October Surprises: FDR vs. Willkie (1940)
In 1940, the Republican Party nominated a candidate who was a wealthy businessman who had never been elected to public office. (Sound familiar?) He was running against a president who was seeking to do something no president had ever done before: win a third term in office.
All the way up to the summer of 1940, it was uncertain whether or not Roosevelt would break a longstanding tradition and run for an unprecedented third term as president. The two-term limit for presidents was not yet part of the U.S. Constitution, but it was a respected tradition that had been begun by George Washington when he refused to run for a third term in 1796. Roosevelt refused to give a definitive statement as to his willingness to be a candidate again. He even told some Democratic party contenders for the presidents, such as James Farley, that he would not run for a third term. But as Nazi Germany swept through Western Europe and as it looked like Great Britain was and the rest of Europe was threatened by the Nazi menace, Roosevelt decided that he had to remain in office in order to see the nation safely past the Nazi threat. He was easily nominated at the party's convention in Chicago that summer.
In 1940 the major political parties still selected their candidates at nominating conventions, although some states held primaries by this time. Only 9 states held primaries and Wendell Willkie didn't win any of them.
The 1940 Republican National Convention, held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, found the party deeply divided between the party's isolationists, who wanted to stay out of the war at all costs, and the party's interventionists, who felt that Great Britain and her allies needed to be helped to fight the Nazis. The three leading candidates for the Republican nomination were all isolationists to varying degrees. The three frontrunners were Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio, Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg of Michigan, and District Attorney Thomas E. Dewey of New York. Taft was the leader of the conservative, isolationist wing of the Republican Party, while Dewey, the District Attorney for Manhattan, had risen to national fame as the "Gangbuster" prosecutor who had sent numerous infamous Mafia figures to prison, most notably Lucky Luciano, the organized-crime boss of New York City. Dewey had won most of the presidential primaries in the spring of 1940. Vandenberg, the senior Republican in the Senate, was the "favorite son" candidate of the Michigan delegation and was considered a possible compromise candidate if Taft or Dewey faltered. Former President Herbert Hoover was also spoken of as a compromise candidate.
None of the candidates were that appealing to the convention delegates. Taft's outspoken isolationism and opposition to any American involvement in the European war convinced many Republican leaders that he could not win in the general election, especially after France fell to the Nazis in May 1940. At 38, Dewey was seen as too young and inexperienced, especially in matters of foreign policy. Vandenberg was also an isolationist and his lethargic campaign never gained any traction. Hoover still bore the stigma of having presided over the Great Depression.
Wendell Willkie was a Wall Street industrialist who had never run for public office. He was a native of Indiana and a former Democrat who had supported Roosevelt in the 1932 election. He had first come to public attention as a leading critic of Roosevelt's attempt to break up electrical power monopolies. Willkie was the chief executive officer of the Commonwealth & Southern Corporation, which provided electrical power to customers in eleven states. In 1933, when Roosevelt created the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which promised to provide flood control and cheap electricity to the impoverished people of the Tennessee River Valley, this initiative threatened the economic viability of Willkie's company and this led Willkie to criticize and oppose the TVA. Willkie argued that government had unfair advantages over private corporations, and should not competing directly against them.
Willkie stood apart from his competition because he was an outspoken advocate of aid to the Allies, especially Britain. This position won him the support of many Republicans on the East Coast, who disagreed with their party's isolationist stance. Many of the leading newspapers supported Willkie. When the German Army invaded France in May 1940, sympathy for the embattled Europeans increased and this aided Willkie's candidacy. Fueled by his favorable media attention, Willkie won over many of the convention delegates. Hundreds of thousands of telegrams urging support for Willkie poured in, many from "Willkie Clubs" that had sprung up across the country. Millions more signed petitions circulating everywhere. At the 1940 Republican National Convention itself, keynote speaker Harold Stassen, the Governor of Minnesota, announced his support for Willkie and became his official floor manager.
Dewey led on the first ballot, but steadily lost strength on each successive ballot. Both Taft and Willkie gained in strength on each ballot. Large states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New York left Dewey and Vandenberg and switched to Willkie, giving him the victory on the sixth ballot.
Going into the election, polls between the two candidates for the major parties showed a very close race, though the polls indicated that if there was no war in Europe, voters preferred Willkie over Roosevelt. Willkie campaigned against Roosevelt's attempt to break the two-term presidential tradition. He told his audience, "if one man is indispensable, then none of us is free." Willkie also criticized what he claimed was the incompetence and waste in Roosevelt's New Deal welfare programs. He stated that as president he would keep most of Roosevelt's government programs, but would make them more efficient.
But many Americans continued to blame business leaders for the Great Depression. Democrats tried to portray Willkie as the face of "Big Business" and this hurt him with many working-class voters. Willkie bravely campaigned in industrial areas where Republicans were still blamed for causing the Great Depression and where Roosevelt was highly popular. He frequently had rotten fruit and vegetables thrown at him and was heckled by crowds, but he campaigned on undaunted.
Willkie accused Roosevelt of leaving the nation unprepared for war, but signs of Roosevelt's military buildup negated this as a major issue. Willkie then reversed his approach and charged Roosevelt with secretly planning to take the nation into World War II. This accusation had some success, but in response, Roosevelt promised that he would "not send American boys into any foreign wars."
Willkie tried to cut into Roosevelt's support by attempting to recover the support of African-American voters, a constituency which, at the time was traditionally Republican, but that had left the party to vote for Roosevelt after the Great Depression. Roosevelt came under criticism from African-American leaders for enabling the military's continued segregation. Willkie was campaigning on a strong civil rights platform. In October, less than a month before the election, an FDR press aide named Stephen Early attracted negative attention when he kneed an African-American police officer in the groin outside of Madison Square Garden in New York City. This became an issue among African-American voters. It was seen as an example of the double-standard treatment afforded to Washington insiders and an insult to African-Americans.
FDR responded quickly to control the damage to his campaign from this October surprise. He announced the creation of the Tuskegee Airmen, an African-American aerial fighting unit, shortly before the election. In addition, just days before the election, Roosevelt promoted Colonel Benjamin O. Davis Jr. to the rank of brigadier general, making him the first African-American to achieve that rank.
The move achieved its purpose as Roosevelt was able to salvage his support among African-American voters. On Election Day Roosevelt received 27.3 million votes to 22.3 million for Willkie. In the Electoral College, Roosevelt defeated Willkie by a margin of 449 to 82. Willkie ran strong in rural areas in the American Midwest, taking over 57% of the farm vote. But Roosevelt carried every American city with a population of more than 400,000 except for Cincinnati.
But despite the clarity of the victory, after the election FDR would say that Willkie had given him the toughest political fight of his life.