REORGANIZE OR PERISH: WILLIAM EDGAR BORAH

AND THE REPUBLICAN CIVIL WAR

1930‐‐‐1936

BY

PAUL MICHAEL WARDEN

A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF

MASTER OF ARTS IN HISTORY

WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY

MAY 2011

To the Faculty of Washington State University:

The members of the Committee appointed to examine the thesis of PAUL MICHAEL WARDEN find it satisfactory and recommend that it be accepted.

______Matthew Avery Sutton, Ph.D., Chair

______Robert Bauman, Ph.D.

______Peter Boag, Ph.D.

ii REORGANIZE OR PERISH: WILLIAM EDGAR BORAH

AND THE REPUBLICAN CIVIL WAR

1930-1936

Abstract

By Paul Michael Warden, M.A. Washington State University May 2011

Chair: Matthew Avery Sutton

In the aftermath of the electoral humiliation of 1932, the Republican Party faced a crossroads on two fronts. The first of these was the pressure placed on the party by its, largely western, leftwing to liberalize and embrace reform in order to wrest the

White House from Franklin Delano Roosevelt. When the Old Guard refused to accede to the demands of its West wing, a Republican civil war commenced: further dividing the party in its darkest hour. The second impasse was in regard to the Republican Party’s southern strategy. The party faced increasing pressure to capitulate to white southerners on issues of states’ rights and anti-lynching legislation: a move that would cost them the legacy of Lincoln and African American voters. At the center of both controversies was Idaho senator William Edgar Borah, whose presidential ambitions in

1936 forced these issues out of the smoke-filled rooms and into the public sphere.

Borah not only led the campaign to reorganize the party along western lines, he also ultimately forced the GOP to adopt a national policy with regards to anti-lynching legislation: forcing them to choose between the coveted white South or their traditional

African American voting base. I argue that the Republican civil war had a profound

iii effect on the future of the Republican Party and, consequently, the development of modern American conservatism.

iv

Table of Contents

I. Preface 1

II. Chapter I – The 1930s: Defining Borah and Conservatism 3

III. Chapter II – The Republican Civil War 1930-1936 15

IV. Chapter III – The Ten Dollar Campaign 38

V. Epilogue 67

v PREFACE On March 22, 1936, William Edgar Borah emerged from behind the curtain of

Chicago’s Civic Opera House to a stirring round of applause. He had arrived in the state by bus late the previous evening. Ragged from his arduous travel schedule and delayed by extreme weather, the senator’s advanced age exacerbated the toll of the campaign on his constitution. Shortly before the doors opened, Borah’s associates draped an

American flag over the podium as Borah poured over his notes one last time. The senator waited patiently behind the heavy brown curtain as the audience found their respective seats. With little sleep and a slew of aches and pains, Borah was in no shape to deliver a speech. Yet after a succession of determined steps towards the star- spangled podium, he did just that. Borah began his address with an account of the

Republican Party’s electoral humiliation of 1932. In the even-toned voice of a master orator, Borah questioned his audience, rhetorically, as to the whereabouts of the ten million registered Republicans who had abandoned the party for the last four years.

According to Borah, the party had to reestablish its connection with the Constitution and the people for whom it was written. He warned the audience that if the men who led the party in 1932 were still “sitting in the front row of the Cleveland convention,” dominating the platform and choosing the candidate in 1936, those “ten million will never come back and… millions [more] will go with them.”1

1 Arthur Evans, “Borah Lashes New Deal and Old Guard Here: Opens Campaign for Primary Votes,” Chicago Daily Tribune, March 22, 1936; “Issues before the People” Vital Speeches of the Day (date obscured in document ca. March 1936).

1 In his thirty-three years as a Republican senator from Idaho, Borah earned a reputation for being a maverick. Though he had dedicated a fair amount of his criticism towards Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his New Deal that evening, Borah’s derision of his own party left an indelible mark on his audience. Despite the fact that only one thousand people had turned out to hear the “Lion of Idaho,” NBC broadcast the speech nationally, while several regional newspapers and journals such as Vital Speeches of the

Day printed the speech in its entirety. Needless to say, it left quite an impression. One month later, Borah received nearly half of the state’s nine hundred thousand votes in a primary that pitted him against Illinois’ “favorite-son” and future Republican vice presidential nominee, Frank Knox. After years of poor health, many had wondered if the seventy-year-old Idahoan had the wherewithal to finish his Senate term. Yet, on a shoestring budget and in a campaign propelled by grassroots organization, the elder statesman had become relevant once again. The events that unfolded in the handful of years prior to the presidential election of 1936 were the culmination of a career often overlooked and just as often misunderstood.2

2 Arthur Evans, “Borah Lashes New Deal and Old Guard Here: Opens Campaign for Primary Votes” The Chicago Daily Tribune, March 22, 1936; “Issues before the People” Vital Speaches of the Day (date obscured in document ca. March 1936).

2 CHAPTER I THE 1930s: DEFINING CONSERVATISM AND BORAH

The 1930s was an extremely tumultuous decade for a number of reasons. It is axiomatic that the crisis of the Great Depression shook the very pillars of American society and, as a result, even the most fundamental institutions were being transformed. Beyond the obvious, other more subtle shifts were occurring. In this thesis

I argue that the Republican civil war, waged between two factions—the “Old Guard” and the “sons of the wild jackass”—had a profound effect on the future of the Republican

Party and, consequently, the development of modern American conservatism. At the center of this civil war lies William Edgar Borah’s attempt to reorganize the party from

1930-1936. Reexamining Borah’s career from 1930 to 1936 reveals deep conflicts within the Republican Party during the Great Depression: more specifically, conflicts between libertarians and corporatists, Young Republican leagues and the “Old Guard,” as well as farmers and manufacturers. Underlying each of these conflicts, to some extent, was a battle for control of the Republican Party between Eastern and Western factions.

Among those politicians in the West, none utilized the media and grassroots organization to the extent that Borah did. The most influential venues for activism among the rank and file were farmers’ organizations like the National Grange and informal political organizations such as the Young Republican leagues. Throughout this period, Borah used these grassroots organizations to wage a civil war against the Old-

Guard power-base in the East. The outcome of this war produced neither victor nor

3 vanquished. Conventional historiography tells us that Alfred Landon won the

Republican nomination and went on to be squarely defeated by Franklin Delano

Roosevelt by one of the largest margins in American history. What scholars have overlooked is that Borah’s prediction proved accurate; the Republican Party had to

“reorganize or perish.” As a result of Landon’s defeat, Republicans realized that in order to defeat the New Deal coalition, they needed to build a new coalition of their own.

This is not to say that the Old Guard would agree to a redistribution of power.

They ultimately reorganized the party on their own terms and salvaged as much of their power and influence as possible. To do it, they needed to outmaneuver the Idahoan and his fellow sons of the wild jackass in order to thwart their hostile takeover of the party.

The Old Guard was forced to compromise, expand southward, heed the westernization of the party and embrace coalitions that it had previously refused. It is the fruit of these early compromises and coalitions that garnered the Republican Party the broad-based support that allowed it to rebound in the decades after World War II.

As a result of this endeavor for new broad-based Republican coalitions, African

Americans, once the GOP’s most dependable voting demographic, were alienated.

Borah’s campaign for the Republican presidential nomination inadvertently accelerated tensions between the Republican Party and African Americans, creating a legacy that haunts the party to this day. African Americans had begun abandoning the Republican

Party in earnest by 1934, but it was Borah’s stand on federal anti-lynching legislation and the states’ rights ideology he drew on that issued the most decisive blow. Cornered by the Idahoan’s insistence on a uniform national policy of states’ rights that was

4 directly challenged by the NAACP, Republican Party leaders were forced to make a choice between holding on to a small and once loyal, but now faltering voting base of

African Americans or attempt to make inroads into the South in search of larger returns. With Borah forcing the issue by actively campaigning for support among southern whites, the Republican Party did what it determined was in its best interests; it abandoned African Americans. As a result, the legacy of Lincoln was no more.

The conflict among Republican Party factions and the tensions between the party and the African American population were not completely resolved in 1936. New broad-based conservative coalitions across the South and West were not formed in any substantial manner until the 1960s. The sectional nature of these coalitions and the way in which they were formed has had a severe impact on racial tensions between conservatives and African Americans that carry over into the present day. So why does the Republican civil war of the 1930s matter? Because the issues and the controversies that defined modern American conservatism either originated or were solidified during the 1930s. How exactly then did modern American conservatism develop from the conflict of the 1930s?

In the last twenty years, two questions have troubled the historiography of modern American conservatism. First, when and where did modern conservatism coalesce into a broad-based movement? Second, how did conservatives form broad based sectional and ideological coalitions and to what extent have cultural factors, such as race relations, aided in forging the modern conservative movement? This thesis will explore race relations within a political frame: specifically tensions between African

5 Americans and the Republican Party during the 1930s. Before addressing these cultural factors I will recount the historiography of Borah and the development of modern

American conservatism.

In the last twenty years, historians have been interested in when and how modern American conservatism originated. Much of the work conducted in the last decade has focused on the post-World War II manifestations of conservatism, while a few historians have examined its antecedents in the pre-war years. Leo Ribuffo’s recent article “Twenty Suggestions for Studying The Right Now that Studying The Right is

Trendy,” argues persuasively that recent work on conservatism has not spent enough time examining the antecedents of this movement prior to World War Two.

Increasingly in the last five years, historians have begun looking for the origins of modern conservatism in the interwar period or earlier. Many who trace these antecedents prior to the post-war era find great significance in the advent of New Deal liberalism and opposition thereof in the 1930s. This work will examine how New Deal opposition provided the foundation upon which the Republican Party rebuilt, survived its civil war, and organized important coalitions that shaped the party for the better part of seventy-five years.3

In defining the movement, scholars have relied heavily on the foundation laid by

George H. Nash’s The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America (1975). Nash postulates that no compact definition of conservatism exists, arguing that it was a

3 Leo Ribuffo, “Twenty Suggestions for Studying The Right Now that Studying The Right is Trendy,” Historically Speaking XII, no. 1 (January 2011), 2.

6 pluralistic movement deeply influenced by intellectuals steeped in both foreign and domestic ideology. In that vein, he cites three distinct movements that have contributed to modern American conservatism. Eventually, this Americanized derivative of classic- liberalism, along with “new conservatism” (individualistic corporatism) and

“evangelistic anti-communism” coalesced into an “articulate, coordinated, self- consciously conservative force” in the immediate postwar period. It took the electoral humiliations of 1932, 1934, and 1936 in order for Republicans (libertarian, moralistic, and corporatist) to realize the key to their survival lay in new broad-based coalitions.4

Allan Lichtman, author of White Protestant Nation, argues for a far more singular movement dedicated to perpetuating white American Protestantism stemming from a rebuke of the 1920s counter-culture. While Lichtman’s point regarding the Protestant roots of conservatism is well taken, the differences between disparate factions are but cracks in the sidewalk in contrast to the chasm of ideological divergence between them and New Deal liberalism. This is not to say that divisions were trivial, but to deny the plurality of the conservative movement is to negate its most salient feature: broad- based coalitions. Supporting Nash’s contention, Donald Critchlow in The Conservative

Ascendancy underscores the importance of these coalitions, asserting, “as the New Deal coalition… fell apart, new conservative coalitions” made up of previously disparate factions “sought to replace it.” Indeed, my research, building on the foundation laid by

4 George H. Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1935: Thirtieth Anniversary Edition (Wilmington: ISI Books, 2008), xx-xxii.

7 Nash’s influential work, argues this very point. However, I place the origins of these coalitions a decade earlier.5

In order to define 1930s antecedents to modern American conservatism, I will define this ideology and its manifestation in the 1950s and beyond. Modern American conservatism as a movement coalesced into a major political phenomenon in the 1950s and 1960s, culminating in Goldwater’s nomination in 1964. Several works have examined the 1960s as a pivotal moment in the coalescing of broad-based modern conservatism. In these works, two fundamental issues have arisen: race and suburban development. Yet prior to the advent of the suburb, the Grange and organizations like the Young Republican leagues carried out grassroots political activism. The market, the banquet hall, and the church were home to political action, strategy, and planning.

Passed on from generation to generation, these methods and strategies were given new life during the social upheaval of the Great Depression.6

Therefore, in light of the conservative coalitions built during this period and the presence of grassroots activism in these endeavors, the 1930s are integral to the discussion of modern American conservatism. However, many historians have passed over the 1930s, offering only slight nods towards anti-New Deal sentiment and anti- communism. Kim Phillips-Fein’s Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative

5 Allan Lichtman, White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the Modern American Conservative Movement (New York: Grove Press, 2008), 5; Donald Critchlow, The Conservative Ascendancy: How the GOP Right Made Political History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), 3; To Lichtman, Borah’s libertarian obsession with the rights of the individual and preference for small government would preclude him from being considered a conservative. 6 Kevin Michael Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and Making of Modern Conservatism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005); Matthew D. Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006); Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origin of the New American Right (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002).

8 Movement from the New Deal to Reagan, is a notable exception, though it only takes the corporatist “Old Guard” faction into account, neglecting the more libertarian faction, that Borah so well represents. In order to properly characterize these factions and developments, we must delve into the terminological problems associated with such an examination. All too often, historians have examined Borah’s rhetoric towards

“liberalizing” the Republican Party in contemporary terms. Few scholars, with the notable exception of Lichtman, have mentioned Borah in the context of the development of modern American conservatism. Although Lichtman is to be commended for placing Borah in this context, he asserted that the senator merely sought to liberalize the Republican Party. This could be easily misinterpreted, unless one delves into the temporal nuances of the terms liberal, conservative, and progressive.7

When historians analyze Borah within the context of conservatism, they often treat him as little more than a mostly impotent agitator. The last work that attempted to understand Borah in the political context of the 1930s was written nearly twenty years ago. David A. Horowitz’s 1993 article, “Senator Borah’s Crusade to Save Small Business from the New Deal,” showcases Borah’s battle against the National Recovery Act through his advocacy of small businessmen. While Horowitz’s work highlights an aspect of the senator’s opposition to the NRA and corporatism, it fails to analyze this development in the context of Borah’s larger ambitions. Small businessmen were one of

7 Kim Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan (New York: W.W. Norton, 2009); Lichtman, White Protestant Nation, 35, 49, 66-67, 84, 87-88.

9 Borah’s most reliable grassroots constituencies from which to gain leverage against the

Old Guard, who, in turn, heavily courted them between 1934 and 1936 as a result.8

In addition, neither of the senator’s notable biographies, Claudius O. Johnson’s sympathetic Borah of Idaho (1937) nor Marian McKenna’s Borah (1961), pay any serious attention to Borah’s role in the presidential election of 1936 or his influence on the Republican Party in the 1930s and afterward. Johnson, in a revised prologue in

1967, asserted that the Idahoan “had as little influence over [the Republican Party]…as it had over him” and that the erstwhile senator “made no dent in the organization.”

Johnson’s insinuation is an all too common oversight, shaped by a desire to paint Borah as a hapless and yet principled progressive underdog in a sea of moral capitulation and political corruption. It is an image that Borah worked tirelessly to maintain: yet it is also an image that does not survive under scrutiny.9

It is also important to remember that “liberal” and “conservative” are temporally sensitive terms that must be understood in the parlance of their time. In the 1930s, the term “liberal” was used loosely. While sharing some characteristics with their

Democratic liberal counterparts, these Republican liberals hold more in common with modern American conservatives than New Deal liberals we associate with liberalism today. The term conservatism presents problems of its own, as prior to 1945 conservatism was equated with corporatism and lacked some the connotations it carries today. Here I concur with Phillips-Fein in that the Old Guard corporatists,

8 David A. Horowitz, “Senator Borah's crusade to save small business from the New Deal,” The Historian 55, no. 4 (Summer 1993). 9 Claudius O. Johnson, Borah of Idaho, 2nd ed. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1967 [1937]), xxii; Marian C. McKenna, Borah (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1961), 265-66, 319-344.

10 contemporarily dubbed conservatives, cared little for the evangelical anti-communist cause and even less for the plight of individual liberties beyond their own bottom line.10

While “liberal” and “conservative” can be contextually defined, the term

“progressive” is far more problematic. As Daniel T. Rodgers astutely observed in his now classic article, “In Search of Progressivism,” recent historiography has developed a

“pluralistic reading of progressive politics” which has dispelled any attempt to assert any substantive cohesion among progressive reformers. The term “progressive” has become an old rug, under which has been swept the complexities of an era. Many individuals, including Borah, claimed to be both “liberal” and “progressive,” while their actions, at times, defied these monikers.11

As LeRoy Ashby astutely observed in The Spearless Leader: William Edgar Borah and the Progressive Movement in the 1920s, the “progressivism” of Borah and the West

“tended to shift reform questions to cultural matters—involving issues of manners, morals, and life styles,” drawing “lines between agrarian liberals and city reformers on questions of prohibition, immigration restriction, and the place of hyphenate groups in

American life.” Borah understood the need to regulate corporations, provide aid to the poor, and protect the yeomanry who he felt were intrinsic to American prosperity. At the same time, he feared a bureaucratic federal leviathan that would strangle individual autonomy and capitalistic ambition. As a result of these convictions, the senator and his

10 Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands, 321-322 11 Daniel T. Rodgers, “In Search of Progressivism” Reviews in American History 10, No. 4 (December, 1982), 114.

11 policies are far too complicated and nuanced for the “progressive” label alone to suffice.12

The term “Old Guard” will appear ubiquitously in this work. Few works have ever tried to define exactly who the Old Guard was or how they would classify this term in their work. This thesis will endeavor to eschew obfuscation by offering some insight into this classification. Those identified with this term “Old Guard” include the most influential members of the Republican Party, who, with the obvious exception of

Herbert Hoover and a few others, resided almost exclusively in the East. The term also identifies the corporate backers of the Republican Party, including those who defected from the Democratic Party, such as the Du Ponts and William Randolph Hearst, after

Roosevelt’s New Deal had been unveiled. Thus they are both old and new: comprised of party mainstays, such as chairman Harry Fletcher, Standard Oil’s John D. Rockefeller Jr.,

Robert A. Taft, and aforementioned newcomers who had only recently bolted from the

Democratic Party. I will extend the term beyond Republican leaders in the east to include private individuals, largely associated with big business, who exercised significant social and political control over this faction.

So beyond labels and self-styled monikers, how did Borah differ from the Old

Guard? The first major difference, Borah’s position against monopolies, appears starkly in contrast with the corporatist leanings of the Republican Old Guard. Borah’s liberalism focused on protecting the individual from the corporation, the state from the

12 LeRoy Ashby, The Spearless Leader: William Edgar Borah and the Progressive Movement in the 1920s (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1972), 1-3, 12-13, 241-244, 291.

12 federal, and the farmer from the industrial profiteer. But beyond these tidy ideological classifications it was also a means of identification, in this case east versus West.

Geography was not absolute, as some Old Guard Republicans resided in the West, while some of Borah’s most fervent supporters could be found in the East. But, more often than not, geography was a reliable means of demarcation. The greatest point of contention was over the race to align the South.

The Republican Party’s identification as a pro Union party had hampered its ability to garner southern support since the end of the Civil War. Since that time reconciliation efforts had gone a long way towards healing the country, but to many in the South the GOP remained a northeastern political machine. After the crash of 1929 and the subsequent depression, these perceptions were exacerbated: causing even greater tension between the Republican Party and the South. Meanwhile, the rise of the

West, with regard to both political influence and population, created a viable three-way contest for political power. With the Republican northeastern representatives hemorrhaging at the polls, it became evident that in order to survive the party had to expand both South and West. To the burgeoning western wing of the Republican Party, the best way to take power from the Old Guard in the East was to mobilize the West and make headway into the South before their rivals. As a result of the GOP’s need to expand south and unite East and West, broad-based coalitions were a necessity. With these coalitions came consequences.

This contest over the South between Borah and the Old Guard inadvertently caused racial tensions to increase between the Republican Party and African Americans.

13 This work will illuminate the extent to which Borah’s position against federal anti- lynching legislation led to NAACP protests of his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 1936. In an attempt to placate the northern and southern wings of the party, Old Guard Republicans denounced lynching in the North while simultaneously clamoring for states’ rights in the South: ergo they avoided directly addressing the legislation on a national scale while using regional candidates to provide lip service to both viewpoints. As this work will make clear, Borah forced the issue, pressuring the Republican National Committee to take a definitive stance. As a result,

Republicans effectively abandoned any further attempts to preserve the “Legacy of

Lincoln” with African American voters.

The structure of this work will be chronological, following the career of William

Edgar Borah from the beginning of the Republican civil war in 1930 to the end of his presidential campaign at the Cleveland convention in June of 1936. At the conclusion of this narrative it should be clear that Borah’ career is an important lens through which to observe a portion of the Republican Party’s history that is often oversimplified or overlooked altogether. Through this lens, one can observe a turning point in the development of modern American conservatism with important implications for politics in the modern United States. The Old Guard realized the peril in their overt dominance of the party and accepted the need for broad-based coalitions on widely held anti-New Deal principles in order to contend with the coalitions formed by

Roosevelt’s administration. For as Borah prophesized, the party would either

“reorganize or perish.” And so it did just that.

14 CHAPTER II THE REPUBLICAN CIVIL WAR 1930-1936

On July 3, 1930, George W. Norris of Nebraska mailed the paperwork necessary to place his name on the upcoming primary ballot for the office of state senator. To his dismay, due to the post office’s observation of Independence Day, his paperwork did not reach the secretary of state until July 5. Having arrived a day late, the filing was invalidated. This came as a great relief to the incumbent senator of the same name, who had filed his paperwork the previous December. Having two candidates named George

Norris on the ballot would cause confusion. Such confusion could nullify any votes cast for either man, and thus cost the Republican senator his reelection bid. A store clerk and relative unknown from the small-town community of Broken Bow, Nebraska, the man that became known as “Grocer” Norris was recruited by Old-Guard conservatives to undermine the campaign of a man they called “a cancer in the Republican Party that must be cut out.” Senator Norris was one of the infamous “sons of the wild jackass,” a powerful coalition of western Republicans that had threatened to undermine the Old

Guard’s domination of the Republican Party. His opponent George “Grocer” Norris, on the other hand, had never held, nor even ran for, political office. His only apparent qualification was that he shared the same name as the man his conservative backers wanted to remove.13

The attempt to sabotage the reelection of senator George W. Norris was among the first shots fired in a Republican civil war from 1930-1936 that pitted the eastern

13 George W. Norris, Fighting Liberal: The Autobiography of George Norris (New York: MacMillan, 1945), 292-295; Allan Lichtman, White Protestant Nation, 52.

15 conservative “Old Guard” against the western, and often more liberal, “progressives.”

Scholars of this period have astutely acknowledged the tumultuous nature of its politics, evidenced by factionalism in both the Democratic and Republican Party. This struggle was heavily publicized throughout the first half of the decade, although its effects could be felt for over two decades. While the two factions had been sparring since Teddy

Roosevelt’s Bull Moose bolt of 1912, the onset of the Great Depression and the Old

Guard’s weakness as a result of Hoover’s perceived inabilities among the American populace set the stage for the final confrontation between those who called themselves liberal or “Progressive Republicans” and those who were dubbed by their enemies as the “Old Guard.” Like all wars and conflicts a spark was needed to set it aflame. That spark came in the early winter of 1929.

In a speech before a gathering of New England manufacturers in early November

1929, New Hampshire senator and president pro tempore, George Higgins Moses cracked that the liberal Republican senators of the West were akin to “sons of the wild jackass.” The comparison drew raucous laughter from the audience and immediate attention from the national press. In one jocular outburst, Senator Moses effectively fired the first shot of what would effectively become a civil war within the Republican

Party. Within days of the remark, several Republican senators called for Moses to resign as president pro tempore of the Senate.14

14 Ray Thomas Tucker and Frederick Reuben Barkley, Sons of the Wild Jackass (New York: Ayer Publishing, 1932), 1; “Seek to Oust Moses from Senate Post,” New York Times, November 10, 1929.

16 Yet, conspicuously, none of the western senators who had been targeted by

Moses’ remark lent any support towards having him ousted. Senator William Borah of

Idaho released a statement on behalf of the western senators, asserting that they would take no part in such squabbles, preferring to direct their attention to their agendas.

Senator George Norris of Nebraska echoed Borah’s remarks in his own statement, adding that the spouting of “reactionaries [such] as Senator Moses… are immaterial to us.” Some of their number went so far as to denounce the calls for the president pro tempore’s resignation, such as Senator Smith W. Brookhart of Iowa who, despite numerous clashes with him in the past, characterized Moses as “a very fair presiding officer.”15

While eschewing any involvement in the proposed deposing of Senator Moses, they also resisted attempts to reconcile, as some suggested they interpret his remarks as a misguided compliment. Moses, the son of a clergyman, claimed he had inadvertently misquoted scriptural references to a proud and stubborn “wild ass” as portrayed in the Old Testament, but the offended parties were not about to buy it. Truth be told, they welcomed the division. Friction between the two factions of the

Republican Party had been increasing and the remark had done more to galvanize their opposition than offend them. For in one stroke, Moses had given them a cohesive identity within the party. It was an identity they became endeared to: as had their electorate, who had taken the jab more personally than their representatives. When the

15 “Seek to Oust Moses from Senate Post,” New York Times, November 10, 1929.

17 dust settled the moniker, “sons of the wild jackass” was no longer a pejorative to ears west of the Mississippi.16

A Republican civil war had begun. Prior to Moses’ quip, the progressive

Republicans had been experiencing a dearth of leadership since the infamous Bull

Moose bolt of 1912. Moses’ chastisement had served to unite them, if only in their opposition to the Old Guard. This time the conservatives were on the ropes, as the results of the November 1932 election had clearly pronounced. As the Democratic Party swept the elections, the senators that Moses had singled out were among the few

Republicans left standing. Perhaps the most influential of these “sons of the wild jackass” was William Edgar Borah.

By 1930, many were wondering how much longer Borah could hold on to his seat in the U.S. Senate. While debating federal relief with Senator Simeon Fess of Ohio,

Borah appeared breathless and weak. The consensus was that his health was failing.

While his reelection campaign that year had been a smashing victory, his weakened condition and life on the campaign trail took a far more substantial toll than in years past. But it wasn’t only his health that was failing. Borah’s tenuous relationship with the

Hoover administration was teetering on destruction as the 1932 presidential election loomed on the horizon.17

Despite the economic disaster that had befallen the country, the pressing question at the Republican National Convention in Chicago was whether or not the

16 Tucker, Sons of the Wild Jackass, 3; “A Compliment That Went Wrong,” New York Times, November 12, 1929. 17 McKenna, Borah, 273.

18 party would endorse a constitutional amendment to end prohibition. The party had wavered, offering a plank that took no firm stance on the issue, infuriating Borah even further. In a forty-minute speech on June 30, 1932, Borah exclaimed that the platform was ambiguous and impotent, adding that “nobody can tell where the Republican Party stands on prohibition.” Borah was less concerned about whether or not the party agreed with his support of the amendment, but he felt that the party needed to take a firm stand one way or the other. This would not be the first or the last time the Idahoan accused the party of vacillating between the interests of its factions. To the chagrin of the Hoover administration, Borah not only challenged the administration’s handling of sensitive issues such as relief and prohibition, he also refused to stump for or even endorse Hoover’s candidacy. He made another stab at the party, asserting that when it came to spending “you can’t tell a Republican from a Democrat.” Hoover tried repeatedly to rein Borah in and placate him into endorsing his reelection bid, but Borah would not budge. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt trounced Hoover in November 1932,

Hoover’s feud with Borah was irreparable.18

During the final months of Hoover’s presidential campaign Borah had become increasingly ill: so much so that many feared he would not last the year. He was gaunt, exhausted, and had difficulty digesting solid foods. He submitted to a thorough examination after he began intermittently hemorrhaging in June. In July of 1932, a seemingly benign internal obstruction was located in his intestinal tract. He balked at two doctors’ recommendations that he go under the knife. Yet as his condition

18 McKenna, Borah, 280-281.

19 worsened, he relented and agreed to surgery. After writing his last will and testament,

Borah had the obstruction removed and began the path to recovery. It was early 1933 before he was sufficiently well to resume his senatorial duties with vigor when the opportunity to spar with Franklin Delano Roosevelt reinvigorated the aging senator.19

Borah deeply admired Roosevelt and the sentiment was mutual. The two spent quite a bit of time together, becoming good friends and remaining so until Borah’s death in 1940. The friendship was strictly personal; though some in the party feared that

Borah might bolt to Roosevelt and, worse still, bring the youth of the party with him. In truth they had little to fear, as Borah was extremely critical of the vast majority of

Roosevelt’s policies and institutions: especially those that he felt undermined states’ rights or increased monopolization of markets and industry. He also deplored the federal government’s attempts to influence individual household decisions. After

Roosevelt’s first fireside chat in March of 1933, in which Roosevelt implored the populace to bring their money “out of hiding,” Borah rebuked defiantly that Roosevelt had “a scintilla of power to prosecute me for putting my money where I want to put it.”

It wasn’t until the summer of 1934, however, that Borah officially “opened season” on

Roosevelt’s National Recovery Act and, in doing so, relaxed his attacks on the eastern wing of his party. A relative cease fire in the Republican civil war commenced for the better part of a year in the interest of focusing on a new enemy: Roosevelt’s National

Recovery Act.20

19 McKenna, Borah, 306-310. 20 McKenna, Borah, 310-312.

20 CEASE FIRE: BORAH AND THE AMERICAN LIBERTY LEAGUE

On the evening of July 4, 1934, Borah made a nationwide radio address attacking

Roosevelt’s New Deal. The timing of the speech was not a coincidence, as Borah played to the rhetoric of the American Revolution and Independence in a speech that called for

Americans to be vigilant against the unconstitutional and un-American National

Recovery Act. As one of a handful of Republicans left in the Senate, Borah understood the danger involved in attacking the Roosevelt administration and/or the New Deal.

While many Republicans feared “playing politics with national recovery” in the wake of their electoral humiliation of 1932, Senator Borah assailed the New Deal and its

National Recovery Act as a haven of bureaucracy and waste that significantly endangered small business and the economic freedom of all Americans, warning that the sons of liberty must be “on the defensive” against such an extra-constitutional use of power.21

Responses to the address varied. Some lauded Borah, reveling in his stumping for the common person and constitutional primacy. Others made scathing indictments, accusing him of grandstanding and politicking in a time of national crisis. Departing for his home state of Idaho the very next day, Borah continued these attacks in a campaign- style tour of his constituency from late August through October of 1934. Despite the fact that he was not up for reelection until 1936, Borah felt obligated to raise awareness of the dangers inherent to the New Deal amongst Idahoans. Concomitantly, he was

21 McKenna, Borah, 306-311; The quote “playing politics with national recovery” was a direct criticism of Borah’s New Deal position lifted from the pages of the Nation (February 17, 1934) by McKenna; “Radio Waves and Ripples,” The Washington Post, July 3, 1934.

21 preparing to stump for like-minded candidates in the coming election throughout the state. He made speeches in Boise, Idaho Falls, Meridian, Salmon City, Caldwell, Nampa and Pocatello. The topics were familiar enough. Borah argued for bi-metalism, reorganization of the Republican Party, and attacked monopolies and bureaucracy. In

Genesee, the tenth stop in a fifteen-city tour, the senator openly endorsed corporate

America’s anti-New Deal machine: the month-old American Liberty League.22

The American Liberty League was founded by a bi-partisan anti-New Deal coalition that included prominent Democratic activist Jouett Shouse, former Democratic

Presidential Nominee John W. Davis, New York Republican James Wadsworth Jr., steel magnate and former Republican Governor of New York, Nathan Miller, former governor of New York and Democratic rival to FDR, Alfred E. Smith, and chemical and munitions mogul Irénée du Pont of the DuPont company. The Liberty League officially came into being on August 22, 1934, and within weeks became a household name across the country for the better part of three years. Despite its non-partisan origins, the league was dubbed a corporate endorsed and funded anti-New Deal machine with deep conservative ties. Shortly after its inception it became obvious that the league was little more than an Old Guard puppet organization. Former Democrats like William Randolph

Hearst had openly decried Roosevelt while simultaneously throwing their support behind the Liberty League. They may as well have been inducted into the Old Guard on

22 McKenna, Borah, 311; “Borah Backs Plan of Liberty League” The New York Times, September 24, 1936; George Wolfskill, The Revolt of the Conservatives: A History of the American Liberty League 1934-1940 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1962), 10-12; Elliot Thurston, “Borah on Warpath, Hopes to Make Bureaucracy Tremble,” The Washington Post, July 8, 1934; “Mr. Borah’s Contribution”, The Washington Post, July, 6, 1934; “Constitution Safe Cummings Holds” The New York Times, July 7, 1934; McKenna, Borah, 306-307.

22 the spot. Democratic National Chairman James A. Farley, at the Kansas Democratic

Club’s annual banquet, quoted an anonymous newspaper editor who suggested the league “ought to be called the American Cellophane League” because “first, it’s a Du

Pont product, and second, you can see right through it.”23

Despite this bad press, many initially bought into the claim that the league was a

“mass movement of the common man,” striking out at what amounted to government meddling and price fixing. Essentially, it was a corporate think-tank of Old Guard conservatives and an organizational bulwark against the perceived redistribution of wealth they feared was inherent in the New Deal. The limited Democratic membership of the league was largely southern or western and markedly conservative. Borah was undoubtedly able to see through this façade, and see the league for what it really was.

After all, he was no stranger to Jouett Shouse and his co-executives. The majority of the individuals serving on the league’s executive body were prominent members of its predecessor: the corporate-interest-laden, Association Against the Prohibition

Amendment. It was an organization that Borah had vehemently opposed due to his ringing endorsement of prohibition. In truth, Borah was less concerned with the league’s scruples than the public perception of the league and the political gains that would follow his subsequent endorsement.24

The nuances of Borah’s position against monopolies allowed him to endorse an entity such as the American Liberty League yet still attack monopolies and price-

23 Wolfskill, The Revolt of the Conservatives, 20-23, 56-58, 60, 206-207; Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands, 10- 13; “Democracy Saved Farley Declares,” The New York Times, February 23, 1936. 24 Wolfskill, Revolt of the Conservatives, 36; McKenna, Borah, 277-282.

23 gouging practices. He astutely condemned the bureaucratic dangers of government regulation while only supporting vague legislative action tongue-in-cheek. In addition, by implying that price gouging was a moral problem and that only a few crooked businessmen had to be punished, Borah gave the leery rank-and-file what they wanted to hear without explicitly fingering corporate America as a whole. To a large extent, big business understood that Borah’s rhetoric towards regulation was more bark than bite.

After all, Borah had a record of withdrawing support for any legislation that would result in broad federal regulations. Most important, by making the National Recovery

Act his straw-man, Borah could assail the New Deal and associate himself with the burgeoning American Liberty League without losing credibility with the people.25

The press took notice of the senator’s endorsement of the Liberty League, calling

Borah a “valuable recruit” to the league by linking their “general purposes with his attack upon the National Recovery Act.” Some might argue that Borah’s support for the league was overplayed in the press. After all Borah did express a minor reservation towards the omission of “economic freedom” in the league’s charter and rarely referenced the endorsement publicly. However, one must remember that, given the league’s corporatist backers, an endorsement, even if lukewarm, speaks volumes.

Effectively it was the first step towards a relative cease-fire between Borah and the Old

Guard, brought about by the necessity of action against the burgeoning federal leviathan.26

25 Ashby, The Spearless Leader, 72-73,76, 78; William E. Borah, “Restore the Anti-Trust Laws!” (Senate Address: March 8, 1935), in William E. Borah, Bedrock: Views on Basic National Problems (1936), 38. 26 “A Valuable Recruit,” The New York Times, September 26, 1934.

24 The Liberty League, on the other hand, was far less subtle in its acceptance of

Borah’s endorsement. In a public response issued through the Associated Press, Jouett

Shouse sought to reassure the senator that the league echoed his call for “economic freedom” and declared his endorsement “most gratifying and encouraging.” Over the next ten months the league began circulating copies of Borah’s radio broadcasts in their self-titled newsletter and made sure to chime in any time the senator made public remarks about the NRA or the price fixing it propagated. Yet for a large portion of his career Borah had threatened big business with legislation against monopolistic practices. Many close friends of the league could not have been happy with the publicity such notions had received as a result of the senator’s grandstanding. This raises the question of why the league sought and accepted Borah’s endorsement in the first place.27

The hard truth was that Borah was still immensely popular in the West and reasonably so with the working class across the nation. He was also one of a handful of

Republicans that polled well in the South. The party was well aware of the public’s perception of it as a corporatist den of fat cats and robber barons. The creation of the

American Liberty League provided an opportunity to strike the New Deal from the ground up. But the league needed grassroots credibility; it needed William Edgar

Borah.28

As for Borah’s motive, the senator must have been encouraged by the grassroots

27 “A Valuable Recruit,” The New York Times, September 26, 1934; “Urge Test of NRA in Belcher Appeal,” The New York Times, April 1, 1935; “League Backs Trade Freedom,” The Washington Post, September 28, 1934. 28 Ashby, The Spearless Leader, 76-78.

25 support of the league among anti-new dealers. Yet, this does not explain why a senator from Idaho would be motivated to walk such a fine line for a powerful ally on the other side of the country. Borah was not overly concerned with re-election, as his term would not be over until 1936. Moreover, his home state of Idaho was known for its relative support of the New Deal. Borah was already taking a calculated risk by opposing the

New Deal even without throwing his support behind an eastern and corporate anti-New

Deal organization. There is no logical reason for the senator to openly endorse the

American Liberty League at that time—unless he aspired to higher office. As a result of

Borah’s placations towards the Liberty League and the presence of a common enemy in the New Deal, a relative cease-fire between Republican factions ensued. Yet, all was not well as the party braced for the November elections without much hope of reprisal just yet. Borah saw the writing on the wall. It was only a matter of time until he would be able to strike.

Meanwhile, some members of his own party were questioning the expediency of

Borah’s attacks on the New Deal and his calls to reorganize the party. In early December of 1934, Senator James J. Couzens of Michigan attributed Borah’s attacks during a period of national recovery to the electoral defeats in 1932 and the month previous.

Couzens argued that simply opposing Roosevelt’s recovery plans without a specific alternative solution was political suicide. The senator from Michigan would soon find himself among a distinct minority. The Republican Party had awoken from its slumber of complacency and decided to attack Roosevelt head on. Borah’s early gamble had paid off. At the risk of “playing politics with national recovery,” Borah was now seen as a

26 paragon of the party and the American Liberty League was soon becoming the vanguard of anti-New Deal politics.29

Despite the emergence of the American Liberty League and its attempts to mobilize grassroots resistance to the New Deal, the Republican Party received another crushing blow in the off-year elections of 1934. Holding only twenty-five seats in the

Senate and one hundred and five in the House of Representatives, the Republican Party had been effectively muzzled. As the fall of 1934 came to an end and the next session of

Congress loomed on the horizon, Borah began the long trip back to Washington. It would be a busy legislative session to be sure and, as Borah predicted, the

Congressional elections had upset the balance of power even further against the

Republican Party. Significantly, however, the Old Guard had been disproportionately singled out, as representatives they backed had been almost unanimously defeated.

Meanwhile, those Republicans who identified as western or “progressives” had been almost universally spared. The hangover of the Hoover administration was still casting a shadow over the party and, as a result, those in the Republican Party who had opposed the thirty-first president were spared remuneration. As a result, the cease-fire engendered earlier in the year seemed less and less fruitful to Borah. The time was nearly right for him to make his move.

As 1934 came to an end, the boom for Borah was increasing. The following year was one of mutual success for Senator Borah and the American Liberty League. Both

29 “Couzens Demands Borah’s Platform,” New York Times, December 5, 1934; “Parties and Ideas,” New York Times, December 5, 1934.

27 had enjoyed a tremendous outpouring of support and press for their anti-New Deal agendas in 1934, though 1935 would prove to be even more rewarding. Despite the popularity of Borah’s previous calls for reorganization the Liberty League continued to endorse the senator and his agenda. He was simply too popular to abandon. Borah’s political fortunes were also on the rise, as a poll conducted by the Republican Nation

Committee surveyed county chairmen as to their preference for the Republican presidential nominee. By no small majority, Borah had been the most popular choice.

Various other polls and delegations that year came back with the similar results. Borah, who had made a career out of running from rather than for the presidency, seemed to be preparing himself for a higher office. The year would prove to be extremely significant for the aging statesmen, although such talk was a bit early. The National

Recovery Act still loomed as Borah’s greatest adversary. More importantly, for the first time in his career, Borah perceived himself to be a viable candidate.30

Despite the public’s enthusiasm for Borah as a candidate for the presidency, the

Old Guard and the elder statesman continued their cease-fire in the interest of combating the New Deal’s latest acronym. In February of 1935, Roosevelt called on

Congress for a two-year extension of the National Recovery Act. Borah was a prominent member of a judicial subcommittee dedicated to investigating the constitutionality of the NRA. Notably, the committee was proceeding without direct authority from the

Senate, but by this time Borah was far from alone in his criticisms. In April, the senator, alongside the president of the National Association of Manufacturers, urged for a

30 McKenna, Borah, 322; Wolfskill, The Revolt of the Conservatives, 59-60.

28 judicial test of the NRA utilizing the Belcher Lumber Case. The Belcher Lumber Case was just one of a series of cases which had barraged the NRA since the beginning of the year. Roosevelt had attempted to eschew any federal court review of the NRA in conjunction with these cases, leading to outrage from Borah and the other members of the Senate. In a ringing endorsement of Borah’s agenda, the Liberty League echoed the senator’s indictment of NRA and price-fixing, condemning the administration for attempting to dodge the constitutional test of the act in the federal court. This hardly came a surprise, given that the league had very close ties with the National Association of Manufactures (a highly organized and well funded anti-labor and anti-New Deal association). Its former president was a prominent member of the executive committee.31

In the midst of the turmoil surrounding the NRA, another case beat it to the

United States Supreme Court. The case of United States vs. A.L.A. Schechter Poultry

Corporation, which dealt with price fixing, illegal labor practices, and the sale of uninspected poultry, brought the constitutionality of the NRA before the nation’s highest court. On May 27, 1935, Chief Justice Charles Evan Hughes issued a unanimous decision in which the foundation of the National Recovery Act was declared unconstitutional. In a national radio address after the court’s decision, Borah rang triumphant. Heralding the Constitution, he made three observations of the high court’s decision. In the first two observations, Borah weighed the relation and powers of the

31 “Congress Tomorrow Gets Roosevelt Plan for NRA; He May Ask 2 Years More,” New York Times, February 17, 1935; “Urge Test of NRA in Belcher Appeal,” New York Times, April 1, 1935; Wolfskill, The Revolt of the Conservatives, 60.

29 three branches of the federal government. He compared Roosevelt’s usurpation of executive authority with that of Lincoln during the Civil War, yet argued that the latter had been justified by insurrection. He maintained that in the 1860s and contemporarily, the Supreme Court resisted the pressures of uncertain times in order to preserve that which had once and again “cost the friends of liberty a vast amount of suffering and bloodshed.” This colorful and patriotic harkening to the Civil War was not an isolated incident. Borah’s entire address was dripping with the “Spirit of ’76” and avowed the venerable jurisprudence of 1789—at least as he understood it. In the same breath it warned of the consequences that Europe faced for turning away from their time- honored documents, seeking out more “modern” solutions. Furthermore, Borah argued that any extra-constitutional authority granted by Congress to the executive branch was impotent, as Congress did not have authority to do so. 32

While the entire speech was published in several notable publications, such as the American Liberty League Newsletter and the New York-based Vital Speeches of the

Day, Borah’s third observation received the most attention. According to Borah, the

Supreme Court’s ruling had reestablished the sovereignty of the state and ruled that the federal government had no power to impart legislation on a matter of local jurisdiction.

This conviction, that the Supreme Court’s decision in United States vs. the A.L.A.

Schechter Poultry Corporation had set a precedent for the legislative sovereignty of the state, proved to be extremely significant in the campaign of 1936.33

32 William E. Borah, “The Supreme Court Decision,” Vital Speeches of the Day, (June 17, 1935) 586-589. 33 William Edgar Borah, “The Supreme Court Decision,” Vital Speeches of the Day, (June 17, 1935) 586- 589.

30 After the fall of the National Recovery Act, talk of Borah as a legitimate threat to the Roosevelt Administration reached a fever pitch. Postmaster General Farley had begun threatening to groom a Democratic candidate in Idaho for the senator’s seat in

Congress, pledging to put the full support of the party behind the proposed challenger.

The Democratic National Committee chose Idaho Governor Ben Ross, arguably the most prominent challenger the elder statesman had ever faced for re-election. The response from Borah’s colleagues was swift. Republican Senator Robert D. Carey of Wyoming opened his address to the National Conference of Young Republicans warning Farley to abandon his assault on Borah, lest he encourage the senator to contest Roosevelt for the presidency in 1936. Carey had survived a similar assault in the previous year and, along with Chairman Fletcher of the Republican National Committee, vowed to take the fight back to the Democrats in a series of radio addresses beginning in the fall. Borah took note of his “boom” amongst voters and groups such as the Young Republicans. During his campaign against the National Recovery Act, Borah had received thousands of letters from small businessmen and farmers across the country, a large majority of which had urged him to continue his fight all the way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. A national poll of Republican leaders had placed him ahead of any other prospective

Republican candidate for the nomination, including Colonel Frank Knox and Kansas

Governor Alfred Landon. It would not be long before the tenuous anti-New Deal bonds between Borah and the eastern “Old Guard” were rigorously tested and ultimately broken.34

34 Charles R. Michael, “Carey Calls Nation to Fight New Deal,” New York Times, August 24, 1935; Richard L.

31 As Borah’s popularity increased, so did his ambitions. From Borah’s earliest attacks on the NRA in 1934 to mid 1935, there had been a relative ceasefire between opposing conservative factions. In the late fall of 1935, the Republican “Old Guard” began to take the threat of Borah’s impending candidacy a little more seriously.

Members of the press had already sized up the potential of the senator’s campaign and what impact it could have on the alignment of the parties and their constituents. Borah had been a consistent agitator for a paradigm shift in the party for years, using each and every opportunity afforded to him to call for realignment and reform within the party.

However, with the party reeling from a wave of electoral humiliation the threat was now more substantive. Coupled by the fact that Borah’s star had been on the rise after the fall of the National Recovery Act, the Old Guard began to show legitimate concern for the preservation of their power base within the Republican Party. However, the Old

Guard was not the only obstacle that Borah would face in the next twelve months. One particular organization would pledge itself to obstruct the senator’s quest for the presidency, encouraging its members to actively picket the Idahoan at every opportunity. In the fall of 1935 the anti-lynching legislation issue caught fire again, once again pitting the elder statesman against the NAACP.35

Neuberger, “Borah has Rival for Senate Seat,” New York Times, September 8, 1935; “Borah is Prepared to Enter 1936 Race if His Boom Grows,” New York Times, August 18, 1935; Horrowitz, “Senator Borah's Crusade to Save Small Business from the New Deal.” 35 McKenna, Borah, 319-320; Charles R. Michael, “Borah Raises G.O.P. Doubt,” New York Times, October 20, 1935; “Democrats Plan Two ‘Third Parties’,” New York Times, August 30, 1935; Borah spoke on countless occasions during his career of a “reorganization of the party.

32

THE THIN END OF THE WEDGE: BORAH, ANTI-LYNCHING, AND THE NAACP

From the outset of the organization in the early twentieth century, the NAACP realized that any and all efforts to enfranchise African Americans in the Jim Crow South was mostly futile, as lynching nullified any efforts in this direction. Lynching and the fear associated with its tolerance still pervaded much of the former Confederacy and, considering that the vast majority of African Americans lived in the South prior to

World War II, any attempt to advocate enfranchisement while lynching still pervaded society was suicidal. Voter activity was encouraged in much of the North and some urban centers of the Midwest, but lynching stood in the way of any national political ambitions. In order to make any progress on issues of civil rights, African Americans first had to secure their safety. As a result, for the first two decades of its existence, “the

NAACP’s solitary political focus… was the campaign to outlaw lynching.”36

Prior to Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal, African Americans had largely looked at the Republican Party as the lesser of two evils. Other than a brief flirtation with the Wilson administration, which ended disastrously, the vast majority of

African Americans had generally looked to Republicans as their only hope for enacting federal anti-lynching legislation. When, in January of 1922, the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill miraculously passed the House of Representatives, many black leaders felt that federal protection was finally within their grasp. Henry Cabot Lodge, the highest-ranking

36 Gilbert Jonas, Freedom’s Sword: The NAACP and the Struggle Against Racism in America, 1909-1969 (New York: Routledge Press, 2005), 110-112.

33 Republican in the Senate at the time, had been coerced into providing enough support so that the legislation could have a chance of passing through the Republican held

Senate. Unfortunately, Lodge’s lukewarm support of the bill did not withstand the question of its constitutionality, as put forward by Senator William Edgar Borah.37

The reasoning behind Borah’s opposition to the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill has been a topic of debate amongst his biographers, NAACP leaders, and historians of anti- lynching legislation. According to Claudius Johnson, Borah’s opposition to the bill came out of a deep concern for the bill’s constitutionality and the preservation of states’ rights. Johnson makes sincere efforts throughout his work to dispel notions that Borah was pro-lynching or vehemently racist, going so far as to give an account of how Borah saved an African American man from being lynched in his home state early in his political career. Robert Zangrando in, The NAACP and its Crusade Against Lynching, avoided questioning Borah’s prejudices and, instead, intimated that his position on the

Dyer legislation was motivated by a personal squabble with Lodge.38

Borah, himself, made many controversial statements with regard to African

Americans, their enfranchisement, and lynching. For example, he argued that southern voting restrictions were perfectly reasonable, given the “stupendous error” made in

1870 by enfranchising freedmen who were not yet ready for the responsibilities of full citizenship. Like many of his colleagues in the Senate, the Idahoan was prejudiced.

However, the senator’s vocal opposition to anti-lynching legislation made him uniquely

37 Patricia Sullivan, Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement (New York: The New Press, 2009), 26; Robert L. Zangrando, The NAACP Crusade Against Lynching, 1909-1950 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1980), 65-66. 38 Johnson, Borah of Idaho, 77, 186-187.

34 appropriate to help the party expand southward. Borah had stumped for Hoover throughout the South in 1928, as his popularity there was unmatched by any other

Republican heavyweight. During this campaign Borah argued that intelligence tests were the best way to safeguard the vote. As a result Borah acquired a substantial amount of support for Hoover’s 1928 presidential bid in the South. In fact, every southern state the Idahoan visited fell into Hoover’s column in the November election.39

Borah considered anti-lynching legislation to be a “sectional measure,” perceiving it as “an attempt upon the part of States particularly free from the race problem to sit in harsh judgment upon their sister States” that are stricken with this

“malady.” To add insult to injury, Borah added that the “southern people have met the race problem and dealt with it with greater patience, greater tolerance, greater intelligence, and greater success than any people in recorded history.” Borah professed that lynching was reprehensible, but could not see how imposing federal regulation on the states’ rights to prosecute the law would solve the problem. Thus, it was Borah’s contention that anti-lynching legislation was unconstitutional, due to its negation of states’ rights. It is worth noting that Barry Goldwater made a similar stand against the

Civil Rights Act of 1964, citing the very rhetoric that Borah utilized some forty years earlier against the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill and its successor the Costigan-Wagner Anti-

Lynching Bill.40

Borah’s interpretation of the relationship between the federal government and

39 Ashby, The Spearless Leader, 251-253, 256-258, 279. 40 William Edgar Borah, “Anti-Lynching Speech 1938” (Unknown Binding and Press), Ray McKaig Papers, Ms438 Box 7.

35 the states appears inconsistent when the senator’s actions are juxtaposed with his proclamations of constitutional adherence. Rather they must be examined for their inherent racial implications. These racial implications belie the senator’s courtship of the South. For example, during the 1920s Borah had been an advocate of the federal prohibition of alcohol and supported vigorously what would eventually become the

Eighteenth Amendment: a clear violation of states’ rights. On this matter his split with eastern progressives was indicative of what Ashby labeled the “moralistic underpinnings of his progressivism.” Yet, his morality had not given him pause when he flatly opposed federal anti-lynching legislation on the basis of states’ rights in 1922. The bill had passed the House of Representatives but met its end in the Senate soon afterwards. African Americans held Borah and a block of southern senators responsible for the bill’s defeat by filibuster in the Senate. Borah argued that it was not a matter of support for lynching, but a defense of the sagacity of the constitution. Furthermore, he defended his opposition to the Nineteenth Amendment, arguing that despite being “an advocate for women’s suffrage for twenty years… the race question makes it impossible” to pass an amendment that could be misconstrued as to grant suffrage to black women. Without a distinction as to race, “intelligent [white] women” like those in

Idaho could not be granted the vote. The senator’s rhetoric on race and reconstruction reveal his aspiration for southern support.41

When Majority Leader Joseph T. Robinson reintroduced the legislation in the

Senate during the fall of 1935 Borah once again voiced his opposition. This time it

41 Ashby, The Spearless Leader, 241-242, 250-253, 256-258.

36 wasn’t enough. Despite the Idahoan’s vehement protests, the bill passed the Senate 48-

32. In the June 1935 issue of W.E.B. Du Bois’ The Crisis, the official monthly magazine of the NAACP, several editors expressed disdain for Borah’s opposition. One particular piece accused Borah of using the occasion afforded by the attempted filibuster in the

Senate to speak out against the federally corpulent Roosevelt administration, linking it to the legislation for his own political gains. Yet, little could have prepared Borah for the ramifications that his position on this legislation would have on his upcoming campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.42

42 “The Fight Has Just Begun,” The Crisis, (June, 1935) 175.

37 CHAPTER III THE TEN-DOLLAR CAMPAIGN

After the electoral humiliation of the GOP in 1934, Borah returned to the nation’s capital. Upon his arrival, a handful of reporters asked the senator whether he had given any thought to the 1936 presidential election. The senator replied that he hadn’t ruled out running in the Republican primary, but made no formal announcement of his candidacy. It would be over a year before he would. Unbeknownst to all but a few close confidants, Borah had left his office and operations in Boise intact. He continued to outwardly abide by the relative cease-fire with the Old Guard while concomitantly enlisting an old friend to push for reorganization behind close doors, gather support for

Borah without implicating the senator directly, and act as a campaign manager of sorts.

That old friend was Ray McKaig.43

Robert Raymond McKaig was Borah’s unofficial presidential campaign manager from approximately 1930-1935. A well-connected farmer in the Pacific Northwest,

McKaig was an integral link between Borah and the National Grange of the Order of

Patrons of Husbandry or more succinctly, the Grange. The Grange was not a conservative organization. However, Borah’s popularity with the organization, even in light of his opposition to much of the New Deal, was unquestionable. Seeing as though

Borah had always advocated farm relief and farm issues, including some aspects of the

Agricultural Adjustment Administration, there was little reason that he couldn’t mobilize this select constituency with the help of McKaig. Borah’s old friend proved to

43 McKenna, Borah, 309, 314.

38 be a valuable asset in this regard. In a letter to the national Granger master, Louis J.

Taber, McKaig reminded the organization of Borah’s loyalty to the farmer and Taber did not disagree. Taber remarked that the organization and its members “have always found Senator Borah supporting the interests of agriculture” adding that the Idahoan was “one of the strongest defenders of… rural life, and he is today the most outstanding foe of monopoly, combinations, [and] unfair practices in the United States Senate.”

Included on the original document are hand written instructions from McKaig to his mimeographer to make copies of Taber’s remarks to be utilized in Borah’s upcoming campaign. McKaig had risen through the ranks of the Grange, eventually becoming its chairman and most prominent lobbyist. McKaig’s influence and ability to build partnerships with men like Taber was invaluable for the elder statesman.44

McKaig had been attempting to persuade Borah to run for president since 1928, and had asked the Idahoan to allow him to function as a pseudo campaign manager as long as McKaig kept Borah’s intentions close to his chest. A whirlwind of communication between the two ensued for the better part of a decade. Borah sent

McKaig all of the letters he received in support of his candidacy and politics. McKaig filed them according to their purpose. Those that explicitly called for Borah to run for president were kept separate from those that merely expressed appreciation. Borah then copied McKaig on every response that he made. Special attention was paid to letters from people of influence within the party or those who were influential within important constituencies: often McKaig would reply to Borah if he felt there was special

44 Ray McKaig to Louis J. Taber, August 30, 1934, MS 438 Box 7, Ray McKaig Papers.

39 significance. Borah instructed McKaig to use grassroots connections with farmers and other select constituencies to spread this information without attracting too much attention. Borah went so far as to insist that McKaig have the items to be distributed mimeographed locally with a printer he trusted and had the bill sent to him personally.

The two understood that Borah would need a broad national coalition in order to upset the Republican Old Guard’s plans for the 1936 election.45

In a February 8, 1932 letter to Borah, McKaig had outlined a strategy, nearly identical to that which Borah would employ in 1936. The Idahoan would run against the party’s front-runner, in this case Hoover, in the thirteen state primaries that instructed delegates. The delegates garnered in these primary contests would be inadequate to secure the nomination, as the remaining thirty-five states had no primary contests and, thus, their delegates were uninstructed. Yet McKaig believed that Borah could use these elections to demonstrate his popularity over a wide geographic area. Such broad based support could be used as leverage against the party’s machinations.46

For fours years, from 1932 to 1936, Borah had been forwarding McKaig letters, both supporting his calls to reorganize the Republican Party and his presidential aspirations. Whether Borah was legitimately interested in the presidency or merely saw it as a fulcrum on which to exert leverage on the party to reorganize, the end result would be the same. Regardless of the many possible reasons, the fact that he sent these

45 William Edgar Borah to Ray McKaig, February 26, 1935, MS 438 Box 7, Ray McKaig Papers; William Edgar Borah to Ray McKaig, April 15, 1935, MS 438 Box 7, Ray McKaig Papers; As early as February of 1935, Borah began sending large quantities of his speeches and letters of support to Ray McKaig in order to be mimeographed and distributed. Borah often specified that these be distributed quietly in order to keep his intentions close to his chest. 46 Ray McKaig to William Edgar Borah, February 08, 1932, MS 438 Box 7, Ray McKaig Papers.

40 letters to McKaig, along with specific instructions on how to disseminate information throughout the Grange networks, illustrates the means by which he sought to effect this change. As the 1934 elections loomed on the horizon, Borah would soon have another opportunity to utilize these informal networks.

Despite all of this secrecy and planning, Borah was often troubled by what a presidential campaign would entail. In a letter to Ray McKaig on May 22, 1935, Borah lamented how his actions would be placed under a microscope once he announced his intentions to run for president. He confided to McKaig that “as a candidate I would always be charged with acting from selfish motives for reasons of ambition.” Such wavering from the elder statesman was not uncommon. McKaig continued to prod

Borah along, insisting that the only way to effect the change he desired in the party was to make a run for the presidency. Win or lose, the goal was simple: reorganize the

Republican Party in order to better serve the American people.47

In the months prior to the cease-fire, Borah had given a number of speeches, interviews, and press conferences throughout the West regarding the reorganization of the Republican Party. Rank-and-file response to these overtures was overwhelming.

Once again, letters poured in from all over the country expressing gratitude and agreement with Borah’s call to reorganize the party. The letters Borah received not only reflected the breadth and depth of his influence, but also the widespread desire to reorganize the Republican Party from both influential Republicans and the masses at the grassroots level. Chase Mellen, President of the Republican County Committee of

47 William Edgar Borah to Ray McKaig, May 22, 1935, MS 438 Box 7, Ray McKaig Papers.

41 New York, praised Borah’s leadership, commending him for “stimulating a revival of

Republicanism” and that “large numbers of the County Organization…are most enthusiastic in following your lead.” Salt Lake City attorney, James Devine, echoed these ovations of support, citing Borah as an example of those “who recognize the necessity for reformation” of the party, in order to save them “from the fallacies and heresies… that threaten our beloved country.”48

As previously mentioned, Borah leaned on McKaig’s national connections through the Grange in order to bolster support among farmers. Yet, Borah also utilized burgeoning Young Republican leagues and like organizations throughout the nation to spread his message for reorganization. Letters poured in from all over the country, sent by young Republican organizations pledging not only their votes, but their organization’s support as well. The vast majority of these letters, however, came from western and southern states. Ralph Jones of Seattle, Washington, offered the services of the Young Republican League of Washington in order to press for reorganization of a

“national scale.”49 In a similar fashion, Leslie L. Anderson, the state director of the Junior

Republican League of Minnesota, praised Borah for his call to realign the party and inquired if there was anything they could do towards the “accomplishment of this end?”

In Nashville, Tennessee, J. Ross McKinney sought out Borah’s advice in starting a Young

48 Chase Mellen to William Edgar Borah December 20, 1934, William Edgar Borah Collection, Library of Congress via The Idaho State Historical Society (MF443 File 8); Chase Mellen to William Edgar Borah November 9, 1934, William Edgar Borah Collection, Library of Congress via The Idaho State Historical Society (MF443 File 8); James Devine to William Edgar Borah November, 10, 1934, William Edgar Borah Collection, Library of Congress via The Idaho State Historical Society (MF443 File 8). 49 Ralph Jones to William Edgar Borah, December 12, 1934, William Edgar Borah Collection, Library of Congress via The Idaho State Historical Society (MF443 File 8).

42 Republican Club in the city in order to help facilitate reorganization. Likewise, Charles

O. Busick Jr., of the Young Republicans of Sacramento, relayed that there were “over

100 members” that were interested in his “suggestions for a program to enable the

Young Republicans to offer some constructive leadership… in contrast to the leadership of the Republican Party.”50

So why did Borah appeal to Young Republican and other informal Republican leagues? The answer is two-fold. First, Borah’s desire to realign the party resonated with those who had no vested interest in maintaining corporate power and influence.

Borah’s realignment would open doors for those who weren’t backed by corporate fat cats, expanding the influence of the party beyond New York, Boston, and Philadelphia.

Second, Borah’s accessibility and willingness to align himself with political lightweights endeared him to those who felt their influence should extend further than it did. Borah responded to letters from these leagues and organizations in a way that made them feel connected, not only to him and his national strategy, but to returning the Republican

Party to its place on the national political stage. In short, young Republican leagues saw

Borah as a member of Congress they could access and reveled in his calls to turn the

GOP upside down.

Still others were emphatically calling for Borah to throw his hat in the ring for the 1936 presidential election. Robert G. Simmons, attorney from Lincoln, Nebraska, expressed that he and his friends were anxiously awaiting the “opening gun” of his

50 J. Ross MicKinney to William Edgar Borah December 14, 1934, William Edgar Borah Collection, Library of Congress via The Idaho State Historical Society (MF443 File 8).

43 1936 campaign. U.S. representative from North Dakota, Usher Burdick, relayed that the

“boom” for Borah was increasing daily in his state and that he hoped Borah would

“make a little stir for the nomination” as “there is no one else who can win against

Roosevelt.” Borah’s office was filled with letters like these. Among them, a significant number perceived Borah as the only hope to restore America.51

Some of the rank and file perceived Borah as a paragon of capitalism against the growing socialist menace. William Green of Los Gatos, California, calling Borah “an instrument of the world’s salvation,” expressed his fear of the growing radical element in California, citing that the state “just barely [avoided] electing a Socialist [Upton

Sinclair] as governor.” Such talk was not uncommon. Small businessman, A.C. Gates of

Ventura, California, wrote that the “Government stands on the brink of chaos” and that the “wonderful heritage of the American people enunciated by Thomas Jefferson and wrought by 150 years of endeavor and accomplishment, will be lost.” Gates asserted that Roosevelt had spent more than what it had cost to “administer the government for

145 years,” “usurped the powers of Congress, and now seeks to make the judiciary subservient to his dictates.” 52

While Borah was more than willing to revel in these ovations, he was not ready to announce that he had plans to run in 1936 for anything other than reelection in his current Senate seat. Such a move would undermine his leverage down the road. In a response to Mr. Asher, secretary of the New Republican League of Michigan, Borah

51 Usher Burdick to William Edgar Borah, October 21, 1935, Raymond McKaig Papers (MS438 Box 7). 52 A.C. Gates to William Edgar Borah, June 19, 1935, Raymond McKaig Papers (MS438 Box 7).

44 relayed his strategy. Borah confided that if he were to judge “the situation based upon the messages [he received] from different parts of the country, we ought to be able to reorganize the Republican Party” by 1936. Borah stressed patience, asserting that “the thing to do at present is to organize in the different states, creating statewide organizations, and then… we shall have to organize nationally.”53

When the press announced in October that Borah was still contemplating a run for the presidency and was considering Theodore Roosevelt Jr. as his running mate, despite his previous denial, the Old Guard was forced to act. Borah had quite conspicuously released a letter to the press, which intimated that he and Colonel

Roosevelt had openly discussed the possibility of a campaign. More importantly the letter was quite explicit in its distaste for the Old Guard. In what had been a relatively civil year between Borah and his eastern rivals, the senator had expanded his power base and visibility. Yet once Borah perceived that the party had no interest in seeing him ascend to the presidency, all coalitions broke down. To the party bosses in the East,

Borah’s renewed attacks were an outrage. For years Borah had been critical of the party for its lack of a viable platform and disinterest in the plight of the common person, but to re-invoke these attacks less than a year before a pivotal election led to extreme polarization. It was this atmosphere that inspired former President Herbert Hoover to throw his name out as a “compromise candidate,” should the convention become deadlocked. The “Old Guard,” facing a dearth of strong candidates in their eastern

53 Cash Asher to William Edgar Borah, December 6, 1934, William Edgar Borah Collection, Library of Congress via The Idaho State Historical Society (MF443 File 8).

45 “backyard,” was forced to accept a pool of nominees consisting of three candidates from the Midwest and two westerners.54

Of the five candidates for nomination, none had stronger polling numbers than

Borah. Immensely popular in much of the West and with working-class Americans throughout the country, Borah’s popularity with the common person was appealing to anti-New Dealers and those who sought to dethrone Roosevelt by any means necessary.

Kansas Governor Alfred Landon was the only Republican governor to survive the election of 1934. Landon, a self-made millionaire in the oil industry, had been a Bull

Moose Progressive, supporting former President Roosevelt in 1912. Despite his progressive past, the majority of the “Republican kingmakers” felt that Landon was pliable. As a result, he made the best available candidate for the nomination. Colonel

Frank Knox of Illinois and publisher of the Chicago Daily News quickly became irrelevant outside of his eventual commitment to Landon. Knox was quite content with being Landon’s vice presidential nominee. Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan never entered the race for the nomination, perceiving Roosevelt’s reelection as all but certain. Lastly, former president Herbert Hoover actively sought the nomination, despite having little chance of being nominated. His strategy was, in all likelihood, to achieve enough delegates to have large influence in the final nomination and the official party platform. As Allan J. Lichtman correctly observed in White Protestant Nation,

Borah was Landon’s only true rival for the nomination. But, to be blunt, Borah was not

54 Charles R. Michael, “Borah Raises G.O.P. Doubt,” New York Times, October 20, 1935.

46 the first choice among the “kingmakers” to which Lichtman referred.55

But, where had Alf Landon come from? The then governor of Kansas was a westerner and a progressive, considered, theretofore, too “liberal” for the Old Guard to accept. After all, he and his eventual running mate Frank Knox had corresponded with

Borah as recently as 1935 with regard to the need to realign the Republican Party along more progressive lines. In their correspondence, Borah explicitly called on Landon to take the lead, asserting that Landon was now in “a position of tremendous power,” adding that “the party will have to reorganized and rebuilt, and men like yourself can do the job.” Yet, Landon had always maintained some ties to the Old Guard. William

Randolph Hearst claims to have discovered Landon in 1933 shortly after his break with

Roosevelt and the Democratic Party and assisted the Kansan in his bid for the governorship in 1934. Landon was well known in the circles that spawned much of the

Liberty League’s membership. Most importantly he was a westerner and not perceived as a part of the political machine of the east. In short, he was the perfect candidate for the Old Guard to take some wind out of Borah’s sails and repair their image without threatening their position of power.56

This does not explain, however, why Landon and his running mate Knox abandoned their desire to realign the party. What triggered their defection to the Old

Guard is unknown. Perhaps they understood the need to stand united against Roosevelt or perhaps Borah was too much of a maverick for them to support. After all the Idahoan

55 Lichtman, White Protestant Nation, 87; “Democrats Plan Two ‘Third Parties’,” New York Times, August 30, 1935; Wolfskill, Revolt of the Conservatives, 200-201. 56 Wolfskill, The Revolt of the Conservatives, 186, 202-203.

47 showed no desire to compromise and attacked the very corporations that buttressed the party financially. Whatever the reason, by 1936 both Knox and Landon were singing a different tune, and Borah was not the least bit pleased.

To complicate matters, Borah began talking of a “better deal” to supplant

Roosevelt’s failed attempts at recovery. The “better deal” was essentially Borah’s domestic platform, in which “big government” and “big business” were always viable targets. Borah sought economic balance through limited government involvement.

Ultimately, the senator was in favor of servicing select constituencies: most notably the elderly, farmers and the disgruntled, white working-class that desired a hand up but deeply feared government intervention. Essentially the “better deal” amounted to little more than what Borah had been advocating for decades: reform within the parameters of Americanism and the Constitution as he defined them. Borah’s notion of servicing select constituencies to form broad coalitions was years ahead of what the Old Guard had envisioned in 1935. Borah’s overtures to the farmer and the young Republican are well documented, but his overtures towards the elderly have not been thoroughly examined by historians.57

In September of 1935, Borah announced his support for the augmentation of the recently passed Social Security Act through the adoption of the Townsend Plan. The

Townsend Plan, which had at least in part originally inspired Roosevelt’s Social Security

Act, remained relevant as an agitator for a proposed increase to monthly pensions provided by Social Security for those over sixty. In light of his support for the plan,

57 “Borah in Quandary Over ’36 Candidacy,” New York Times, October 20, 1935.

48 Borah introduced Dr. Francis Townsend at a rally of nearly 10,000 supporters in Boise, trumpeting that the increase in old age pensions would “not cost as much as a single year of the depression.” Knowing that the Old Guard would pounce on his support for

Townsend’s plan, why would Borah take such a risk? Much like the farmer and the young Republican, Borah looked to the elderly for grassroots activism and support.58

At their height in the fall of 1935, Townsend Clubs boasted a national membership of nearly five million with thousands of local chapters throughout the country. Townsend had become a force for social and moral conservatives that were not opposed to forays into liberal economics as long it served their core constituency.

Through his endorsement of popular movements such as the Townsend Clubs, Borah ensured that his popularity among the rank and file would continue to grow. Besides,

Townsend did not forget his friends. A few days after Borah hosted him in Boise, the

Townsend Plan headquarters issued thousands of windshield stickers promoting the senator: “Get the Townsend Plan with Borah,” “Back to America with Borah,” and “Save the Constitution with Borah” were among the slogans.59

How could an anti-New Deal Republican square his support for the Townsend

Plan? The truth is when the Townsend legislation went to the floor Borah balked and reneged his support. In rescinding his support, as Townsend’s plan became too closely identified with the Democratic platform, he still pushed for more modest fifty-dollar monthly pensions in order to mitigate his losses among Townsendites. It wasn’t

58 McKenna, Borah, 325; “Borah in Quandary Over ’36 Candidacy,” New York Times, October 20, 1935. 59 Lichtman, White Protestant Nation, 88; Wolfskill, The Revolt of the Conservatives, 17; “Borah in Quandary Over ’36 Candidacy,” New York Times, October 20, 1935; “Figures on Yesterday’s Political Front,” Washington Post, January 29, 1936).

49 Townsend’s plan Borah was interested in; it was his following that Borah coveted.

At the end of 1935, poll numbers gave Borah a lot to ponder with regard to his presidential aspirations. His projected candidacy was the subject of much speculation in the press and talk of a “small state’s son” seemingly a world away from the East began to pick up as the Cleveland convention loomed on the horizon. Of several nationwide polls conducted in 1935, many were quite favorable to the elder statesman. One particular nationwide poll conducted by George Gallup’s American Institute of Public

Opinion asked which Republican candidate had the best chance of besting FDR, forty- two percent of Republicans and sixty-nine percent of Democrats chose Borah; Landon trailed with twenty-four and nine percent respectively. Yet another poll by the same institution that asked self-identified Republicans whom they would like to support,

Borah placed second at twenty-six percent: roughly seven points behind Landon nationwide. As Borah mentioned several times between 1934 and 1936, roughly ten million voters had abandoned the Republican Party in the election of 1932. The senator’s strong numbers amongst Democratic voters led many to believe that he might have been the best chance of winning them back.60

Borah decided it was time to test the waters in the Old Guard stronghold of the northeast. When he arrived for a pre-campaign speech in Brooklyn on January 28, 1936, fifty pickets braved the frigid temperatures to meet him. These African American citizens contested their rights with local law enforcement, risking their own

60 “Topics of the Times,” New York Times, January 27, 1936; George Gallup, “Borah Easy Second, Hoover Tied at Third,” Washington Post, December 1, 1935; “Borah is Best Republican Bet, Democratic Voters Agree,” Washington Post, December 1, 1935.

50 imprisonment, in order to protest the senator’s opposition to the Costigan-Wagner

Anti-Lynching Bill. As Borah emerged from his car, the deputy police chief escorted him to the hall’s entrance while his officers did their best to keep the picketers at bay. The

Idahoan was taken aback by the protest and, according to one observer, “faltered and fumbled his words to such an extent that the audience and newspapermen looked at one another in amazement.” It would not be the last time that Borah was picketed by

African Americans and their allies, angry over the senator’s opposition to the Costigan-

Wagner Anti-Lynching Bill. Nor would the repercussions of the senator’s adversarial relationship with the NAACP be fully realized until the following year.61

Despite this setback, on February 4, 1936, Borah ended what little speculation remained and officially announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination beginning the “ten-dollar campaign.” The campaign was so dubbed due to its propensity for small individual donations usually amounting to less than ten dollars.

In announcing his candidacy, Borah came out swinging for the common person. He took a swipe at the Old Guard and their favorite son strategy, which prevented Landon from having to face Borah directly in the primaries, declaring that “[u]nder the so-called favorite son plan, [a person’s democratic] privilege is denied to them.” He was an outsider according to John S. Knight of Akron, who called Borah’s platform

“emancipation” from the disenchanted Old Guard. Unfortunately his outsider status afforded him very little in the way of funding. Counting on the full-fledged opposition of

61 Walter White, A Man Called White: The Autobiography of Walter White (New York: Viking Press, 1948) 171; Jonas, Freedom’s Sword, 128.

51 the party regulars, Borah’s only hope was to win big in the states that held primary elections. The American Institute of Public Opinion reran their November poll in which self-identified Republicans were asked what candidate they would like to support for the nomination. Borah polled two percent higher in February of 1936, coming in at twenty-eight percent. Unfortunately for Borah, Landon polled fifteen percent higher than he had in November. Despite Borah’s gains, Landon picked up much of Hoover’s lost ground, giving him a seventeen-point lead over the Idahoan. Borah remained undaunted. After all, he wasn’t only campaigning for Republican support. His polling numbers among Democrats had been a beacon of hope to those who sought to retrieve some of the ten million missing in action since 1932. Yet, Borah would have far more trouble with the African American Republican constituency than any other candidate in the field.62

Once Borah officially announced his candidacy, the NAACP’s official magazine,

The Crisis, responded swiftly in its March 1936 issue entitled “Borah: What Does He

Stand For?” The issue contained three articles and several other mentions of Borah’s bid for the Republican presidential nomination, most notable among them being the cover story. Louis L. Redding, who would go on to become one of the nation’s foremost civil rights lawyers and a member of the NAACP legal team on Brown versus The Board of Education, wrote the cover story which was essentially an indictment of Borah’s entire career. He accused Borah of clutching to the liberal and progressive moniker

62 Marian McKenna dubbed Borah’s effort the “ten-dollar campaign” due to the meager donations it received from admirers throughout the nation; Robert C. Albright, “Borah Announces Bid for G.O.P. Nomination,” Washington Post, February 5, 1936; George Gallup, “Nation-Wide Poll Puts Governor Far Ahead,” Washington Post, February 23, 1936.

52 despite a dearth of progressive action and ideology; wavering on women’s suffrage behind a veil of states’ rights ideology, while attempting to barter women’s suffrage in exchange for repealing the fifteenth amendment; and inconsistency on enforcement of the Constitution, citing the example of the senator’s positions towards the Fifteenth and

Eighteenth Amendments respectively. The scathing article was cited in an editorial within the same issue, declaring that, “The Crisis submits that the record of Borah makes it impossible for Negro Republicans to lend him any aid whatsoever.” Such a declaration was far more than a suggestion. Effectively, The Crisis had called for a boycott of Borah’s candidacy.63

Another editorial expressed disbelief that Borah had advocated an investigation into the treatment of Mexican Catholics by their government during the late 1920s and

1930s and yet, in the same legislative session, denied American citizens protection from lynch mobs. Indeed, Borah’s position on Mexico appeared hypocritical considering his conceptualization of sovereignty. Borah justified the Senate inquiry, asserting he had supported it after he received evidence that visiting American citizens were being

“maltreated” in conjunction with these events and that Mexican Catholics were streaming across the United States border to seek asylum: draining community resources in the southern and southwestern states. Whether or not this was the senator’s true motivation is immaterial. What is significant is that all of these positions

63 Louis L. Redding, “Borah: What Does He Stand For?” The Crisis (March, 1936) 70-72, 82; “Editorials: Senator Borah,” The Crisis, (March, 1936) 81.

53 were consistent with obtaining southern electoral support.64

Borah understood the risk; his anti-lynching position undermined the support of black and racially progressive conservatives in vital Republican strongholds such as

Ohio, New York, and Illinois. He was not overly concerned, however, largely because all of the front-runners for the nomination had taken a similar stand. They, like Borah, desperately needed white southern votes. What Borah didn’t account for was the wiggle room that the favorite son strategy afforded the Old Guard. In the case of Illinois and

Ohio, popular local politicians dubbed “favorite sons” appeared in place of legitimate candidates on primary ballots and were able to endorse the anti-lynching bill in order to sway black Republicans, or vice-versa in the South, and then pledge their delegates to the Old Guard’s national candidate, who would sponsor a neutral position on the bill. In short, through the use of favorite sons the party could avoid making national policy on lynching while relying on local politicians to advocate positions that would best persuade that region. This was one of many gripes that senator had with the “favorite son” strategy of the Republican Party.65

In the coming months Borah made much of the un-democratic favorite sons strategy. In a press conference after the formal announcement of his candidacy, Borah conveyed a desire to give the people the ability to choose their candidate: an

64 “Editorials: Senator Borah,” The Crisis, (June, 1935) 177; “Borah Explains Inquiry on Mexico,” New York Times, February 3, 1935. 65 “Borah Loses 47-5 in Ohio Primary,” Atlanta Constitution, May 14, 1936; “Plot to Win Negro Charged by Borah,” New York Times, May 14, 1936; A more detailed analysis of the “Favorite Son” strategy will be emphasized in the second section of this work. Some may argue that Colonel Frank Knox was not a “favorite son” due to the fact that he was a legitimate candidate. This author would argue that, by May of 1936, the colonel was vying for a vice presidential nod rather than the presidency.

54 opportunity denied to them by the “favorite son” strategy being applied by the Old

Guard. In such a strategy the public is ostensibly robbed of the ability to choose its candidate. There had been little public discontent voiced prior to this contest and no one knew what effect Borah’s campaign would have on its effectiveness. Besides, in

1936, only thirteen states held primary elections in the first place; thus some voice in choosing a candidate, no matter how ineffectual, was better than none at all. Yet, editorials and daily columns began to call into question a strategy that had been in place for decades. Some went so far as to declare that Borah’s appeals to the common person

“dooms the ‘favorite son’ movement.” Columnist Turner Catledge of the New York Times echoed this sentiment, observing that Borah had “upset the plans of those who had taken it upon themselves the job of leisurely picking a candidate” thereby “declar[ing] war on the old regime, and…demand[ing] that the next candidate be chosen by the rank and file of the party itself and not in a ‘smoke filled room.’” An editorial published in the

Washington Post argued that citizens in states that hold primaries “should have the opportunity to choose” their candidate and that Borah’s clamoring against the Old

Guard and the favorite sons will produce a “sympathetic reaction” and will “widen the breach in the ranks of the G.O.P.”66

Such rhetoric was especially damaging to the public image of the GOP, especially at a time in which the common person felt so vulnerable and adversarial towards big business. To make matters worse, the Democratic attacks on the American Liberty

66 Robert C. Albright, “Borah Announces Bid for G.O.P. Nomination,” Washington Post, February 5, 1936; “Knox Denounces New Deal Waste,” New York Times, February 9, 1936; Turner Catledge, “Republicans Line Up for Sensational Battle,” New York Times, February 16, 1936; “On Favorite Sons,” Washington Post, February 10, 1936.

55 League were beginning to pay dividends as well. Exposing the organization in the press for what it was, combined with the league’s inability to maintain its non-partisan visage,

Democrats had effectively crippled the one beacon of hope the Old Guard had in reaching out to the rank and file constituency of America. Worse yet, Borah’s boom and identification as an advocate for the common person might force the party to concede to his nomination: a move that might permanently undermine the Old Guard’s grip on the party. Despite the fact that Borah posed the most viable threat to Roosevelt, Old

Guard Republicans committed to blocking his candidacy. Their best chance for the presidency was also their greatest adversary, leaving them no choice but to abandon their hopes for the White House in the interest of their own power within the party.67

Landon held out little hope of defeating Roosevelt. Despite doing little to make himself visible, the machinery of the Old Guard kept the “Landon for President” drive alive. As Landon remained in relative seclusion, making only three speeches prior to the convention, the machinations of his puppeteers continued. The Old Guard used Frank

Knox, Robert Taft (who, at the time, lent his support to the Old Guard), and other favorite sons to destroy Borah’s chances of taking control of the party. These fears that

Borah would dramatically alter the party were largely unfounded. Speculation as to the senator’s platform began to surface as newspapermen scoured the senator’s record for clues. Most certainly Borah favored limited foreign policy, free of any obligations or entanglements. Meanwhile the party attacked his platform and accused the senator of being soft on the New Deal and lambasted him for his support of the Townsend plan.

67 Wolfskill, Revolt of the Conservatives, 200-201.

56 However, when Borah’s platform and record was examined next to Landon’s, it should have given little cause for alarm.

Borah’s support for the common person, personified in his advocacy of old-age benefits and farm relief, were certain. However, Borah did not support “soak-the-rich” tax plans or the redistribution of wealth. Any discussion of redistribution was tied to the destruction of monopolies, not legislation against the wealthy. Honest gains were untouchable in Borah’s eyes, as were the sovereign rights of the states to legislate and enforce the laws as they saw fit. Social legislation would be permissible as long as it remained within the boundaries of the Constitution and respected local jurisdictions.

He stood for a liberalization of the party, but when discussing his designs for the GOP in a New York convention just over a year prior to announcing his candidacy, Borah voiced vehement opposition to federal regulation and a powerful executive branch of government. Borah claimed he would reform America within the parameters of the

Constitution by reducing taxes, wasteful spending, and by eliminating the price-gouging power of monopolistic corporations. He argued that the size and reach of the federal government had encouraged the disparity between rich and poor through the monopoly-coddling principles of both parties. Borah felt that Roosevelt had usurped power from the legislative branch in order to pass thousands of federal regulations that constrained the individual freedoms of the American people and restrained the upward mobility of small businessmen. The vast majority of these aims were well within the parameters of Republican party dogma. Thus, the only reorganization the Old Guard truly feared was that of their position and the influence of their corporate backers

57 within the party. The real issue was Borah’s attacks on their power base and interests.68

On the campaign trail, Borah spent as much time railing against the corporate corruption in his own party as he did Roosevelt’s New Deal. Borah repudiated the

Republican Old Guard for its lack of attention to the common person: a lack of attention that cost the party ten million, formerly Republican, votes nationwide. Borah assailed wasteful spending and aid abroad, comparing the size of the federal government to that of France just prior to the Revolution of 1789. On top of all these claims, Borah promised to accurately represent the best interest of all Americans, vowing to topple the old guard network that had made the primary elections little more than a formality.

Many of his speeches were reprinted throughout the country and became a rallying call for Republicans who had felt slighted by the Old Guard. As Borah continued to campaign against the Old Guard, his first real test loomed on the horizon.69

His only primary opponent in Illinois was Colonel Frank Knox, the longtime owner/publisher of the Chicago Daily News. Despite being a viable candidate for the national nomination, Knox was the equivalent of a “favorite son” in his home state of

Illinois. He ran in the hope of slowing Borah’s momentum and then planned to pledge the electoral votes to Landon. The Republicans expected Knox to win in a landslide. The results, however, were perceived more favorably for Borah, as he received 396,029 votes to the colonel’s 468,760. In a state in which electoral votes were awarded by

68 “Five Big Guns,” New York Times, February 2, 1936; Robert C. Albright, “Borah Announces Bid for G.O.P. Nomination,” Washington Post, February 5, 1936. 69 Arthur Evans, “Borah Lashes New Deal and Old Guard Here: Opens Campaign for Primary Votes,” Chicago Daily Tribune, March 22, 1936; William Edgar Borah, “Issues Before the People,” Vital Speeches of the Day (March 22, 1936).

58 district, Borah had carried enough votes in rural and small-town Illinois to remain a significant threat. Within Chicago, however, Knox’s popularity and the NAACP boycott cost Borah tens of thousands of votes. This would not be the last time Borah was thwarted by NAACP protest and a “favorite son.”70

After his strong performance in Illinois, Borah ran unopposed in the Nebraska primary. Essentially, not even a “favorite son” had any chance of derailing him there and thus the party conceded the state to Borah. Despite the victory, in a poll of Nebraska’s delegates and alternates to the Republican convention, roughly one third pledged to

Landon. The remaining refused to commit to any candidate. Nebraskan delegates were not tied to the electoral results. In effect, at the instruction of party machine, they turned a deaf ear to their constituents. Worse yet, despite Borah’s strong performance in Illinois, the party machinery began working against him behind the scenes in order to undermine his success.71

As Borah’s campaign prepared for the upcoming contest in Ohio, the Knox campaign was negotiating with delegates in districts of Illinois in which Borah had won, encouraging them to break with their constituents and endorse Knox. Borah was furious. In a published telegram to Knox, Borah demanded that the colonel explain why his campaign had attempted to persuade delegates “to disregard the wishes of the people.” Borah had counted on a strong performance in the primaries in order to influence delegations in states that did not hold primaries, yet left their delegates

70 “Politics,” Chicago Daily Tribune, April 19, 1936; Arthur Krock, “In Washington: Size of Borah’s Illinois Vote Viewed as an Aid to His Aims,” New York Times, April 16, 1936. 71 “Nebraska Votes Tuesday,” New York Times, April 13, 1936.

59 uninstructed. Landon had already received sixty-five instructed delegates in Oklahoma,

Missouri, Kentucky, New Mexico, and his home state of Kansas. To date Borah had received none. Despite his favorable performance in Illinois, Nebraska, and Wisconsin, none of these delegates had been formerly instructed to pledge for Borah. In other words, these were non-committed pledges that, at best, were leaning towards Borah.72

To make matters worse, Borah was forced to pull his primary campaign from

Ohio despite his remarkably strong polling against Landon there. Ohio was a necessity for Borah and the Old Guard knew it, replacing Landon on the ballot with favorite son

Robert Taft at the last minute. Taft’s popularity in Ohio was insurmountable. In addition, the Idahoan was advised that his stance against the lynching law, combined with NAACP mobilization there, had aroused a large amount of anti-Borah sentiment among African American voters. Just as it had in Illinois, his states’ rights strategy had come back to haunt him. Retreat was the only viable solution. Yet all was not lost. Borah still had an outside chance of arriving at the convention with more than one hundred delegates.

On a bright note, the vast majority of Wisconsin’s twenty-four delegates had all but pledged their support to Borah under the instruction of the La Follette faction.

While it was a forgone conclusion that Landon’s delegate count would be far greater than Borah’s going into the convention, a large number of delegates would be entering the convention formally uninstructed. While trends dictated that the majority of these delegates would support the presumptive nominee, if Borah could arrive with at least

72 “Borah Demands Knox Explain on Delegates,” New York Times, April 24, 1936.

60 one hundred delegates in his pocket, such support, at minimum, would grant him some leverage in the construction of the party platform. Should his own campaign come up short, he could still have a decisive impact on the direction of the party moving forward.

The downward spiral seemed inevitable, however, as May proved to be a disappointing month for Borah’s campaign.73

Even as delegates lined up overwhelmingly for Landon, a poll conducted by the

American Institute of Public Opinion showed Borah trailing Landon by only two points nationwide among all voters when asked who would pose the greatest threat to

Roosevelt. More importantly, in this poll Borah held a slim advantage in states like

Illinois and Ohio that were a necessity if the Republican Party wanted to take back the

White House. Both states had utilized “favorite sons” in order to skew Borah’s appeal.

Furthermore, Borah alleged that pro-Landon and Knox men had employed “favorite son” tactics to exacerbate the NAACP’s efforts to persuade blacks to vote against him in

African American districts, costing him victories in both Illinois and Ohio. In Ohio forty- seven Republican committee delegates out of fifty-two had pledged to Robert Taft, who had taken a more “northern” stance on anti-lynching legislation.74

Was it possible that the NAACP protests and the Republican “favorite son” strategy cost Borah two pivotal primary elections? Prominent leaders in the NAACP thought as much. The campaign against Borah’s presidential aspiration was fit retribution for a career of opposition to African American voting rights and federal anti-

73 Charles R. Michael, “Conventions in the Making,” New York Times, April 5, 1936. 74 American Institute of Public Opinion, “America Speaks: Special Polls Show How Landon, Others Would Race F.D.R.” Atlanta Constitution, May 31, 1936; “Recording Public Opinion,” Atlanta Constitution, May 9, 1936.

61 lynching legislation. Walter White, the leader of the NAACP from 1930-1955, argued that it was the mobilization of the anti-Borah vote among black Republicans in Illinois and Ohio that “wrecked his presidential aspirations and his campaign died” as a result.

White did not single out Borah alone, noting the “inexplicable phenomena” of opposition to civil rights by western “liberals.” Roy Wilkins, who had replaced W.E.B.

Dubois as editor in chief of The Crisis, called Borah “our main victim,” adding that when

“he decided to run for the Republican nomination for President in 1936 we moved to settle the score.” Wilkins saw Borah as an enemy to the advancement of African

Americans, admitting that he was “quite satisfied” by the NAACP’s hamstringing of the

Idahoan’s campaign. Borah was picketed at several campaign stops and, on one occasion, he was even picketed by African Americans in his home state of Idaho.75

With regard to the Republican Party’s sectional flip-flops on the lynching issue,

Borah argued that such a tactic was a “deliberate deception of the colored voter” and prophesized that “the [Republican] platform at the Cleveland Convention [would clearly advocate] the Constitution [by not taking a stand against lynching] and the rights of the states.” He was right on both counts. For the moment, however, Borah had far more pressing problems.76

In a May poll conducted by the AIPO amongst those who self-identified as

Republicans, Landon’s lead was widening. The governor showed strong double digit leads over Borah across all sections and constituencies. Borah trailed Landon by over

75 White, A Man Called White, 170-172; Roy Wilkins, Standing Fast: The Autobiography of Roy Wilkins (New York: Viking Press, 1982), 163. 76 “Borah Loses 47-5 in Ohio Primary,” Atlanta Constitution, May 14, 1936; “Plot to Win Negro Charged by Borah,” New York Times, May 14, 1936.

62 thirty points in New England. It was a result that Borah expected, although the margin was undoubtedly troubling. Despite Borah’s antagonism, he was still popular enough to cause a schism and, as a result, the party could scarcely afford to have Borah “walk.”

Borah had enough of a following to endanger the Republican ticket should he decide to run as an independent. Despite all of the “favorite sons” and deals in smoke-filled rooms, with only seven days until the Republican National Conference in Cleveland

Borah remained a distinct factor: so much so, in fact, that Landon had switched his focus from the campaign trail to pacifying the elder statesman.77

The Old Guard knew that if Borah bolted the party would be decimated. Borah needed to be stopped, but not humiliated. Paul Mallon, a D.C. based political columnist for the Atlanta Constitution, confirmed what many had been whispering: Borah was to be placated by affording him a controlling interest in the Republican Platform of 1936.

Landon’s men began a campaign to pacify the lion of Idaho by feeling out his desire to have a hand in reconstructing the platform the RNC had proposed. Borah showed little interest publicly, declaring, “If I am not the candidate, I won’t need a platform.”

Truthfully, Borah was devastated. He arrived in Cleveland two days prior to the

Republican National Convention, refusing, once again, a last-ditch effort by Landon to sit him on the Resolutions Committee. The Landon camp, frustrated by Borah’s indifference, asked Hoover to make the opening address and seated many of Borah’s most ardent enemies in the first row. For the second time since 1928, Borah walked out of the convention a liability. Although he never endorsing Landon, the senator refused

77 McKenna, Borah, 333-335; Wolfskill, Revolt of the Conservatives, 200-201.

63 to throw his support behind any “Stop Landon” groups. The “ten-dollar campaign” was over. However, the full extent of the toll that Borah’s campaign took on the future of the party was yet to be fully realized.78

The pressure that Borah exerted on the party, just prior to the national convention, to take a definitive stance on lynching was damaging to the relationship between African Americans and the Republican Party. In years past, the party had advocated centralized federal power and embraced the legacy of Lincoln. In 1932, for example, the Republican Platform made an overture to African American voters, recalling that “for seventy years the Republican Party has been the friend of the

American Negro” and that the party “stands pledged to maintain equal opportunity and rights for Negro citizens.” While the platform did not specifically mention lynching, it promised “vindication of the rights of the Negro citizen to enjoy the full benefits of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Furthermore, the platform did not carry a plank advocating states’ rights. In fact, the only mention of federal and state jurisdiction came in a plank endorsing the Eighteenth Amendment of the constitution in which

“nullification by non-observance [of prohibition] by individuals or State action threatens the stability of government.”79

In contrast to the 1932 platform, the Republican Party Platform of 1936, as

Borah predicted, made no such overture to African Americans. In fact, throughout the entire platform, there was no mention of African Americans or even intimations of

78 Paul Mallon, “News Behind the News,” Atlanta Constitution, May 12, 1936. 79 The Republican National Committee, The Official Proceedings of the 1932 Republican Convention (New York: The Tenney Press, 1932), 120-121.

64 minority presence. However, in a marked votle face, states’ rights ideology received considerable endorsement, both within the platform and in Landon’s acceptance speech. In the portion of his speech entitled “Safeguard Human Rights,” Landon asserted that all men deserve protection under the law, but not at the expense of

“safeguards against tyranny and oppression.” In the following portion of his speech entitled “To Preserve States’ Rights,” Landon warned against a powerful executive, arguing that states’ rights and a limited federal jurisdiction amounted to preserving the

“American form of government.” In agreement, vice residential nominee Frank Knox added in his acceptance speech that the Republican Party platform “condemns the abuse of Federal power to invade local rights.”80

Yet, the controversy surrounding the convention was not limited to what was said or, rather, what was omitted, but who was allowed to hear the message in the first place. Several southern black delegations were refused entry to the convention in favor of “lily-white” delegations. The Lily-White movement, an attempt to wrest political influence from southern blacks by white political coalitions, was hardly a new phenomenon in 1936. Originated by Texas Republican Norris Wright Cuney in 1888, the

Lily-White movement sought to recover conservatives lost to the Democratic Party by invoking traditional southern attitudes towards black political activity. Just days prior to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, the Republican National

Committee announced it would refuse to seat African American delegates from Florida,

80 The Republican National Committee, Textbook of the Republican Party 1936 (Chicago: The Republican National Committee, 1936), 34-35, 47.

65 South Carolina, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Mississippi in favor of Lily-White delegations. While the credentials committee, in the wake of large protest, overturned some of these rulings, the writing on the wall was clear. The

Republican Party was far more interested in increasing its presence in the South than maintaining its failing grasp on the African American voter.81

81 W. A. Warn, “Republicans Seat ‘Lily-White’ Group,” New York Times, June 4, 1946; W. A. Warn, “Convention Ruling a Blow to Negroes,” New York Times, June 7, 1936; W. A. Warn, “Negroes Threaten Racial Party Split,” New York Times, June 10, 1936.

66 EPILOGUE

Beginning with the nomination of Barry Goldwater in 1964 through the reelection of George W. Bush in 2004, the Republican Party has enjoyed substantial success through the support of broad-based grassroots coalitions. It relies in large part on two fundamental foundations. First, as Nash alluded to in The Conservative

Intellectual Movement in America, the wedding of three disparate factions (the corporatists, the evangelical anti-communists, and the libertarians) gave the Republican

Party a wide ideological front with which to combat the New Deal coalition. Second, and perhaps more important, Republicans managed to get in touch with the rank and file voter. The latter was attained in two meaningful ways. First, economic conditions improved, lessening the leverage of the New Deal, and second, Republicans effectively utilized grassroots activism and organization. William Edgar Borah forced the Old

Guard to acknowledge the power of grassroots activism, select constituencies, and the

West. In the coming years the “favorite sons” were no longer utilized, the state primary became the rule rather than the exception, and the decisions made in smoke filled rooms became less obvious. In the wake of Landon’s defeat, the party began to realize that it would have to build stronger coalitions in order to defeat the New Deal order. As a result, the Republicans strived for coalition and began to search for social issues and policies to unite the disparate wings of the party in order to make a bed large enough to fit them all.

Yet, it has not been a bed of roses. The cost of such polarizing rhetoric and strict alliances has had negative effects on the perception of the party and its mantra of

67 modern conservatism. The tensions between African Americans and the Republican

Party are well publicized. To this day, a dark cloud hangs over the GOP as scholars continue to debate whether race and racism has played a fundamental role in the party’s success. Despite repeated overtures and attempts to heal its image, the

Republican Party has been tainted by accusations of racism and intolerance. Some of these accusations are based in truth and record, while others are the unfortunate legacy of the party’s pre-war past.

The majority of these developments, both positive and negative, came as a direct result of the pivotal decade in which Borah and the Old Guard squared off in the

Republican civil war of 1930-1936. This work has shown that it was Borah’s campaign that forced the Old Guard power base to concede to a westernization of the party and to the coalitions that such a move entailed. Ultimately, the Old Guard enlisted Alf Landon and Frank Knox to mollify their western constituency. Their placations were not convincing, however, and the west fell once again into Roosevelt’s column. Half-hearted as their western overtures may have been, eventually the party would be forced to concede more and more of its power to the West.

The election of 1936 also revealed, as Borah accurately predicted and demonstrated, that the party had not yet healed its image with the American public.

Since the onset of the Great Depression, the Republican Party’s laissez faire economic policy of the 1920s had lingered as a symbol of apathetic decadence and disconnection with the common person. In the interest of shoring this gaping wound in their image,

Old Guard Republicans endorsed the American Liberty League: eventually

68 commandeering the anti-New Deal organization for their own purposes. It was an empty overture. In the end, however, the popular press and the Democratic National

Committee succeeded in exposing the Liberty League for what it truly was. The organization was commandeered to dupe the American public into allowing vested interests to stay in power. Worse yet, the GOP had been fingered as the culprit, further distancing the party from the rank and file it so desperately needed.

Despite all of the effort put into restoring the party’s image, it was an attack from one of their own that truly destroyed its political ambitions in 1936. William Edgar

Borah’s constant pressure on the Old Guard and party regulars to realign the

Republican Party ultimately doomed what was an uphill battle to begin with in the presidential election of 1936. While the Old Guard worked from the top down, using favorite sons, corporate funds, and political maneuvering, Borah worked from the bottom up, utilizing organizations such as the National Grange, Young Republican

Leagues, the Liberty League, and Townsend Clubs. The result was devastating to the

GOP. While Landon may have won the election, it was clear that Borah was likely the more popular choice. Borah enjoyed broad support among farmers and small businessmen in the West, states’ rights conservatives in the South, and laborers in the

East: all three key constituencies for the Republicans to have any hope of defeating

Roosevelt and or regaining seats in Congress. Borah’s campaign cost them dearly with all three constituencies, yet a fourth would also be lost in the process.

Due to Borah’s overtures towards the South and his states’ rights stance towards anti-lynching legislation, Borah helped the NAACP do what it had been trying to

69 accomplish for years: break African Americans away from the Republican Party. The

Old Guard’s inability to take a firm stance on anti-lynching and states’ rights allowed

Borah to hedge them in. No longer could they utilize “favorite sons” to disseminate sectional strategies, as Borah had utilized the media and, in conjunction with the

NAACP’s pressure, forced the Republican Party to choose sides. The party ultimately chose to abandon the attempt to preserve its African American constituency in favor of trying to make inroads into the South. Eventually this would pay political dividends, but in 1936 it was a futile strategy.

Thus, it was Borah’s prophetic slogan “reorganize or perish” that held sway. The

Republican Party began the long process of realigning itself in the shadow of its 1936 defeat. It would be twenty years before conservatives could effectively mobilize the rank and file and another ten years before the beginnings of their successful coalition- based powerhouse would emerge on the political scene. Borah spent four more years in the Senate, actively pushing for realignment until his death in 1940. His successors would be indebted to his vision and his innovation for years to come.

70 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Archival Materials Borah, William Edgar, Papers. Idaho State Historical Society, Boise Idaho. McKaig, Robert Raymond, Papers. Idaho State Historical Society, Boise Idaho.

Stanford, Thomas C., Papers. Boise State University Library, Boise, Idaho.

Primary Sources

Borah, William E. Bedrock: Views on Basic National Problems. Private Publisher, 1936. Norris, George W. Fighting Liberal: The Autobiography of George Norris. New York: MacMillan, 1945.

The Republican National Committee. The Official Proceedings of the 1932 Republican Convention. New York: The Tenney Press, 1932.

The Republican National Committee, Textbook of the Republican Party 1936 (Chicago: The Republican National Committee, 1936.

White, Walter. A Man Called White: The Autobiography of Walter White. New York: Viking Press, 1948. Wilkins, Roy. Standing Fast: The Autobiography of Roy Wilkins. New York: Viking Press, 1982.

Newspapers Chicago Daily Tribune, 1936 New York Times, 1929, 1936

Washington Post, 1934 The Crisis, 1935-1936 Vital Speeches of the Day, 1935-1936 Atlanta Constitution 1935-1936

71 Secondary Sources Ashby, LeRoy. The Spearless Leader: William Edgar Borah and the Progressive Movement in the 1920s. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1972. Barkley, Frederick Reuben and Ray Thomas Tucker. Sons of the Wild Jackass. New York: Ayer Publishing, 1932. Critchlow, Donald. The Conservative Ascendancy: How the GOP Right Made Political History. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007. Horowitz, David A. “Senator Borah's Crusade to Save Small Business from the New Deal.” The Historian 55, no. 4 (Summer 1993).

Johnson, Claudius O. Borah of Idaho, 2nd ed. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1967 [1937]. Jonas, Gilbert. Freedom’s Sword: The NAACP and the Struggle Against Racism in America, 1909-1969. New York: Routledge Press, 2005.

Kruse, Kevin Michael. White Flight: Atlanta and Making of Modern Conservatism. Princeton: Princenton University Press, 2005.

Lassiter, Matthew D. The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006.

Lichtman, Allan. White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the Modern American Conservative Movement. New York: Grove Press, 2008. McKenna, Marian C. Borah. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1961.

McGirr, Lisa. Suburban Warriors: The Origin of the New American Right. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002.

Nash, George H. The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1935: Thirtieth Anniversary Edition. Wilmington: ISI Books, 2008.

Phillips-Fein, Kim. Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan. New York: W.W. Norton, 2009. Ribuffo, Leo. “Twenty Suggestions for Studying The Right Now that Studying The Right is Trendy.” Historically Speaking XII, no. 1 (January 2011). Rodgers, Daniel T. “In Search of Progressivism.” Reviews in American History 10, No. 4 (December, 1982). Sullivan, Patricia. Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement. New York: The New Press, 2009.

72 Wolfskill, George. The Revolt of the Conservatives: A History of the American Liberty League 1934-1940. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1962. Zangrando, Robert L. The NAACP Crusade Against Lynching, 1909-1950. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

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