The Path to Power (116 page)

This assistance was also provided with Johnson thoroughness. Every telegram had a “follow-up” (to Kent Keller: AFTER TELEPHONE CONVERSATION WITH YOU IMMEDIATELY WENT TO WORK ON HOSPITAL PROJECT. ASSUME YOU BY NOW HAVE RECEIVED WIRE FROM VETERANS ADMINISTRATION ADVISING YOU THAT PRESIDENT AND BUDGET HAVE APPROVED THIS). Mistakes in numerals were so frequent in telegrams that Western Union policy was to repeat them at the lower left-hand corner of the telegram so that the reader could double-check. This precaution was not sufficient for Johnson. He took his own precaution, insisting that the operator spell out the numerals as words (project five ought ought seven two). He sent two and three copies of some telegrams.

And his assistance was provided eagerly. When a Congressman asked him for help, he thanked him for asking. Replying to Smith’s request for help on the Moon Island Airport, Johnson began: “Thanks much for yours of the 26th. It had no more than reached me when I immediately got to work on your project. … You can be sure that I will do my best.” And he asked them to ask him for more help. “Do you have any other assignment for me?” he asked them. He reiterated his request: “Call on me, at any hour.”

No matter how many assignments he was given, he tried, in those frantic three weeks, to carry out all of them—and, in fact, thought of additional help he could give the candidates. His work for Nan Wood Honeyman was an example.

Her telephone call to Johnson on October 17, the call which had been transcribed by John Connally, had asked for money—but for other assistance as well: for letters of endorsement from Rayburn and McCormack, and because “one of her big problems was the Townsend Plan,” from a Congressman identified with assistance for the aged, Charles H. Leavy of Washington; and for “Honorable George Norris to speak in [the] district.” That very day the Western Union messengers began arriving at the front door of her home—and each yellow envelope contained good news. The telegram that arrived that afternoon, of course, informed her that the AIRMAIL SPECIAL DELIVERY LETTER with a big contribution was coming. The next day two telegrams arrived from LYNDON. The first said that while he had been
UNSUCCESSFUL
ON LEAVY MATTER
, the Rayburn and McCormack letters were on the way. The second said that HONORABLE GEORGE NORRIS would indeed SPEAK IN PORTLAND, OREGON. HAVE TALKED WITH HIS SECRETARY ABOUT YOU, AND FEEL SURE HE WILL NOT FORGET YOU. HOWEVER, SUGGEST YOU HAVE SOMEONE CONTACT HIS PARTY AND HAVE HIM REMINDED OF THIS TO PREVENT ANY POSSIBLE OVERLOOKING OF IT. (Johnson had even suggested a sentence that the Senator could include in his speech: “I would like to live in Portland so that I might vote for Nan Wood Honeyman to be my Congressman.”) The Rayburn and McCormack letters were warm enough to satisfy even an anxious candidate, and Johnson’s work with Norris’ staff paid off on the front page of the
Portland Oregonian:
posing before the great dam after his speech, Norris had summoned Mrs. Honeyman to stand beside him, so that she was in the dramatic page-one picture.

In a letter which Johnson wrote on the 22nd, he told Mrs. Honeyman that he had been “thinking about … having you back here with us. That’s the thing that would really tickle me and the big job I want to do between now and November the fifth. So if you don’t write, wire, or phone me any time there is anything—big or little—I can do for you, I am going to be awfully mad at you.” Mrs. Honeyman gave him little chance to be mad. If he couldn’t get a letter from Leavy, she asked, how about one from Senator Downey, who, she said, “is next to Dr. Townsend in the eyes of his followers. … A suggestion from him that the local pensioners support me would carry a lot of weight. … I put this up to you as a real job.” Johnson was glad for the job, he wrote her on the 23rd; he asked her to give him more jobs: “Nan, I will look into the Downey matter you mentioned and do everything I possibly can to help work this out for you. Please, please let me know if I can do anything else.” And the letter of the 23rd brought other good news to Prospect Drive: “I am glad … the little financial contributions have helped you some,” he wrote. “I talked with them again last night and gave them three hundred fifty more to send you air mail special, so that you should have received that by the time this letter reaches you.” The next day, the 24th, there was another letter—and another $350. The extent of the money from Washington had by this time reached levels so unexpected that when, on October 28, Johnson asked her how much more money she needed, she said she had all she could use.

Downey wasn’t the only Senator beloved by pensioners; Claude Pepper was, too, and he was at that very moment campaigning on the West Coast. Johnson tracked Pepper down in Los Angeles, and talked to him on the telephone. “I told him to do all he could for you and he heartily agreed,” he wrote Mrs. Honeyman. John Rankin was an important name in public power; Mrs. Honeyman was informed that a letter from Rankin was on its way.

Johnson volunteered, in fact, an even bigger favor—one for which
she hadn’t dared to ask. She had requested letters from Rayburn and Norris; he got her one from a bigger name. He suggested she send a letter to President Roosevelt noting her role in the Bonneville Dam and Columbia River projects—a letter which would give the President an excuse to reply, and emphasize her role. He himself wrote a draft of her letter—and of the President’s reply—and persuaded Rowe to arrange to have the letter sent over the President’s signature: “My dear Nan: It was good to hear from you again and to receive from one who has fought shoulder to shoulder with me for the Columbia developments a picture of their present usefulness. …” Notifying her of this unexpected boon he had arranged, Johnson said: “I just thought this might give you another little push.”

I
T WAS NOT
only Congressmen whom he was assisting.

In an era before the widespread use of political polling, information was a commodity very difficult for a politician to obtain quickly enough for him to make effective use of it. Without computers, even the famous Gallup Poll had to report its results several days after its polling had begun, by which time new political developments might have changed voters’ attitudes. And little polling was done on the effect of developments on specific segments of the population. A candidate might wonder—might be desperate to know—how his strategy was working, but it was hard for him to find out.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee had never before been used to fill this gap. But it was used to fill it now.

With many of the checks that went out, there went out also a request for a status report, not only on the Congressman’s own chances in his district, but on the President’s. And since many of the men Johnson was asking for these reports were veteran Congressmen—seasoned, experienced (and successful) politicians—their replies were often extremely informative. They were especially informative because when Congressmen took their own, local, polls, unscientific and rudimentary in technique though they were, they sent the results to Johnson, and he could pass them along to the White House—and the results of these polls, of course, were hard facts, the kind of facts for which a candidate and his advisors are so anxious. Ohio’s Ninth Congressional District, which included Toledo with its large factories, was considered a fairly typical urban, industrialized district, and a good indicator of sentiment in such areas. In mid-October, its Congressman, John F. Hunter, had sent out “blind” postcards, postcards simply asking voters to write in their preference for Congressman and President and send the cards to a numbered postal box. He mailed them to 16,000 voters, and when, a week later, 3,654 postcards had been returned, he could report the figures to Johnson: 2,182 for Willkie, 1,472 for Roosevelt. But Hunter could shrewdly report to Johnson that the figures might not be as ominous as they seemed at first glance, because the return rate from factory districts was so “much less, by percentage,
than from the Republican wards, it may be that factory workers are afraid to express their choice.”

Most important, Johnson could not only get information for the President, he could get it for him fast. Roosevelt, worried about a Gallup poll which showed Willkie rapidly cutting into his lead, began a series of radio addresses on October 23. Sending out checks to congressional candidates around the country, Johnson had asked them to repay him with a report on how Roosevelt’s speeches went over; within a day or two after each speech, he could tell the White House that, as one candidate put it after one speech—in a reaction echoed by other Johnson correspondents—“the President’s broadcast of last night has caused [a] definite swing toward the President’s candidacy.”

John L. Lewis broke his long silence with a dreaded roar on October 25, endorsing Willkie and announcing that he would resign as CIO president if Roosevelt won; not only was the speech shrewdly timed—Lewis had delayed for weeks while press speculation about his intentions aroused interest in his speech, and had finally struck twelve days before the election for maximum impact—but it hit at what was perhaps Roosevelt’s weakest point; in his Shakespearean voice, the miners’ chief proclaimed that the President was determined to force the United States into war. Initial press reports speculated that Lewis’ speech would have substantial impact on the campaign, but no one—including an anxious White House—could know for sure. Johnson, however, soon had specific reports—from the very districts in which the speech would have had the greatest impact. Using his list of “Districts Which Produce 1,000,000 Tons or More Coal”—the fifteen districts in six states, which, of course, contained the greatest concentration of the coal miners who formed the bedrock of Lewis’ constituency—Johnson sent telegrams to the Congressmen from these districts asking for a report on the effect of Lewis’ speech. The initial responses were surprising: one of the first said that the speech “has not injured us any”; if anything, it had helped; several CIO locals responded to Lewis’ threat to resign by asking him to do so immediately. And later responses confirmed the trend: “The coal miners … rank and file … will stay with Roosevelt,” one said. Because the telegraph was too slow for him, Johnson telephoned several of the fifteen whose judgment he particularly trusted (his selection displayed again his keenness as a reader of men; among them were Jennings Randolph of West Virginia and Michael Bradley of Pennsylvania, men who would rise). Their replies confirmed the others’ (Randolph, scribbling a note “following up our telephone conversation of a few minutes ago,” told him that Lewis’ speech would “cut in to the Roosevelt vote in my congressional district” by only about 10 percent, and that the President could still expect to win by 15 percent). Johnson was able to tell the White House that the press reports were wrong; he presented a reassuring district-by-district summary of the limited impact of Lewis’ defection—a summary backed by hard facts.

The White House, frantic for information, suddenly realized that there was a new source of it: a young Congressman from Texas.

T
EN DAYS TO GO
, and there was no time for the mail now. Now almost all requests were couched in Western Union’s urgent capitals. For now defeat or victory was staring ambitious men starkly in the face, and so was the realization that just a little money might mean the difference between one and the other—if the money arrived in time.

A single ad might make the difference—just one more ad. MUST HAVE $250 BY THURSDAY NIGHT FOR LAST ISSUE ADVERTISING, wired James E. Hughes of Wisconsin. ADVERTISING PROGRAMS ACCOMPLISHING GREAT RESULTS DEADLINE THURSDAY NOON, wired Beiter of Buffalo. On Monday, October 28, James F. Lavery of Pennsylvania wired Johnson asking for $100 for BADLY NEEDED advertising. When he did not receive a reply by Wednesday, he wired again. If Johnson could not spare $100, he asked, could he send $90? CHANCES BRIGHT … IF WE GET RIGHT AWAY $14 FOR EACH OF FIVE COUNTY PAPERS AND $20 FOR TITUSVILLE HERALD.

One more mailing. HAVE SET UP MACHINERY TO REACH 11,000 VOTERS BY MAIL IF $250 MADE AVAILABLE BY THURSDAY, Kenneth M. Petrie wired Johnson. In Racine, Wisconsin, J. M. Weisman was staring at stacks of 65,000 circulars—and at the realization that he couldn’t get them into voters’ hands. URGENCY NEED AT LEAST $500 BY FRIDAY.

One more maneuver of a more informal character. Cap Harding’s son, Kenneth, who would succeed him as director of the Congressional Campaign Committee, was running campaigns in California’s Eighth Congressional District. “There was a colored minister who controlled the bloc of colored votes in San Jose, and we bought him for fifty dollars. A small amount of money judiciously spent could mean more than a larger amount of money spent on political advertising. Just a few bucks strategically placed could mean all the difference in the world. But those last few days of a campaign—when the deals were being struck—that was when you either had the cash or you didn’t. And if you didn’t—well, that could mean the end of a man’s career.”

Election Day itself was looming before these men—Election Day, with Election Day expenses. Arthur Mitchell, returning to his Chicago district from his travels on behalf of other Negro candidates, found to his shock that, as he wired Johnson:
PRACTICALLY ALL COLORED BAPTIST MINISTERS HAVE BEEN EMPLOYED BY THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. … I CAN AND WILL BEAT THEM IF I CAN GET THE MONEY TO HIRE WORKERS. … I NEED A MINIMUM OF $600____WHATEVER HELP I CAN GET SHOULD BE IN HANDS TOMORROW IF POSSIBLE. Byron G. Rogers of Colorado wired: COULD USE $500 FOR WORKERS IN SPANISH AND ITALIAN DISTRICTS. WIRE TODAY HOW MUCH I CAN EXPECT. Francis T. Murphy of Milwaukee: CAN CARRY DISTRICT BY
2000 BY GETTING VOTE TO POLLS IN KEY WARDS. NEED $300 FRIDAY TO CARRY OUT INTENSIVE WORK. … WIRE BY WESTERN UNION
. Vernon Sigars of Missouri:
NEED $1,000 NOVEMBER IST TO HIRE POLL WATCHERS
.

There were other Election Day expenses, too, for San Antonio was not the only city and Texas not the only state in which money was piled on tables to purchase votes, just as Mexican-Americans were not the only immigrants whose votes were purchased; in New Brunswick, New Jersey, heavily inhabited in 1940 by first-generation Americans of Slavic descent and controlled by a ruthless city machine (to name just one Northeastern city in which this practice was widespread), the big oak desks of city officials were traditionally cleared of papers on Election Day and covered with piles of cash. In the big cities of the Northeast, votes might cost more than five dollars each; in the slums of New York and Chicago, at least, it was not uncommon for Bowery and Skid Row residents to be handed tens or even, in a close election, twenties for their franchise. And for those candidates who were not planning to buy votes, money might be needed for poll watchers to prevent illegal balloting by voters bought by their opponents. As for rural areas, certain “boxes” in the Tenth District of Texas were not the only precincts which could be delivered for a candidate if a payment was made to a local Sheriff or County Commissioner.