Kup's Chicago - Irv Kupcinet [61]
If uncertain health had not prematurely undermined his career, forcing him to vacate the Cook County Chairmanship now held by Mayor Daley, Arvey might today be one of the most powerful men in the regular Democratic Party organization. During his twenty-eight years as alderman of the Twenty-fourth Ward, he built up a model political organization. In the 1936 election, when the Republicans got 700 votes in the ward, Arvey’s Democrats got 29,000! “Not a sparrow falls inside the borders of the Twenty-fourth Ward without Arvev’s knowing of it,” said an admirer. “And then, before it hits the ground there’s already a personal history at headquarters, complete to the moment of its tumble.”
At the approach of the 1948 elections in Cook County, Arvey, with other ranking Democrats, realized that the slate needed new faces. It was time for a change, he said – a cry that was to be taken up nationally by the Republicans in 1952. And the first change had to be made at the top, where Ed Kelly had reigned so long as Mayor and County Chairman. Boss Kelly’s popularity had dipped considerably; it fell to Arvey, as the number two figure in the organization, to convince Kelly that he would wreck the machine if he ran again for mayor. It wasn’t easy for Jack to talk his forceful chief into retiring. But after Kelly had listened to all the arguments and studied the results of a poll that Arvey had had taken, he accepted the fact that he faced personal defeat in the coming election. Kelly was too proud and too astute a politician not to realize that it was time for him to retire. As graciously as was possible under the circumstances, he withdrew.
The man that Arvey selected to run for Mayor was Martin H. Kennelly, a successful businessman and a well-known civic leader. He had not previously been active in politics, and his private life had been exemplary. Kennelly, with the backing of the powerful Democratic organization, was an easy victor.
At Arvey’s urging, the Democrats introduced other new faces into the political arena in 1948 – all highly respected men with unblemished reputations. Paul Douglas, former University of Chicago economics professor and alderman of the famous Fifth Ward, was nominated for United States Senate. Adlai Stevenson was nominated for Governor. By slating candidates of such high caliber, Arvey not only kept his machine’s power intact in Chicago, but helped to lay the foundation for the astonishing triumph of his good friend, Harry S. Truman, in the national election. (A fact not generally known is that Stevenson was originally slated to run for United States Senator in 1948, an office he preferred to that of Governor. But because the Republican incumbent, Senator C. Wayland Brooks, owed much of his popularity to his military record in World War I, Arvey decided instead to match Marine combat veteran Douglas against him.)
Arvey also stage-managed the 1952 nomination of Stevenson for President. Overriding Adlai’s avowed reluctance, he spread the word in the right places that Stevenson should be the candidate. When the convention finally mounted its “draft” of Adlai, he accepted the nomination – as Arvey had planned all along.
Arvey worked diligently for Harry Truman’s renomination at the 1948 convention. But only a short time earlier he had been a key member of the small group of party leaders who maneuvered desperately behind the scenes to sponsor Dwight D. Eisenhower as the Democratic Party’s candidate for President.
How Eisenhower almost became the Democratic nominee in 1948 is a footnote to history that I will tell here for the first time.
A group of atomic scientists, headed by Harold Urey, called on Arvey in late 1947. They brought ominous tidings. They described in detail the destructive potentials of the nuclear bomb. They predicted that soon there would be intercontinental ballistic missiles and rockets and, perhaps, a military base on the moon. There was no way, the scientists explained, to prevent Soviet Russia or any other power from making the same scientific strides.
“Our entire