The Path to Power (113 page)

And in to many of the Democratic members, trapped in Washington, poured reports that they were in trouble back home, and that time was growing too short to repair the damage. Sam Rayburn had spent twenty-eight years in Congress waiting to be Speaker; was he to be Speaker for only four months?

Over and over again Rayburn was told that a principal reason for the impending electoral disaster was lack of money. Visiting the Chicago headquarters of the party’s Midwest Division, Charles Marsh reported that “Chicago is a skeleton, because no money has trickled from New York West yet. I walked through a graveyard … with yawning offices everywhere.
Apparently no money for payrolls, no definite amounts to make planning for radio and speaker’s bureau.” Roosevelt’s personal popularity would pull the President through, Marsh predicted, but it wouldn’t pull enough Congressmen with him. “I believe the lower house of Congress may be lost by not getting money West now.”

And there was no money. In August, Rayburn had asked Flynn to set aside $100,000 to help congressional candidates. At the end of September, the Democratic National Committee had not contributed a penny. On October 2, a letter from Flynn’s finance chairman, Wayne Johnson, must have made Rayburn realize how remote was the chance of significant financial assistance to his “fellows” from the DNC: Congressman William D. Byron of Maryland had made a personal trip to National Committee headquarters at the Biltmore to ask for financial help; Johnson wrote Rayburn, “Will you see what
you
can do to help Congressman Byron if his need is as acute as he thinks.” As for the National Committee, Wayne Johnson wrote, “We have had such difficulty in getting money to keep things running to date that I don’t know how much we will have to help the Congressional Campaign Committee.”

Then, over the weekend beginning October 5, premonition turned to panic, for on that weekend, Democrats, desperate over discouraging reports from their districts, began drifting away from Washington; by October 8, when an informal “recess” was finally arranged, more than a hundred members had already left for home on what the
Times
called “French Leave,” and others, the
Times
reported, were threatening “to quit the capital regardless of what the body decides to do about … remaining in daily session.” And when they arrived back in their districts, they found that the reports were all too true. In district after district, Democratic Congressmen who had won by comfortable margins in 1936, and by smaller margins in 1938, returned home in 1940, with less than a month to go before the election, to find that they were behind, and that their opponents’ campaigns were well organized and well financed, with plenty of help from Washington—while they were getting no help at all.

Michigan’s Sixteenth Congressional District, which included part of Detroit, and adjoining Dearborn, site of a giant Ford Motor Company plant, had once been considered a safe Democratic district. Running for his third term in 1936, Congressman John Lesinski had polled 61 percent of the vote, defeating his Republican opponent by 21,000 votes. But in 1938, the margin had been reduced to 10,000—55 percent. And in 1940, the Republican candidate in the Ford-dominated Sixteenth was a Ford: Henry’s cousin Robert. Arriving back in Dearborn to begin his campaign, Lesinski found “hundreds” of Robert ford for congress billboards, and numerous other indications of “unlimited financial backing”—including no fewer than a dozen well-staffed campaign headquarters. Clearly, the district wasn’t safe any longer. It contained voters of fifty-eight nationalities, so literature
printed in foreign languages was a necessity. In the 1936 and 1938 elections, the Democratic National Committee had sent truckloads of foreign-language pamphlets to the district—100,000 in Polish alone. Now Lesinski was informed that not one piece of foreign-language literature had been received in the district. When he telephoned the Biltmore to find out when some would be arriving, he could not even get through to anyone who could give him a reply. Compiling a detailed list of the minimum needed—50,000 pamphlets in Polish, 5,000 each in Hungarian, Ukrainian, Italian and Russian—he telegraphed it to the Biltmore, and this time he got a reply. The pamphlets had been set in type, he was told, but there was no money available to print them. And he couldn’t get campaign buttons. He pleaded for a visit by Roosevelt to his district, reminding Washington of the great crowds the President had drawn in Detroit in 1936, but he couldn’t get Roosevelt. That was understandable and standard for any campaign; every Congressman wanted a popular President in his district. But Lesinski couldn’t even get a
picture
of Roosevelt! So few posters of the President were available that they were framed under glass to preserve them and carried from one rally to another; not one could be spared, Lesinski was to write, to hang in his own headquarters! John Lesinski knew he was in trouble. He needed all the help he could get. And he couldn’t even get a poster.

Lesinski’s experience was being repeated, that first part of October, in scores of congressional districts. In 1940, radio was still not the most expensive campaign item for Congressmen; most spent more money on billboards. “When you saw a lot of billboards for your opponent,” recalls a man who ran many congressional campaigns in the pre-war era, “you knew that he must have a well-financed campaign in other areas, too.” Now, in district after district, the Congressman arrived home to find his opponent’s face staring down at him from billboards—and to realize what that meant. And when he wrote or telephoned his Congressional Campaign Committee for help, he found that not only cash but the most basic types of other campaign materials were difficult to obtain. In previous elections, the committee had relayed requests for buttons, posters, bumper stickers, literature, nationally prominent speakers, to the parent Democratic National Committee, and Farley’s efficient staff, sympathetic to Congressmen and experienced in solving their problems, had done their best to meet their requests. Now, with Farley and his staff abruptly gone, and with Farley’s replacement, Flynn, interested almost exclusively in Roosevelt’s election, the National Committee, its resources more limited than ever, was all but ignoring Congressmen’s requests.

Overshadowing every other problem for the returning Congressmen was their shortage of campaign funds. Lesinski had pleaded with Drewry for help; what he received was a check for $100, a very small amount of ammunition with which to fight a Ford. That was not an ungenerous contribution by Drewry’s standards, particularly given the state of the Congressional
Committee’s bank account. The long-awaited subvention from the Democratic National Committee finally arrived on October 10. It was not the $100,000 for which Rayburn had asked, but $10,000. Parceled out among seventy-eight candidates in contributions of $100 or $200, it was an amount too small to make a difference in the fight on which hung Sam Rayburn’s fate. Not since the New Deal had swept into office in 1932 had Democratic candidates for Congress needed more help—and instead they were getting less help. Tallying the frantic telephone calls from the Congressmen, Democratic congressional leaders realized that the fight was being lost. With Roosevelt’s once-substantial lead slipping week by week until Gallup polls in early October showed Willkie pulling into a virtual dead heat, the outlook for the House worsened. “You could have cut the gloom around Democratic congressional headquarters with a knife,” Pearson and Allen were to recall. “The campaign committee, headed by Representative Pat Drewry, a charming and dawdling Virginian, had collapsed like the minister’s one-horse shay. Activity had so bogged down that hard-pressed candidates had quit even asking for help. For the Republicans it looked like a lead-pipe cinch to regain control of the House.”

Sam Rayburn realized the situation, and if he hadn’t, a letter misdirected to Congressional Committee secretary Cap Harding would have helped him realize it by giving him additional evidence of the financial odds against House Democrats. Contributions to the Republican Party from A. Felix du Pont, Jr., and his wife, Lydia, had been delivered to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee by mistake. The checks were for $3,000 and $4,000, respectively. And they were from just two du Ponts. No fewer than forty-six du Ponts were active Republican contributors. Apparently still unwilling to put Lyndon Johnson in charge of the congressional effort, Rayburn now tried frantically to find someone else. But no one else wanted the job. Recalls one of Rayburn’s aides: “It appeared that the Democrats were … going to lose the House. No one wanted to risk his political future by being congressional campaign manager for the House.” Rayburn talked to “two or three other people,” but found “nobody available.” Earlier in October, he told Roosevelt what he had told Flynn: “that if this House were lost—even though he was re-elected—it would tear him to pieces just like it did President Wilson after the Republicans won the House in 1918.” He asked Roosevelt to appoint Johnson to the post he wanted, Chip Robert’s now-vacant National Committee secretaryship. Flynn again refused to accept that appointment, but Johnson now agreed to accept the informal role with the Congressional Committee that he had earlier refused. Apparently changing his mind yet again, Flynn appears to have demurred even at this, but on October 13, Rayburn begged Roosevelt to get Johnson into the congressional campaign in some capacity, formal or informal, and to do it fast. The President agreed to do so. He reportedly said: “Tell Lyndon to see me tomorrow.” Lyndon saw the President the next day
—October 14—at breakfast, and that afternoon not only Flynn but Drewry sent out the letters that assigned Johnson a role in the campaign.

The role could hardly have been more informal. Drewry’s letter said only that Johnson would “assist the Congressional Committee.” No specific position or title was mentioned. While the role may have been informal, however, it was a role not on the district level or the state level, but on the national level. Rushing out of the White House, Lyndon Johnson placed a call to Houston—to Brown & Root.

T
HE GREAT POLITICAL FUND-RAISERS
—the Tommy Corcorans of Washington, the Ed Clarks of Texas—agree that most businessmen who contribute to political campaigns don’t contribute enough to accomplish their purposes. They want Ambassadorships or contracts or input into policy, but they don’t give enough to get what they want. Their contributions are grudging, or slow in coming, or too small to place the recipients under sufficient obligation to them. “There’s always just a few,” says Clark, “only the most sophisticated and the smartest,” who give “real money” and who give it eagerly enough, and early enough, so that they can reap the maximum return on their investment. Herman Brown, on top of whose native shrewdness had been overlaid the sophistication obtained from more than a decade of involvement in the financing of state politics and politicians, was one of the few. “When Herman gave,” says Ed Clark, “he gave his full weight.” When Johnson’s call reached Brown & Root headquarters, the response was immediate. Since the Federal Corrupt Practices Act prohibited political contributions by corporations, money could not come directly from Brown & Root. Because of a $5,000 limit on an individual’s contribution to a political organization during any one year, not enough of it could come from Herman, or from his brother George. Therefore, Herman arranged to have six business associates—sub-contractors, attorneys, his insurance broker—send money, in their names, to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. And Herman acted fast. Johnson had made his telephone call on Monday, October 14. On Saturday, October 19, George Brown telegraphed Johnson: YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO HAVE CHECKS BY FRIDAY. … HOPE THEY ARRIVED IN DUE FORM AND ON TIME. JOHNSON WAS ABLE TO REPLY BY RETURN WIRE: ALL OF THE FOLKS YOU TALKED TO HAVE BEEN HEARD FROM. MANY, MANY THANKS. I AM NOT ACKNOWLEDGING THEIR LETTERS, SO BE SURE TO TELL ALL THESE FELLOWS THAT THEIR LETTERS HAVE BEEN RECEIVED. The amount of each check was the maximum contribution allowed under the law: $5,000. The initial Brown & Root contribution to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee
was $30,000—more money than the committee had received from the Democratic National Committee, which had in previous years been its major source of funds.

Nor was this the only money Lyndon Johnson received from Texas during his first week on the new job, for he had persuaded Sam Rayburn to make some telephone calls to Fort Worth and Dallas, and to stop talking in terms of hundreds. On October 14, Sid Richardson, through his nephew, Perry R. Bass, sent $5,000. On October 16, C. W. Murchison sent $5,000. And another $5,000 arrived from Charles Marsh’s partner, E. S. Fentress. By Saturday, October 19, Johnson was able to bring to the offices of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, to be distributed to Democratic candidates for Congress, a total of $45,000. One week after he had taken his job, he was able to write Rayburn aide Swagar Sherley: “We have sent them more money in the last three days than Congressmen have received from any committee in the last eight years.”

O
NE TALENT
that Lyndon Johnson had already displayed in abundance was ingenuity in political tactics. Now he displayed it again. By saying in his letter to the candidates that Johnson was only “assisting” the Congressional Campaign Committee, Drewry had thought he was keeping Johnson subordinate to the committee. All these first checks from Texas, of course, were made out to the committee—Johnson had to turn them over to the committee for deposit in the committee’s bank account, and it was on this account that the checks for contributions to individual candidates were drawn. They were signed by the committee’s chairman, Drewry, and mailed out, with an accompanying letter by Drewry, from the committee’s office in the National Press Building, in the same manner as any other contributions, with no indication that the money that had made them possible had come from Texas, or that it had been raised by the efforts of Lyndon Johnson.

For a man who had pulled political strings to get a dam legalized, authorized and enlarged, Johnson’s method of letting the candidates know that he, not the committee, deserved the credit for the contributions was relatively simple—but ingenious, nonetheless. He had had George Brown instruct each of the “Brown & Root” contributors, and apparently had had Rayburn instruct Richardson and Murchison, to send with their contributions a letter stating: “I am enclosing herewith my check for $5,000 payable to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. I would like for this money to be expended in connection with the campaign of Democratic candidates for Congress as per the list attached, to the individual named in the amount specified.”

Johnson had, of course, compiled the list, and had determined the amount each of the lucky candidates was to receive. Since the committee would hardly dare to disobey such specific instructions from the “donors,” it
was Johnson rather than Drewry or Harding (or anyone else) who was determining who would get the Texas money, and how much. And, armed with this knowledge, he had no sooner left the committee headquarters, having handed in his checks, than he sent to each of the recipients the following telegram—which made it abundantly clear to each recipient who was really responsible for the check which he would be receiving from the Congressional Committee the next day: AS RESULT MY VISIT TO CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE FEW MINUTES AGO, YOU SHOULD RECEIVE AIRMAIL SPECIAL DELIVERY LETTER FROM THEM WHICH IS TO BE MAILED TONIGHT.

O
F THE ELEMENTS
in Lyndon Johnson’s career, none had been more striking than his energy.

Procuring checks wasn’t all he did that first week. Permission to “assist” the Congressional Campaign Committee had finally been given to him on October 14. Election Day was November 5. He had three weeks.

Within three hours, he had rented an office, furnished it, and filled it with a staff: Herbert Henderson, John Connally, and Dorothy Nichols from his congressional office; only Walter Jenkins was left behind to keep that office open. (The furnishings of the room in the five-room suite that would be his private office revealed a distaste for the spartan: the furniture rental order read “1 large Exec, desk, 1 swivel desk chair, 2 arm chairs, 1 club chair, 1 divan …”) That same day he composed a questionnaire to be sent to congressional colleagues (“1938 votes received?” “Is your present opponent stronger than your 1938 opponent?” “Describe briefly type of campaign he is making and principal issues he is raising,” “Where can you or a representative be reached at all times in your district?”), and dictated, to be sent with the questionnaire, a letter announcing his entrance into the campaign.

Although he was ostensibly assisting Drewry’s committee, the office he had taken was in another building, the eleven-story Munsey Building at 1329 E Street, Northwest, off Pennsylvania Avenue, away from Drewry’s eyes and supervision. He had done more that busy Monday. The letter and questionnaire were not sent to all his colleagues. Conferring over the telephone with Rayburn, McCormack—and with Paul Appleby, campaign manager for vice-presidential nominee Henry A. Wallace and a politician with a detailed knowledge of the political situation in Midwest congressional districts—he had selected from the 435 Democratic candidates for Congress several score who should be helped. His decision was based in part on which districts had had the closest results in 1938, but only in part. One of several lists hurriedly compiled by Henderson and Connally was titled: “The following men received a majority of more than 10,000 over their Republican opponents in 1938.” Democrats had considered these seats safe, but only because they had not done a thorough analysis; Johnson did one, analyzing not merely the vote totals and percentages but the type of district,
and found that many of them were in danger—and these Congressmen were selected for assistance.

By the end of the first week in his new assignment, he had further refined his lists. One refinement was caused by John L. Lewis. The coal miners’ chief was turning against Roosevelt; although speculation was rife about the effect of his defection on the presidential race, no one was thinking about its effect on congressional candidates. Johnson assigned his staff to draw up a list of “Districts Which Produce 1,000,000 Tons or More Coal,” and of the 1938 congressional results in those districts. Then, sitting down with a yellow legal pad, he went to work on the list himself. Fifteen districts in six states were involved; in 1938, Democrats had won all of them. Calculating the margin in each district, he added them up and divided by fifteen, and around this average he drew a circle in red, and drew a red arrow to it, for the average was only 8,268. Then he calculated the Democratic percentage of the vote in each district, carrying the long division out to several places, and the percentages confirmed the bad news: the fifteen districts could not be considered safely Democratic this year; their Democratic Congressmen needed help, too. Other lists were compiled—by him, personally; no aide was allowed to do this—compiled with the same painstaking thoroughness (“If you do absolutely
everything
…”). He also called a luncheon meeting in a private room at the nearby Hotel Washington. Present were Rayburn, McCormack, Appleby, Alvin Wirtz, and three White House aides, Lowell Mellett, Wayne Coy and Jim Rowe (James Forrestal was invited, but was unable to attend). At this meeting, the lists were further refined, so that when, that first week, the money from Texas having arrived, he began distributing it, the identity of the seventy-seven recipients had been determined by a rather intensive analysis: the type of analysis that for years had been routine for the Republican congressional committee but rare for the Democrats—and that had not been made at all in 1940.

O
N THE QUESTIONNAIRE
Johnson had sent out, candidates had been asked to “List suggestions as to how, in your opinion, we can be most helpful.” Underneath had been left three blank lines, marked “1,” “2” and “3.” Many of the respondents, of course, asked for a visit to their district by the President, but that was not the reply most frequently made on the first line. The most typical reply was that of Representative Martin F. Smith of the State of Washington’s Third Congressional District: “Financially.” (Representative John F. Hunter of Ohio’s Ninth Congressional District was firmer. “1” was “financial assistance,” he wrote. “There is no two.”) Others wrote a line or two of elaboration. “The best service that you could possibly render me would be to arrange a campaign contribution of $200 or $300,” said Wendell Lund of Michigan’s Eleventh CD. “The thing this district needs most of all is money,” said George M. May of Pennsylvania’s Tenth. And
some, as though the mails were not fast enough, made the same point over the phone. Says an inter-office memorandum: “Robert Secrest [of Ohio’s Fifteenth] called and talked with John Connally. Said the only help he needed was a little money. …”

Candidates who had dealt with the Congressional Campaign Committee in the past had little hope that they would get what they asked for. Secrest wrote on his questionnaire, “Nothing will help except cash, and I know that is scarce.” Laurence F. Arnold of Illinois’ Twenty-third noted that he had received $200 from the committee in 1936, but nothing in 1938; he had asked for $200 this year, he noted, and had not received even the courtesy of a reply. Emmet O’Neal of Kentucky’s Third wrote, “I feel sure that there is nothing that can be done to help.” He needed money, he said, “but I know … money is not floating around, so this is not meant as an indirect solicitation.”

But, to their astonishment, their hopes were answered. Four-term Congressman Martin F. Smith had returned home to find that there was a good chance he wouldn’t be re-elected to a fifth. He had stayed in the capital until October 8, and he had stayed too long; stepping off the train after the three-day trip home, he was promptly informed by campaign aides that he was in serious danger of losing his seat. His only hope was to increase his planned advertising in his district’s forty-two newspapers, and to reserve radio time—and he didn’t have enough money to do either. He left for a week-long tour of the district with no money in sight. And then, when he checked in with his campaign headquarters in Hoquiam one evening, Johnson’s telegram was read to him. Naturally, he hoped that the Congressional Committee’s airmail special-delivery letter to which the telegram referred would contain funds. Arriving back in Hoquiam several days later, he found on his desk not one but two letters from the committee. Ripping them open, he found in each a check—one for $200, one for $500.

Arriving, weary, at a hotel one evening, Representative Charles F. McLaughlin telephoned his headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska, and was told that a telegram had been received from Lyndon Johnson; when he reached Omaha the next day, the airmail special-delivery letter to which it referred was already there—and it contained a check for $300.

All across the United States, similar scenes were enacted. Slumping into a chair in a hotel room or lying on the bed—shoes still on, too tired to take them off after a long day of campaigning (and worrying about campaign funds)—a Congressman would telephone his headquarters, would be read Lyndon Johnson’s telegram, and would realize that funds were on the way.

Others got the news in their campaign headquarters. Representative Edouard V. M. Izac arrived home in San Diego to find, as he wrote Johnson, his opponent’s face staring down at him from “hundreds” of billboards. He had no billboards, and, he found to his dismay, “no organization.”

Thousands of copies of a hard-hitting pamphlet selling the “Roosevelt-Wallace-Izac” ticket had been printed in an attractive red-white-and-blue color scheme, but there was no money to mail them to voters, and, without an organization, no other way to distribute them; most canvassers who would distribute them door to door wanted to be paid for their work, and even volunteers required reimbursement for lunch money, carfare, gasoline and other expenses. And then the telegram arrived from his colleague from Texas, the telegram and then a check for $500. With it he could pay the necessary expense money to get the pamphlets distributed. And hardly had the workers fanned out from headquarters to, as he put it, “carry the Roosevelt-Wallace-Izac story from door to door” when another letter arrived—with another $500.