The Path to Power (118 page)

Washington’s new source of information had geared up for Election Day. Sending out on October 29 his request for information on their finances to 175 Congressmen across the country, Lyndon Johnson had added a request for other information—early returns not only on their own races but on Franklin D. Roosevelt’s—and (“if you do
everything
…”) had followed that up in later telegrams, including one on the day itself.

He had let the White House know he would have information for it. Rowe already knew, of course, but as Rowe himself puts it, Johnson “never did anything through just one person.” He was not well acquainted with Missy LeHand, and this was an excuse to communicate with her. He wired her that
IF I FEEL THE INFORMATION IS OF SUFFICIENT INTEREST I WILL TAKE THE LIBERTY TO CALL THE PRESIDENT. FOR THAT REASON I AM LETTING YOU KNOW IN ADVANCE OF MY PLAN
.

The information for which he had asked arrived—early, as he had asked. By 2:47 p.m. on Election Day, the first flash was in from Detroit.
MICHIGAN FIRST DISTRICT VOTING HEAVY INDICATES BETTERING PREVIOUS DEMOCRATIC MAJORITY
, Tenerowicz reported. By late afternoon, Western Union messengers were racing to the third floor of the Munsey Building in a steady stream. Other news came over the telephone; James Shanley of
Connecticut telephoned at 6:45 because, as he was to write, “I certainly wanted to give you the first news in Washington.”

In the evening, the telegrams bore hard news. The first telegrams from other Detroit districts were less optimistic than Tenerowicz’s: the figures in the initial communication from Representative George D. O’Brien were close—too close (
104 PRECINCTS OUT OF 222 … O’BRIEN 28,700, MCLEOD 24,769
), but just twenty-four minutes later, O’Brien could dictate another wire (
140 DISTRICTS OUT OF 222 … O’BRIEN 39,797, MCLEOD 28,586
). Some of the telegrams were tinged with jubilation as well as gratitude. Edouard Izac’s last pre-election wire had told Johnson:
ROOSEVELT SHOULD WIN BY 10,000 … MY PROSPECTS DOUBTFUL
, but on election night, the wire from California said:
APPARENTLY WINNING BY APPROXIMATELY 8,000. THANKS
. … Some were not. John G. Green, who had thought up to the last minute that he might beat out incumbent Republican Bernard J. Gehrmann, wired:
GEHRMANN APPARENTLY REELECTED, DAMN TIRED
. At 2:37 a.m., a single brief line arrived from Ernest M. Miller in Harlan, Iowa:
PRESENT PARTIAL RETURNS INDICATE MY DECISIVE DEFEAT
. Jubilant or dejected, however, the telegrams, taken together, added up to a great deal of information.

On the evening of Election Day, Johnson wasn’t at the Munsey Building, but at the spacious Georgetown home of Jim Rowe’s brother-in-law, Alfred Friendly, where a crowded election-night party was in progress. His staff, back at the Munsey Building, was taking the reports as they came in, and telephoning them to Johnson there. Many more reports came in than Johnson had expected so early in the evening, and he telephoned Walter Jenkins and told him to come out to Friendly’s house. Jenkins was installed in a bedroom, where he sat on the bed tabulating the incoming information.

Johnson and Rowe bantered back and forth throughout the evening in the easy and—then—quite close camaraderie that existed between them. They had several wagers—twenty-five cents each, as befitted two young men with no money to spare—riding on the returns. Rowe, reflecting the prevalent Washington thinking on the likely outcome of the congressional elections, had bet that the Democrats would lose at least thirty seats in the House; Johnson had bet that the Democrats would lose less than thirty. And the two tall young men, both in their early thirties, also bet on several individual races, while they waited for a call from Hyde Park.

For some hours, no call came.

In the house above the Hudson, crowded with family and friends, the President sat at the dining-room table, with news tickers clattering nearby and big tally sheets and a row of freshly sharpened pencils lined up in front of him.

“At first,” as Burns has written in an unforgettable scene, “the President was calm and businesslike. The early returns were mixed. Morgenthau, nervous and fussy, bustled in and out of the room. Suddenly Mike Reilly,
the President’s bodyguard, noticed that Roosevelt had broken into a heavy sweat. Something in the returns had upset him. It was the first time Reilly had ever seen him lose his nerve.

“‘Mike,’ Roosevelt said suddenly. ‘I don’t want to see anybody in here.’

“‘Including your family, Mr. President?’

“‘I said anybody,’ Roosevelt answered in a grim tone.”

As the news tickers clattered feverishly, Franklin Roosevelt sat before his charts with his jacket off, his tie pulled down, his shirt clinging damply to his big shoulders. “Was this the end of it all?” Burns writes. “Better by far not to have run for office again than to go down to defeat now.” Would his enemies beat him at last, “and write his epitaph in history as a power-grasping dictator rebuked by a free people? … In the little black numbers marching out of the ticker, not only Roosevelt but the whole New Deal was on trial. … Still Willkie ran strong. Disappointing first returns were coming in from New York. … The ash dropped from the cigarette; Mike Reilly stood stolidly outside the door. Was this the end …?

“Then there was a stir throughout the house. Slowly but with gathering force, the numbers on the charts started to shift their direction. Reports arrived of a great surge of Roosevelt strength. … By now Roosevelt was smiling again, the door was opened, and in came family and friends. …” And the President made a number of telephone calls—including one to Jim Rowe and Lyndon Johnson.

The twenty-two-year-old Jenkins had been thrilled by other calls he had been taking. “It was the most exciting night of my life,” he would recall. “I thought I was in the high cotton. All those big shots, you know,” voices on the telephone that had previously been only names in a newspaper. And then the call from the biggest name of all. “Mr. Roosevelt called and asked how many seats we were going to lose, and Mr. Johnson said, ‘We’re not going to lose. We’re going to gain.’” He and Rowe got on extensions and talked to the President. Recalls Rowe: “Johnson got good, early counts and we both got on the telephone … and told him [Roosevelt] how many Congressmen we had elected, and it was impressive—a helluva lot of Congressmen. And it impressed the hell out of Roosevelt. I remember that.”

L
ESSER POLITICIANS
were also impressed. Knowledgeable Democrats in Washington had reluctantly reconciled themselves to the loss of a considerable number of seats in the House. Instead, they had gained eight (while losing three in the Senate). “My father expected to lose,” Ken Harding recalls. “We were the most surprised people in the world when we didn’t lose.”

Many of the men most directly affected—the Democratic candidates—gave considerable credit for the surprise to Lyndon Johnson. Despite the frenzy of the last days before the election, several candidates had taken
time out from their campaigning to write to express appreciation for the help he had given them. “I want to thank you again from the very depths of my heart for the interest you have taken in me, because of the confidence which you have manifested and the effort you have put forth,” Arthur Mitchell wrote. Said Nan Honeyman: “As darling as I think it was of you I still was a bit perturbed over your taking all the trouble to enlist the interest of the state of Texas in my welfare. Really, darling, that was too good of you and of them. How can I thank you? If I am elected I shall really owe the victory to your efforts.” After the election, similar letters were received at the Munsey Building from scores of men who remembered the yellow rectangles from Western Union that had arrived with the information, or the money, they needed, and who wanted to thank the man who had sent them. “Before you came to my rescue, I was really getting discouraged,” John Kee of West Virginia wrote. Thanking Johnson for the money he sent, John F. Hunter of Ohio wrote, “We were able to put on some thirty short radio programs in the last two days.” Lansdale G. Sasscer of Maryland said, “I used it among our colored vote very effectively both for the President and myself.” “Certainly I never had such grand cooperation from the Congressional Committee before,” wrote Draper Allen of Michigan. “This is … the first time I have ever received any financial assistance from Washington, and I assure you I deeply appreciate it.” And some of the gratitude was expressed in a form that must have been particularly pleasing to a man looking down a long road. “Congratulations on your fine and successful work in the campaign,” wrote Pat Morrison of South Dakota. “We look forward to the date, not too far distant, when our delegation will be able to be of aid and assistance to you.” Says Walter Jenkins: There was a lot of gratitude among his colleagues for what he had done. “I saw it in the phone calls and the letters. And the feeling of respect. It built him up from being just—he was barely a first-term Congressman—to probably the most…” Here Jenkins pauses and searches for the right word; and finally says, “He was
the
hero.” The same feeling was expressed by observers less impressionable than Jenkins. Wrote Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen in their “Washington Merry-Go-Round” column:

Gratitude is an emotion as ephemeral in Washington as elsewhere, but Lyndon Johnson obtained from his work with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee a reward more lasting.

During those three weeks in the Munsey Building, his secretaries had compiled lists of Congressmen who had asked for money, and the amounts for which they had asked. And then the lists had been placed before Lyndon Johnson—for decisions. If Sam Rayburn or John McCormack requested a specific amount of money for a specific Congressman, Johnson would honor the request, but these requests were relatively infrequent. And except in those few cases, the decision as to which Congressman got money, and how much he got, would be Lyndon Johnson’s decision. His alone.
O.K.
, he wrote next to some requests.
None
, he wrote next to others. “1,000 would be a lifesaver”—
None
. “An additional $300 will, I am sure, get results”—
None. Out
. The words and numbers he wrote on those lists were a symbol of a power he now possessed—over the careers of his colleagues. The power was a limited one—it was the power of the purse, and the purse was not a large one. Small though it might be in comparison to the purse which financed a presidential campaign, however, it was not small to most of the men whose campaigns it was financing; it
was
substantial in terms both of their needs and of their expectations. They needed its contents, needed it badly. What Lyndon Johnson wrote beside their names had played a role—a small role but a definite role—in determining their fates.

Returning to Washington after the election, Congressmen compared notes on their campaigns, and in these discussions the name of Lyndon Johnson kept coming up; when someone mentioned it to a freshman Congressman, Augustine B. Kelley of Pennsylvania, Kelley said: “Oh, Lyndon Johnson! He really had a lot to do with me getting elected. He sent money up to my campaign. He’d call up from Washington to see how we were getting along, and what we needed. ‘Gus, what do you need?’ And he sent me money, and kept up with my campaign.” Listening to his colleagues talk, a Congressman who had received campaign funds from Johnson—funds on a scale unprecedented for a central Democratic congressional financing source—would realize that Johnson had contributed funds, on a similar scale, to scores of Congressmen. Through cloakrooms and Speaker’s Lobby spread a realization that, in some way most of them did not understand, this
young, junior, rather unpopular Congressman, a scant three years on the Hill, had become a source—an important source—of campaign funds.

For some of these funds—the money from Texas—he had, moreover, become the sole source. The telegrams candidates had received from Johnson announcing that funds were on the way had said they had been contributed by “my good Democratic friends in Texas.” By
his
friends. The recipients did not know who those friends were—and even were they to find out, they could hardly ask these Texans with whom they were not even acquainted to contribute to their campaigns. Their only access to this new—and, apparently, substantial—source of money was through Lyndon Johnson. He controlled it. The money they needed could be obtained only through him.

They were going to need money again in 1942, of course, in less than two years. In 1942—and in succeeding years. Whether or not they liked Lyndon Johnson, they were going to need him. Not merely gratitude but an emotion perhaps somewhat stronger and more enduring—self-interest—dictated that they be on good terms with him.

This realization—and the reality behind it—abruptly altered Johnson’s status on Capitol Hill. When Congress had left Washington in October, he had been just one Congressman among many. Within a short time after Congress returned in January, the word was out that he was a man to see, a man to cultivate. Harold E. Cole of Boston, a friend of John McCormack, had lost a close race, and was planning to run again. He hadn’t learned until late in the campaign of Johnson’s role in campaign funding, and he didn’t want to make the same mistake again. He wrote Johnson asking if he could come to Washington and drop in and see him. Working closely with Johnson, Jim Rowe had understood what he was trying to accomplish with the money from Texas. “He was really trying to build a power base as a new Congressman,” he says. And he succeeded. Ray Roberts, a Rayburn aide, says that Johnson had