1940 - Roosevelt vs. Wilkie
Roosevelt campaigns in 1940; Courtesy of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library
President Franklin D. Roosevelt decides to run for an unprecedented third term. To oppose him, the GOP nominates Wendell Willkie, the president of New York-based Commonwealth & Southern Corporation, the nation’s largest electric utility holding company. Willkie, a former Democrat, had switched parties when Roosevelt launched the Tennessee Valley Authority, which aimed to provide cheap electricity to rural dwellers, in competition with Commonwealth & Southern.
Both candidates have to operate under new financial rules, thanks to Congress’s amending of the 1939 Hatch Act. Contributions by individuals are now limited to $5,000, and a $3 million cap is placed on the amount that the national parties can spend on presidential campaigns. Party officials, in turn, quickly figure out the loopholes that Congress graciously included in the new restrictions, which enable them to employ state and local party organizations and nominally independent groups to raise and spend money on behalf of presidential candidates. Republican National Committee counsel Henry P. Fletcher, for example, advises Willkie that each of the three major GOP campaign organizations — the RNC, the Willkie Clubs, and Democrats for Willkie — could spend $3 million apiece and still technically be within the law.
The highly principled Willkie, however, objects to the subterfuge. Instead, he insists that all the organizations working for him stay cumulatively under the legal limit. Moreover, he instructs campaign officials to accept no more than a total of $5,000 from any individual, no matter how many different campaign organizations he or she gives to. He requires that all contributions of more than $10 be made by check or money order, to make it easier to compile a complete and detailed record. Finally, Willkie insists on refusing all donations made on behalf of corporations and makes it known that donors should not expect ambassadorships or other favors. “I think this is a fine time to clear up the abuses that have for so long existed in our politics,” he says. “And I’m not saying that one party has been more responsible in the past for these abuses than the other.”
Willkie’s insistence upon running an above-reproach fundraising operation puts him at a disadvantage to the Democrats, who eagerly use Roosevelt’s incumbency and the massive New Deal bureaucracy to create financial leverage. Democratic National Committee chairman Edward J. Flynn, for example, advises party activists that despite the Hatch Act’s ban on solicitation of contributions from federal employees, “their friends and relatives are in no way prohibited from such activities.” The Democrats also aren’t shy about making quid pro quos to wealthy benefactors. Roosevelt’s donors include Doris Duke Cromwell, who gives $50,000. Her then-husband, James H.R. “Jimmy” Cromwell, subsequently is appointed U.S. ambassador to Canada.
In November, Roosevelt defeats Willkie by 54.7 percent to 44.8 percent in the popular vote and swamps him in the Electoral College, 449 to 82.
SOURCES: “The Indiana Farmer,” Tennessee Valley Authority; Gil Troy, “Money and Politics: The Oldest Connection,” The Wilson Quarterly, Summer 1997; Ellsworth Barnard, “Wendell Willkie: Fighter for Freedom” (Marquette: Northern Michigan University Press, 1966); “Gifts for Willkie Buy No Favors,” The New York Times, July 3, 1940; Turner Catledge, “Hatch Act No Bar to Campaign Gifts, Flynn Tells Aides,” The New York Times, October 18, 1940; “The Best Regulated Families,” Time, May 22, 1944; “1940 Presidential Election Results,” Dave Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections.
Previous year: 1939
Previous election year: 1948 - Truman vs. Dewey
Next year: 1962
Next election year: 1976 - Carter vs. Ford