Battleground 1948: Truman, Stevenson, Douglas, and the Most Surprising Election in Illinois History

1. The Democrats Disintegrate

1 w 1. The Democrats Disintegrate Republican Revival The election of 1948 in Illinois was more than the sum of many parts. While it is essentially a story based on details of the 1930s and 1940s, it echoes into the twenty-first century, suggesting something of greater importance to the state than a recorded election upset. Woven throughout the two decades is a tale of raw politics manifested in development and domination by competing political machines: Democrats and Republicans. In large part, they reflected the height of regional political coalitions. They feasted on patronage and bloated government payrolls, not unlike the example today of overwhelming one-party control from grass roots to high office. The borders of regional politics have changed, especially with the diminishing impact of southern and central Illinois, resulting in a power center concentrated in the northeast portion of the state around Chicago and its suburbs. Efforts at political reform through the decades have fostered strong rhetoric but produced only occasional results, due largely to the resistance of party organizations and an ever-present desire for power. This has left state government with something of a decades-long hangover reminiscent of the 1948 election period, if not a carbon copy. The role and influence of crime and corruption in the election outcome is a commentary on the lack of a statewide commitment to law enforcement and on a culture with roots in the lawlessness of the 1920s. It took years to reduce the smell of organized crime across the state. For T h e D e m o c r a t s D i s i n t e g r a t e 2 example, in St. Clair County, the gangster influence remained another fifteen years in spite of a campaign by those elected in 1948 to shut down gambling. The crime committee hearings in Chicago and St. Louis by U.S. senator Estes Kefauver in the early 1950s exposed the depth of illegal and corrupt activity but did little more than inspire a few interest groups, individuals, and newspapers to seek change. Criminal activity was ingrained in Illinois politics and was not easily expunged. In spite of legislative successes, there are undisclosed campaign activities today that threaten to undermine elections and confidence in government. The culprits are not shadowy underworld characters but are presumably respectable citizens who have figured out how to scam the election process . The echo from the earlier time is “pay to play” political schemes, which have been exposed in modern Illinois. Certain campaign themes from the 1948 era sound familiar to those living in the twenty-first century. Republican candidates claimed that Democrats running for president, the U.S. Senate, and state offices had a socialist agenda. Newspapers sympathetic to the Republican cause— primarily the Chicago Tribune under the leadership of Robert McCormick —pounded away on the theme, focusing on opposition to social programs and policies of the New Deal. In today’s world, the accusations and denials are more likely to surface on cable television and talk radio, but they do resonate with the earlier theme. The 1948 election also is a reminder of how uncontrollable events can influence a campaign outcome, especially when appearing in the final stages. The political impact of the Centralia coal mine disaster in 1947 on the race for governor cannot be overstated. Until the final weeks, Centralia still grabbed statewide headlines. Equally significant were revelations and accusations of political corruption and connections to organized crime that produced newspaper headlines and editorials almost daily through the campaign’s final months. The potential for political surprises still causes sleepless nights for candidates, but there is no better example of their impact than the election of 1948. The first six years of the 1940s were a disaster for Democrats in Illinois. After riding high across the state in the 1930s, the party’s political world collapsed. During the 1940s, Republicans had almost total control.1 With Franklin D.Roosevelt no longer living to arouse Democrats after early 1945, it appeared that nothing could stop the GOP through the rest of the decade. No wonder that Republicans—and their backers such as the widely circulated Chicago Tribune—thought they could equal the Democratic R e p u b l i c a n R e v i v a l 3 dominance achieved with the Great Depression and the Roosevelt era. While Democrats controlled at...