Hampshire

Tom Dewey, the pollsters’ choice, knew he had to get out in front at the ballot box as well. Any early setback in the GOPresidential sweepstakes might well prove fatal. Last week, on the heels of Harold Stassen’s departure, the Dewey machine rumbled into New Hampshire under a full head of steam, aiming for the nation’s first presidential primary on March 9.

Deweymen went right to work. Campaign Manager Herbert Brownell buttonholed Republican politicos in Concord. Dewey’s agricultural adviser, Dr. E. W. Sheets, tromped the snowbound countryside talking politics to the farmers. Though Brownell conceded most of the younger GOPsters and the political outs to Candidate Stassen, he figured the Dewey-minded ins and old guardsmen would be more than enough to swing the trick.

The strategy seemed to be paying off. Before the week was out, Governor Charles M. Dale and Manchester’s Joseph E. Geisel, an early Eisenhower organizer, had both come out for Dewey. Deweymen talked confidently of winning at least five of New Hampshire’s eight convention delegates, hoped to make a clean sweep of it.