FDR - Jean Edward Smith [42]
The idea of campaigning by automobile was risky. Cars were still luxury items in rural New York, and to use one might remind voters unnecessarily of Franklin’s silk-stocking pedigree. Far more serious was the possibility of an accident. Farmers didn’t like automobiles because they frightened their horses. In fact, New York law gave the right-of-way to horse-drawn vehicles. “When we met a horse or a team—and that was about every half mile or so,” said FDR, “we had to stop, not only the car but the engine as well.”49 But the experiment proved a whopping success. Wheezing along at the dazzling speed of twenty miles an hour, Roosevelt crisscrossed the district as no candidate had done before. The flag-draped little car soon caught people’s attention.* Even the mandatory horse stops worked to FDR’s advantage. Farmers were duly impressed with the candidate’s deference, and Franklin used the halts to chat up the teamsters and anyone else in the vicinity.
For companionship, and to learn the tricks of the campaign trail, Franklin invited Richard E. Connell, the editor of the Poughkeepsie News-Press and perennial Democratic nominee for Congress, to accompany him. Connell was a gifted stump speaker in the florid style of William Jennings Bryan and began each of his orations by referring to his audience as “My Friends”—a phrase Roosevelt quickly adopted as his own. It was also Connell who advised FDR to discard the pince-nez he had worn since Groton. Made him look snooty, said Connell.
For four exhausting weeks, Franklin, Connell, and Hawkey spent day after day on the dusty back roads of Dutchess, Putnam, and Columbia counties, giving the same speeches as often as ten times a day. They spoke from the porches of general stores, atop hay wagons, in dairy barns, at village crossroads, sometimes standing on the backseat of the old Maxwell itself—any place where a group of farmers could be brought together. “I think I worked harder with Franklin than I ever have in my life,” said Hawkey afterward.50
FDR was having the time of his life. Nothing seemed to lessen his enthusiasm for jumping into a crowd, pumping hands, and making friends. He was “a top-notch salesman,” a Hyde Park housepainter, Tom Leonard, remembered. “He wouldn’t immediately enter into the topic of politics when he met a group. He would approach them as a friend and would lead up to that … with that smile of his.”51
No roadside gathering was too small for Franklin. He startled a gang of Italian railroad workers repairing track near Brewster by leaping from his car into their midst, chattering away in what they slowly realized was his own version of Italian—a cross between textbook French and the Latin he had learned at Groton.52
Occasionally Roosevelt’s enthusiasm got the best of him. Campaigning in the Harlem Valley on the eastern edge of the district late one afternoon, he stopped in front of a small-town saloon, rushed inside, and invited everyone to have a drink. “What town is this?” he asked the bartender. “Sharon, Connecticut,” said the man pouring drinks. FDR paid up, passed out campaign buttons, and told the story on himself for years.53
As the campaign wore on, Judge Mack recognized that FDR was a natural. His speech making was still awkward, but he had an uncanny ability to persuade his audience. Women’s suffrage did not come to New York until 1917, but an increasing number of ladies began to attend Franklin’s rallies, especially those in the evening. “They came to see as well as hear the handsomest candidate that ever asked for votes in their district,” said