Word: caucus
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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TIME had assigned a reporter to every candidate and important delegation to keep the "smoke-filled room" vigil, and to find and cover every caucus, press conference and "secret meeting." They worked 18-20 hours a day under the hot Philadelphia sun and the hotter 45,000-watt lights of Convention Hall, and about the only thing they missed was sleep. Senior Editor Duncan Norton-Taylor even managed to get around to Dewey's fashion show where, he reports, "the models wore garters with pink elephants on them . . . Furthermore," he added, "who should turn up in the Maryland delegation...
Down on the convention floor National Affairs Writer Bob Baker inadvertently picked up some unexpected information at the close of the second ballot. When the Dewey total was announced, the delegates swarmed into the aisles, carrying Baker along with them until he swirled into a private caucus being held on the floor by heads-together Governors Kim Sigler, of Michigan, Jim Duff, of Pennsylvania, and Senator Raymond Baldwin, of Connecticut, who were trying to decide what to do about Dewey on the third ballot. Pinned against Sigler's broad back, Baker couldn't help overhearing the forthcoming strategy...
...Republic, Presidents were picked directly from the ranks of leading citizens by the vote of state electors (themselves usually elected by their state legislatures). Even after the two-party system began to develop, candidates of both parties were simply named by the members of Congress, meeting in party caucus. But in 1812 the Federalists summoned party delegates to a New York City convention and nominated De Witt Clinton (defeated in the election by the Democratic-Republicans' James Madison). By 1832 the revolution against King Caucus was complete. Meeting in Baltimore, Democratic and National Republican conventions nominated Andrew Jackson...
...other two suggestions aim at improving the present method of electing regional officers, which is now by caucus at the national convention in the summer. Two problems arise: voters seldom know candidates' qualifications, and officers elected in the summer must be confirmed by a vote of the regional conference in the Fall. This time-lag leads to inertia on the part of new officers until their "second election." A nominating committee that would acquaint itself with qualifications of potential candidates before the convention, and an amendment to the constitution making the summer election final would insure the best possible officers...
...crowds had jammed every available inch in the old House caucus room. Motion-picture and television cameras stood tripod to tripod, electrical cables matted the floor like jungle vines. Both crowds and cameramen had come with a single purpose: to watch James Caesar Petrillo, the union boss of all U.S. musicians, dropped into the legislative meat grinder and publicly reduced to scrapple...