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By the end of October, the 1944 presidential campaign was drawing to a close. In the four months since the Republican national convention, Gov. Thomas E. Dewey had traveled more than 20,000 miles and delivered 22 major speeches.
Incumbent President Franklin D. Roosevelt claimed he did not have time to campaign due to his war duties. But he did manage to find time to travel to the West Coast, Hawaii, and Alaska during the summer. He was gone from the White House five weeks at a time When U.S. troops were fighting in the hedgerows of Normandy and on the islands in the South Pacific.
Roosevelt had been in office 12 years and wanted to stay another four. Democrats argued only Roosevelt had the experience and ability to end the war and manage the peace that was to follow. His campaign slogan “Don’t Change Horses in Midstream,“ was lifted from Abraham Lincoln‘s 1864 campaign. Incidentally, there was the same number of years (80) between Lincoln’s campaign and Roosevelt’s campaign as there was between Roosevelt‘s campaign and the Harris campaign of 2024.
Dewey’s slogan was “It’s Time for a Change.” He argued that Roosevelt was too old, tired, and ill to serve another term and his New Deal had been a failure. Dewey noted after seven peacetime years of New Deal programs, 10 million men were still out of work in 1940 and Roosevelt needed a war to solve the unemployment problem.
Dewey also charged that Roosevelt was backed by big labor unions and big city political bosses. And even worse, Roosevelt had been endorsed by Earl Browder, the head of the American Communist Party. Dewey promised if elected he would put an end to “one man rule,” wasteful bureaucratic rules and regulations, and excessive government spending.
Dewey’s campaign appearances had been drawing large crowds and Roosevelt was getting worried that his Republican challenger might win. By September Roosevelt’s health had improved to the point that he was able to make a few live appearances. His first campaign speech was delivered at a Teamsters union banquet on September 23. In this nationally-broadcast address, Roosevelt reminded listeners of the Great Depression he said he had inherited from the Hoover administration. Roosevelt also accused Dewey of using Nazi propaganda techniques to spread lies about him and his administration.
The highlight of the speech, however, came when Roosevelt humorously refuted a story that he had left Fala, his black Scotch terrier, on an Aleutian Island during his summer trip and had sent a Navy destroyer to bring him back.
Fala, incidentally, accompanied FDR on the entire trip. His wife, Eleanor, traveled only as far as San Diego before returning to her Hyde Park home.
During the month of October, Roosevelt campaigned in Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York. Because his legs had been crippled by polio at an early age, Roosevelt had to wear leg braces in order to stand and use a special podium that permitted him to support his weight with his hands and arms.
To help conceal his handicap, the press generally photographed him either from the waist up or sitting down.
Shortly before election day, the Lincoln (NE) Journal noted the race was too close to call and that a “petticoat parade“ might decide it. Due to the war there were more women voters than men for the first time in history, and women were thought to favor Roosevelt.
Voters who went to the polls on Tuesday, Nov. 7, decided that wartime was not the proper time to change the Commander-in-Chief. The Laurel Advocate of November 8, noted that Roosevelt had been reelected in one of the greatest outpouring of voters in the history of the country. FDR won 136 states with 432 electoral votes. Dewey won 12 states for 99 votes.
When the vote was broken down by counties, however, the Roosevelt landslide did not appear as large. Out of 3095 counties that reported, Roosevelt won 1751; Dewey won 1343. And of approximately 47 million popular votes, Roosevelt received 25 million; Dewey, 22 million. This was Roosevelt’s narrowest margin of victory in his four presidential races.
Nebraska was one of the 12 states in the Dewey column. The others were Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Kansas, Wyoming, Colorado, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, Vermont, and Maine.
An article in the Coleridge Blade noted “Roosevelt drew his greatest strength from the nation’s large industrial centers where political machines piled up tremendous pluralities, which the Republican rural districts could not counterbalance.“ The Ainsworth Star-Journal put it more bluntly: “Dewey was playing against a cold deck in which office holders, racketeering labor leaders, and big city bosses were stacked against him in states that had high electoral vote strength.”
In Cedar County, the vote was 3,452 for Dewey and 1,724 for Roosevelt. Out of the county’s 21 precincts, Roosevelt carried only three.
Laurel voted 359-128 in favor of Dewey. Other towns in which Dewey won the majority of votes were Hartington, 470–322; Coleridge, 316-101; Randolph, 436-146; Belden, 154-65; Wynot, 197145; St. Helena, 121-79; and Obert, 118-51.
Roosevelt came out on top in Aten, 68-58; Fordyce, 54-43, and one rural precinct near Hartington, 76-52.
In case you haven’t already heard, Donald Trump won 91 of Nebraska’s 93 counties in 2024. Harris won only Douglas (Omaha) and Lancaster (Lincoln). In Cedar County, the official vote count was Trump, 4,141; Harris, 702.
This concludes my series on the presidential election of 1944. Primary sources include the national news sections of the Laurel Advocate, the Cedar County News, the Coleridge Blade, and the Randolph Times. Other sources include daily newspapers in Sioux City, Omaha, Lincoln, Norfolk, Hastings, and other cities across the United States. President Roosevelt’s daily schedule for 1944 also was consulted.
