THE PRESIDENCY: Machine Triumph

There was still plenty of doubt about Harry Truman’s political shrewdness in national politics, but at the congressional district level—and in his own Missouri stamping grounds—he had proved that he could still figure out where the power lay. His personally picked candidate for Congress in Missouri’s Fifth District, a political novice named Enos Axtell, scored a decisive victory in the Democratic primary over Princeton-bred Representative Roger Slaughter, who had hacked away mercilessly at the Truman program in Congress.

Harry Truman’s triumph was less significant than a defeat would have been. Had Axtell lost, the President would have suffered a drop in prestige everywhere. He had said of Slaughter: “If he’s right, I’m wrong.” The result in Missouri’s primary did not necessarily mean that all the voters thought the President was right. It did show that among some Democrats at least the President could marshal support for his program of middle-of-the-roadism cum New Deal trimmings.

The vote had another aspect. Despite the anti-Truman howls of labor and left-wingers, when the chips were down, the C.I.O.’s Political Action Committee went down the line for Truman’s man. So did some Negro Republicans,* who wanted to take a crack at Roger Slaughter’s votes against the FEPC.

The gimmick in the victory was that it could not have been accomplished without the unstinted support of an oldfashioned, ward-heeling political machine. Harry Truman had cried to Kansas City’s Boss Jim Pendergast for help. Boss Jim, nephew of the late, unsavory Tom, replied in the way a boss knows best. He sent out the steamroller (and thus, in one day, brought about the rebirth of a Pendergast juggernaut). The payoff from Washington would, presumably come later.

In the four brawling wards north of Kansas City’s 31st Street, Pendergast lieutenants energetically rounded up 12,000 voters, who started Enos Axtell off with a whopping 10,000-vote lead. In one blue ribbon precinct 430 out of 529 registered voters obediently trooped to the polls, 395 of them for Candidate Axtell. It was a handicap Roger Slaughter could not beat, even after winning the nine other wards in the District. The final, unofficial returns: Axtell, 20,424; Slaughter, 17,623.

The election over, the President was obviously jubilant, but carefully noncommittal. He turned aside all questions except one: What about the fall elections? That was easy. Axtell would win.

*In Missouri, as in many other Midwestern and Western states, voters are not bound by party affiliation in primary elections.