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Presidential Election of 1940

THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION of 1940 took place as Europe was in the midst of World War II. The Democrats nominated Franklin Delano Roosevelt for a third term, breaking the two-term tradition established by George Washington in 1796. The Republicans nominated a dark-horse candidate, Wendell Willkie, a businessman and lawyer and a Roosevelt delegate at the 1932 convention, who left the Democratic Party in 1939, and became an ardent critic of the New Deal. Roosevelt, who promised there would be no foreign wars, was re-elected.

The Democrats

An early frontrunner for the Democratic nomination was Robert H. Jackson, Roosevelt's attorney general. However, Jackson's candidacy suffered a fatal blow when, in January 1938, he appeared on a popular radio program “America's Town Meeting of the Air” to debate New Deal opponent Wendell Willkie. Willkie was perceived to have won the debate, dashing Jackson's hope of being Roosevelt's successor. Speculation then began to center on Willkie, who was still a Democrat at this time. Willkie would not switch to the Republican Party until November 1939.

Roosevelt, while not actively a candidate for re-nomination, made it known that he was willing to be drafted by the Democratic National Convention to run for a third term. For a time, Secretary of State Cordell Hull appeared to be interested in the Democratic nomination, but did not become a serious candidate when it became more obvious that Roosevelt was orchestrating a draft.

Vice President John Nance Garner pursued a presidential candidacy during the primaries. In the latter years of their second term, Garner disagreed with Roosevelt on a number of issues, with Garner supporting a balanced federal budget, opposing Roosevelt's “court packing plan,” and believing that the executive branch should not interfere with the internal workings of Congress. He also opposed the notion of any president breaking the two-term tradition. Roosevelt defeated Garner handily in the Democratic primaries and was re-nominated for a third term. With Garner declining to run for another vice presidential term, Roosevelt's running mate was Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace.

The Republicans

The three leading candidates for the Republican nomination were Senator Robert Taft of Ohio, Senator Arthur Vandenburg of Michigan, and Thomas E. Dewey, the Manhattan district attorney who had come to national prominence because of his high profile prosecutions of organized crime figures. All three men were members of the Republican Party's conservative old guard: anti-New Deal isolationists, who opposed American entry into World War II. They were also lackluster candidates who failed to excite the Republican base. As the primaries ended, only 300 of the nearly 1,000 delegates who were going to the Philadelphia convention would be pledged to any candidate, creating the potential for a deadlocked convention.

In contrast, Willkie was the candidate of the party's liberal wing. An anti-isolationist, he argued that Roosevelt had failed to prepare the United States to defend itself, posing a threat to national security as the Nazi regime marched through Europe. Willkie had come to prominence as an opponent of Roosevelt's plan to establish the Tennessee Valley Authority. Willkie, who went to New York in 1929 to serve as general counsel to the Commonwealth and Southern Corporation (C&S), opposed government ownership of utilities (C&S was the largest utility holding company) claiming that it was unconstitutional. He also warned that no business was safe if the government could operate utilities. Willkie would eventually become president (1933) and chief executive officer (1935) of C&S as he came to national prominence for his opposition to the New Deal. He began to write articles, make speeches, and testify before congressional committees, raising his profile and giving him a national following. By late 1939, he concluded that he could become the Republican nominee in 1940.

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