U.S. At War: Men Around Dewey

Last week almost every political pundit in the U.S. was willing to concede Tom Dewey’s nomination for President — perhaps even on the first ballot. Odds quoted by Chicago bookmakers: 4-to-1 for the nomination, even money in the first ballot. The number of delegates claimed by Deweyites already far exceeded the required majority. Just possibly, there could be a change in sentiment by convention time — June 26. But few expected it. The wonder was that Tom Dewey had accomplished all this without any of the normal political dickering. Tom Dewey’s backers had not even set up headquarters. Dewey himself had not stirred from his home New York, except to vacation, since the Mackinac Conference last September. No campaign fund had been raised. No reporter could find a state boss anywhere, from Pennsylvania’s Pew to Idaho’s John Thomas, who had yet been promised a job, a favor, or even a pat on the back. The Republican pros were alarmed, but help less. They had only gradually become aware of the power and precision of the politicos who surround Dewey . For presumptive Presidential Candidate Dewey had quietly taken care to perform one of the main tasks of a White House hopeful. Over the years he had gathered about him a group of political advisers perhaps unequaled since the first Roosevelt Brain Trust. Today they are almost unknown to U.S. voters; soon they may become as famed as Moley and Tugwell, Corcoran and Cohen. Each sees Dewey about once a week, either in Albany or in Dewey’s six-room suite in Manhattan’s Roosvelt Hotel. They include : J. Russel Sprague, 57, descendant of three generations of Long Island oystermen, onetime lawyer, now New York’s G.O.P. .National Committeeman. Russ Sprague gulped Republican politics with his father’s oysters (the famed Rockaway, extinct since New York sewage ruined the oyster beds). In 1930 he became G.O.P. boss of swank, arch-Republican Nassau County. He is now county executive, a fulltime, $15,000-a-year job. A suave, be spectacled man, he politicked mightily for Tom Dewey at the 1940 convention. Edwin F. Jaeckle, 49, a bulky, wellheeled Buffalo lawyer, who almost singlehanded turned Buffalo’s meager Democratic majorities into Republican landslides. Grandson of German immigrants, Ed Jaeckle worked his way up from Buffalo’s humdrum East Side, earned his first riches as Buffalo’s collector of back taxes under a now-repealed law which permitted him to keep a fat percentage of all he took in. (His take in five years: $154,506.) He is a member of a law firm with the racially perfect name of Garono, Jaeckle & Kelly. His mule-skinner’s vocabulary first shocked Tom Dewey, who soon came to respect his able, sometimes ruth less organizing talents. As State G.O.P. Chairman since 1940, Ed Jaeckle helped turn New York Republican in 1942. If Dewey is nominated, Jaeckle or Sprague will probably be national chairman. Roger Williams Straus, 52, of Manhattan, president of potent American Smelting & Refining Co., cousin of Jack and the late Percy Straus (R. H. Macy & Co.). His father was Teddy Roosevelt’s Secretary of Commerce & Labor, thrice U.S. envoy to Turkey. As a Princeton undergraduate in 1912, Roger Straus and Classmate John G. Winant, now U.S. Ambassador to England, organized a Bull Moose club; at both the G.O.P. and Bull Moose conventions that year, young Straus ran errands for Teddy. He has always been a generous G.O.P. contributor; has been a Dewey confidant since 1936. He helped found the National Conference of Christians & Jews. George Zerdin Medalie, 60, Manhattan lawyer’s lawyer, who gave Tom Dewey his first public job — that of assistant U.S. district attorney. The son of a rabbi, George Medalie worked his way through Columbia University, became a brilliant trial lawyer. As U.S. District Attorney he convicted the late Jack (“Legs”) Diamond of running a still; in private practice, he won Diamond’s freedom on a murder charge. Dewey and Medalie admire each other’s legal talents. John Foster Dulles, 56, a tall, stooped, bespectacled Wall Street lawyer and impeccable Presbyterian, whose life work has been advising people on international affairs. Tom Dewey, he says, is the aptest pupil he ever had. A Princeton graduate, he studied international law at the Sorbonne, was secretary to the Hague Peace Conference when only 19. He directed the legal aspects of much European financing after World War I, in 1927 worked out a financial-stabilization plan for Poland. He was one of the leading authors of the Six Pillars of Peace, proposed by the Federal Council of Churches (TIME, March 29, 1943). Political writers have already nominated him for Secretary of State. Herbert Brownell, 40, also a Manhattan lawyer, one of Tom Dewey’s oldest personal friends, and his campaign manager in the 1942 governorship race. Nebraska-born, Brownell graduated from the University of Nebraska, won a scholarship to Yale Law School, where he edited the Yale Law Journal. From 1933 to 1937 in the New York Legislature, he sponsored many of Tom Dewey’s criminal-reform bills. These men will plan the grand strategy of the Dewey campaign. Other advisers, concerned with more detailed and technical matters, include the Governor’s smooth, husky executive secretary, Paul Lockwood; his press manager, James C. Hagerty,* onetime New York Timesman; Hickman Powell, ex-expert New York Herald Tribune reporter; his Banking Superintendent, Elliott V. Bell, and Secretary of State Thomas J. Curran, who is also Manhattan G.O.P. leader. Last week, to the delight of Democrats, Tom Curran brought out an official Dewey campaign song, to the tune of Yankee Doodle: Oh, Tom E. Dewey came to town A-ridin’ on a pony He busted gangs and jailed the mobs And cleared out every phony. Tom E. Dewey keep it up You’re swingin’ sharp and dandy The White House is your home next year Our Yankee Dewey Dandy.

* Whose father, James A., the able No. 1 political reporter of the New York Times, last week wrote a front-page story reporting that Dewey already had 779 delegates.