Thomas Edmund Dewey 1902-71, American political figure, governor (1943-55) of New York, b. Owosso, Mich. Admitted (1925) to the bar, Dewey practiced law and in 1931 became chief assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. After briefly serving (1933) as U.S. attorney, he was appointed (1935) special prosecutor to investigate organized crime and was elected (1937) district attorney of New York county. He won a national reputation for "racket-busting." He was the unsuccessful Republican candidate for governor of New York in 1938, but was elected governor in 1942. In 1944 he won the Republican presidential nomination, but he lost the election to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Reelected (1946) governor, Dewey again ran for President on the Republican ticket in 1948 and, contrary to general expectation, lost the election to Harry S. Truman by a close margin. He was reelected governor of New York in 1950, and resumed private law practice on completion of his term (1955). He wrote Journey to the Far Pacific (1952) after a tour of East Asia, and Thomas E. Dewey on the Two Party System (1966).

Bibliography: See B. K. Beyer, Thomas E. Dewey (1979).

Thomas Edmund Dewey

Thomas Edmund Dewey (1902-1971) was governor of New York State from 1942 to 1954 and a Republican presidential candidate.

Thomas E. Dewey was born on March 24, 1902, at Owosso, Mich. In 1923 he received his bachelor of arts degree from the University of Michigan. After briefly studying music and law in Chicago, he entered Columbia University Law School. After his graduation in 1925, he toured England and France. Returning to New York, he entered the state bar, accepted a clerkship in a law office, and became active in the Young Republican Club. In 1928 Dewey married Frances E. Hutt; they had two children.

In 1931 the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York appointed Dewey his chief assistant. In addition to fundamental honesty and natural courage, Dewey possessed a capacity for careful and deliberate case preparation and an amazing self-control that enabled him to remain cool under pressure. With the resignation of the U.S. attorney in November 1933, Dewey took that position—at 31 the youngest U.S. attorney ever. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed a Democrat to the position 5 weeks later, Dewey returned to private law practice. In 1935 he was appointed special prosecutor for the Investigation of Organized Crime in New York. His campaign against narcotics and vice racketeers obtained 72 convictions in 73 prosecutions. In 1937 he was elected district attorney for New York County.

In 1942 Dewey was elected governor of New York. He quickly established a reputation for political moderation and administrative efficiency, enjoying cordial relations with the legislature. Success as governor, added to his reputation in fighting New York racketeers, sent Dewey's political stature soaring. In 1944 he was the Republican party's presidential nominee. He ran well, despite Roosevelt's record as a war leader and Dewey's lack of experience in international affairs. Reelected governor of New York in 1946, he proceeded to ram a series of liberal laws through the legislature.

As the acknowledged front-runner in his second presidential campaign—against Democrat Harry Truman in 1948—Dewey refused to tax himself, made only a few speeches, avoided controversial issues, and scarcely recognized the opposition. He lost to Truman by a narrow margin. In 1950 he was elected to his third successive term as New York's governor.

At the suggestion of State Department adviser John Foster Dulles, Dewey visited 17 countries in the Pacific in 1951. In 1955 he reentered private practice with the New York firm of Dewey, Ballantine, Bushby, Palmer, and Wood. By 1957 Dewey had been awarded 16 honorary degrees. His books include The Case against the New Deal (1940), Journey to the Far Pacific (1952), and Thomas E. Dewey on the Two Party System (1966). He died on March 16, 1971, at Bal Harbour, Fla.

Further Reading

Writings on Dewey remain limited. Stanley Walker, Dewey: An American of This Century (1944), was prepared for Dewey's first presidential campaign. Several good chapters on Dewey's race against Truman are in Irwin Ross, The Loneliest Campaign: The Truman Victory of 1948 (1968).

Additional Sources

Beyer, Barry K., Thomas E. Dewey, 1937-1947: a study in political leadership, New York: Garland Pub., 1979.

Smith, Richard Norton, Thomas E. Dewey and his times, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982. □

DEWEY, THOMAS E. 1902-1971

Governor of new york (1943-1955), republican presidential candidate (1944, 1948)

Famous Defeat

In one of the most famous photographs in American political history, a beaming President Harry S Truman is shown displaying the headline of the first edition of the Chicago Daily Tribune following the 1948 presidential election. In a banner headline the newspaper trumpets Thomas E. Dewey's win over the incumbent Truman. The Tribune got it wrong, of course: Truman won by 2.2 million popular votes and 114 electoral votes. Dewey's defeat disappointed his formidable constituency in the Republican Party and set him politically adrift for much of the 1950s. In the 1940s, however, Dewey—along with Robert Taft and Arthur Vandenberg—was a politician whose name was synonymous with the Grand Old Party.

Successful Prosecutor

Born in Owosso, Michigan, on 24 March 1902 to a middle-class family, Dewey was educated in public schools and attended the University of Michigan and Columbia University Law School. Admitted to the New York bar, he made Manhattan his home and involved himself in local politics. In 1931 he was appointed assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and began successfully prosecuting the racketeers and bootleggers of the Prohibition era. Named full U.S. attorney in 1933, Dewey earned a considerable reputation as a racketbuster in a New York plagued by organized crime. His probes of garment district racketeers and of the Murder, Inc., gang organized by Salvatore "Lucky" Luciano and Louis Lepke led to federal imprisonment for Lepke and deportation for Luciano. As a result of his high visibility in these investigations, Dewey was able to launch his campaigns for the governorship of New York.

Successful Governor

After failing in his first bid in 1938, Dewey was elected to three successive terms beginning in 1942. He was an unorthodox Republican, fiscally conservative but socially liberal. Both of his presidential campaign platforms endorsed New Deal measures and promised to protect such programs as Social Security and unemployment insurance. As governor he pushed through the first law in any state against racial discrimination in employment, took measures to ensure that the labor mediation board was fair, improved state unemployment and disability benefits for workers, and undertook a massive highway-construction program. Largely due to wartime federal spending bounties, between 1943 and 1948 he was able to reduce New York State tax rates by 50 percent and still achieve a $600-million state surplus and reduce New York's debt. State aid to public education and public assistance doubled during his administration, more than fourteen thousand hospital beds were added throughout the state, thirty thousand units of public housing were built, and state workers received hefty raises. Dewey seemed to be a Republican who could match President Franklin D. Roosevelt's largesse to the poor while reining in spending, but this fiscal illusion was made possible by massive federal outlays.

Presidential Candidate

Dewey easily won the 1944 Republican nomination but had to run against President Roosevelt in the midst of World War II. Though the Republicans attempted to criticize the administration's handling of the war, by 1944 it seemed that victory was in sight, and the nation was unwilling to make a change in leadership in midstream. The election of 1948 was another matter. The Republicans had gained control of both houses of Congress in 1946, and President Truman's popularity had declined precipitously. Cold War tensions were beginning to mount, and conservatives were meeting with success by accusing the Democrats of weakness toward the Soviets. Conservative Republicans had also mounted an attack on labor that resulted in passage of the Taft-Hartley Act, which restricted labor's powers. Encouraged by these developments, Dewey failed to campaign with intensity. In contrast, Truman barnstormed around the country with his famous whistle-stop campaign. Speaking to ordinary Americans from the back of his train, Truman managed to revive the faltering Democratic coalition. Accepting defeat with dignity, Dewey later declined to head the Republican ticket in 1952 but played a role in nominating Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. Nixon later sought to repay this political favor and Dewey's efforts against John F. Kennedy in 1960 by nominating him to be chief justice of the Supreme Court. Dewey instead urged that Warren Burger be named. His health declined over the next few years, and Dewey succumbed to cancer and heart disease on 16 March 1971.

Source:

Richard Norton Smith, Thomas E. Dewey and His Times (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982).