National Affairs: CAN A CATHOLIC WIN?

EVER since the mournful 1928 presidential-election showing of New York’s Al Smith (87 electoral votes v. 444 for Herbert Hoover), the Democratic Party has generally accepted as political gospel this proposition: a Roman Catholic is a fatal liability on a national ticket and is therefore not to be considered.

But in the late preconvention season of 1956, two Catholics—Massachusetts Senator John Kennedy and New York Mayor Robert Wagner—rank high among Democratic vice-presidential possibilities. One reason: a confidential survey now in the hands of selected Democratic leaders, e.-g., Harriman Adviser Carmine De Sapio and Stevenson Campaign Manager James Finnegan (both Catholics). The survey’s fundamental thesis: Democratic presidential chances in November may well depend upon getting a Catholic on the national ticket.

“Tke Al Smith Myth.” The paper was prepared under the supervision of Connecticut’s Democratic State Chairman John Bailey, himself a Catholic, who strongly favors a national ticket of Protestant* Adlai Stevenson and Kennedy. It concedes only that “Democratic margins in several [Southern] states might be diminished” if a Catholic were nominated for Vice President. It quickly adds: “It is apparent that a Democratic Catholic vice-presidential nominee, although admittedly prejudices would be stirred, would lose no electoral votes for the ticket simply because a handful of Southerners or Republicans would not support him.”

Before Bailey’s researchers could get on with their case, they had first to deal with the matter of Al Smith. “The ‘Al Smith myth,’ ” says the paper, “is one of the falsest myths in politics. The year 1928 was a Republican year, regardless of who was on either ticket. It was a year for ‘drys’ like Hoover, not ‘wets’ like Smith.”

All to Ike. The’ Catholic vote, says the paper, is “far more important than its numbers—about one out of every four voters who turn out—because of its concentration in the key states and cities of the North.” The paper lists 14 states with 261 electoral votes: New York (with population estimated at 32% Catholic), Pennsylvania (29%), Illinois (30%), New Jersey (39%), Massachusetts (50%), Connecticut (49%), Rhode Island (60%), California (22%), Michigan (24%), Minnesota (24%), Ohio (20%), Wisconsin (32%), Maryland (21%), and Montana (22%).

“In 1940, 13 of these states with 240 electoral votes went Democratic, without which the Democrats would have lost the election. In 1944, twelve of these states with 221 electoral votes went Democratic, without which the Democrats would have lost the election. In 1948, eight of these states with 125 electoral votes went Democratic, without which the Democrats would have lost the election.

“In 1952, none of these states went Democratic, all 261 of their electoral votes went to Eisenhower, thus making possible the first Republican victory in 24 years.”

If Adlai Could . . . Hammering home its point, the Bailey paper says that in 1952 Catholic voters “went approximately one out of two for the Republican candidate, whereas in 1948 they had gone two out of three for the Democratic nominee . . . Approximately 30% of these Catholics for Eisenhower were ‘shifters’—that is, even on the basis of 1948, when the Catholic vote was already slipping away from the Democrats (the Republicans carried New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Michigan and Maryland), they would have been expected to vote Democratic in 1952. These shifters—whom we shall call ‘normally Democratic Catholics’ —constituted approximately 7% of Eisenhower’s total nationwide vote. If Stevenson could have held in 1952 only those Catholics who had voted for Truman in 1948 but for Ike in 1952—or if he could recapture them in 1956—this would add 132 electoral votes to the Democratic column, enough when combined with the Solid South to provide a majority of electoral votes!”

Beyond its obvious implication that a Catholic on the ticket would have helped in 1952, Bailey’s paper does not attempt to assign reasons for Stevenson’s relatively poor showing among Catholics. Few Democrats believe that Stevenson’s divorce lost him any substantial number of Catholic votes. But most Catholic Democratic leaders believe that the general charges of Democratic “softness toward Communism” were especially effective among Catholics. Since those charges are sure to be revived in 1956 to a greater or lesser degree, many a Democrat stands with John Bailey in the belief that a Catholic vice-presidential nominee might help muffle the issue. 1

* Stevenson is a member of a Presbyterian church in Lake Forest, near his Libertyville farm, but he has maintained his longtime affiliations with the Unitarians, who have no church in the Libertyville area.