As the Dust Cleared

As Harold Stassen's chartered plane flew east from Oregon last week, Lawyer Elmer Ryan, of South St. Paul, entertained the Stassen party with a recitation. Chubby Mr. Ryan, Stassen's former law partner and political strategist, romped up & down the aisle of the plane reciting Casey at the Bat. Elmer was the pitcher, the umpire, a bleacher fan, the great Casey himself. Candidate Stassen, exhausted by the Oregon campaign, sat back and roared. But when Lawyer Ryan finally intoned: "Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright . . . But there is no joy in Mudville--mighty Casey has 'Struck Out,' " Candidate Stassen subsided into pensive silence.

As the Stassen plane landed in Minneapolis, the first returns from the Oregon primary were beginning to come in. Stassen studied them. "It looks like a trend," , he remarked worriedly. It was. At week's end there was no doubt about it. The score: Dewey, 111,657; Stassen, 102,419. There was gloom in Minneapolis. The mighty Stassen had struck out.

Fight for Oregon. It had been quite a campaign, its intensity far transcending the importance of Oregon's twelve convention delegates. Tom Dewey had traveled some 1,950 miles in three weeks, speaking to 100,000 people. He had talked from platforms, buses and village greens; he had signed autographs and driven a 1901 Locomobile down McMinnville's main street.

Stassen, charging back into the state which he once thought was sewed up, had traveled some 2,465 miles in nine days. He spoke in a drenching rain at Coos Bay, addressed a crowd huddled under umbrellas at Newport, rode a white horse in Ontario, drank "blue ox milk" to please Roseburg's Paul Bunyan Club. Despite his victories over Dewey in Wisconsin and Nebraska, Stassen could not afford a defeat. But neither could Dewey. It was a knock-down fight which had astonished nobody so much as the open-mouthed voters of Oregon.

'Nimble Tom. Dewey had won an important and vital victory. How did he do it?

He had put on a better campaign. He had shown the voters a new rough-&tumble, folksy Tom Dewey who was a surprising contrast to the stiff, over-stylized candidate of 1944. His hair was sometimes ruffled. He sounded friendly.

He sounded knowledgeable. When Harold Stassen cornered him in their radio debate, he handled Stassen with aplomb. Most Oregonians thought that Dewey won their argument, agreed with him that any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party was folly.

Reported the Christian Science Monitor's Roscoe Drummond: "[He] is a different, improved and more effective campaigner than . . . Washington correspondents have seen in action before." Wrote Columnist Joseph Alsop: "It is reassuring to be able to report that this harddriving, remarkably competent but sometimes rather inhuman governor is still growing as a man and a leader."

Dewey had a powerful, well-financed organization working in Oregon. It crammed newspapers with Dewey ads, saturated the air with radio announcements, put the Dewey message on some 150 billboards. Stassen put two admen to work figuring the cost of the advertising; they estimated it at $140,000. Stassen charged that Dewey spent a quarter of a million on the Oregon campaign. Dewey said it was only a "tiny fraction" of that.

Harried Harold. Stassen, starting late, tried to cover too much ground. He was tired before he even began. His organization sagged. So, in the closing days of the grueling campaign, did his speeches. Before the battle was over, he was out on his feet. It was then that he complained of Dewey's expenditures. The Stassen organization itself spent close to $100,000. Then Stassen charged that Dewey and Robert Taft were in a conspiracy to beat him. Said Dewey: "Desperate, irresponsible, eleventh-hour tactics." That was what they were. Stassen swung but he missed. He was out.

A lot of observers were willing to bet that he was out for good. It was not so much the Oregon vote which had done it as Stassen's own cocky and imprudent campaign. He had irritated Bob Taft by going into Ohio. Long before Oregon, he had antagonized Dewey by loudly announcing that under no circumstances would he be caught running on the same ticket with New York's governor. Oregon had deepened the ill will. Taft and Dewey would certainly be allied against him at Philadelphia. Mighty powerful backing would be needed to override their influence, even to get Stassen the nomination for Vice President.

The Last Stretch. Oregon was the last popular test before the convention. Now that the dust had cleared, it was possible to see the frontrunners. They had narrowed down to three: Dewey, Taft and Arthur Vandenberg--who, although still an unannounced candidate, was the popular choice in the event of a deadlock. Taft was up there mostly on his nerve. He was in a position to do some jockeying and bargaining. On the first ballot, Dewey would clearly be in the lead.

Dewey's chances of winning would depend on how fast he could move ahead after the favorite-son votes were cast and the delegates got down to business. If he began to move fast, then he was probably on his way to the White House. If he stopped in his tracks, then the moment would be ripe for Arthur Vandenberg.

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