Word: truman
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...question as Chicago's big week began: Could Adlai ride out the Truman crisis and protect the huge lead he had collected? The answers lay in the abacus mind and the horny fists of his campaign manager, Pennsylvania's Jim Finnegan...
Come for the Ride. Finnegan's own Pennsylvania was the first hot spot. The day after Truman's flare-up, President David McDonald of the United Steelworkers went on network television and loudly announced that he too was for Harriman. McDonald's steelworkers are mighty in Pennsylvania, and some Philadelphia delegates were raring to go with him. The Pennsylvania delegation caucused, and Dave McDonald made a fiery pitch for Harriman support. But Finnegan's protege, Governor George Leader, laid out the political facts of life. Snapped he: if any delegate hoped to do any future business...
...Hand from Eleanor. Adlai Stevenson meanwhile played the part of the candidate well. As he went from meeting to meeting, his pitch was low-keyed, without personal resentment against Harry Truman. "My fight," he said, "is against the Republicans, not against any Democrat." Old friends rallied around him. Plowing through the crushing crowds with Stevenson was an especially devoted and notedly effective helper: Eleanor Roosevelt, 71, wearing an absurd little hat and carrying herself with gentle dignity. She spoke repeatedly of her concern for a better world, a better America, and a Democratic Party in which the old, e.g., herself...
Gradually Finnegan & Co. discovered that there was very little left of the Truman-Harriman campaign but glowing embers. Clearly it was high time to light a few bright Stevenson torches to get the parade going again. The first bright glare came from Michigan...
Early in the week the United Auto Workers' President Walter Reuther had seen that the Truman-Harriman bid threatened a deadlock from which Texas' Lyndon Johnson might emerge as the conservative Democratic kingmaker, with enormous bargaining power on civil rights. Now Liberal Reuther determined to take the play away from Lyndon. He announced his own strong support for Stevenson, then persuaded Michigan's governor and favorite son, G. Mennen ("Soapy") Williams, to go to work. Striding from hotel room to hotel room, his lanky form trademarked by his green polka-dot bow tie, Williams checked with leaders...