Word: tickets
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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EVER since the mournful 1928 presidential-election showing of New York's Al Smith (87 electoral votes v. 444 for Herbert Hoover), the Democratic Party has generally accepted as political gospel this proposition: a Roman Catholic is a fatal liability on a national ticket and is therefore not to be considered...
...reason: a confidential survey now in the hands of selected Democratic leaders, e.-g., Harriman Adviser Carmine De Sapio and Stevenson Campaign Manager James Finnegan (both Catholics). The survey's fundamental thesis: Democratic presidential chances in November may well depend upon getting a Catholic on the national ticket...
...Smith Myth." The paper was prepared under the supervision of Connecticut's Democratic State Chairman John Bailey, himself a Catholic, who strongly favors a national ticket of Protestant* Adlai Stevenson and Kennedy. It concedes only that "Democratic margins in several [Southern] states might be diminished" if a Catholic were nominated for Vice President. It quickly adds: "It is apparent that a Democratic Catholic vice-presidential nominee, although admittedly prejudices would be stirred, would lose no electoral votes for the ticket simply because a handful of Southerners or Republicans would not support...
...researchers could get on with their case, they had first to deal with the matter of Al Smith. "The 'Al Smith myth,' " says the paper, "is one of the falsest myths in politics. The year 1928 was a Republican year, regardless of who was on either ticket. It was a year for 'drys' like Hoover, not 'wets' like Smith...
Beyond its obvious implication that a Catholic on the ticket would have helped in 1952, Bailey's paper does not attempt to assign reasons for Stevenson's relatively poor showing among Catholics. Few Democrats believe that Stevenson's divorce lost him any substantial number of Catholic votes. But most Catholic Democratic leaders believe that the general charges of Democratic "softness toward Communism" were especially effective among Catholics. Since those charges are sure to be revived in 1956 to a greater or lesser degree, many a Democrat stands with John Bailey in the belief that a Catholic vice...