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Presidential Campaign Funds, 19441

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Louise Overacker
Louise Overacker
Affiliation:
Wellesley College
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Extract

The 1944 campaign was the second presidential election in which the ceilings of the Hatch Act were operative, and the first campaign in which contributions from labor organizations were prohibited. It furnishes convincing evidence of the ineffectiveness of these limitations and of the imperative need for complete revision of existing regulations of campaign funds.

The financing of the 1944 campaign was subjected to close study by special committees of both the House and Senate, and their hearings and reports supplement at many important points the reports required by the Corrupt Practices Act. The most controversial issues of the campaign centered about the Political Action Committee of the CIO, and this organization was subjected to close study by both committees. The House committee, headed by Representative Clinton P. Anderson (now Secretary of Agriculture), also stressed the increasing importance and questionable practices of non-party “opinion moulders,” but did not attempt to summarize the total expenditures of the campaign. Senator Green's committee, in addition to studying certain party committees and independent organizations in detail, made a great effort to compile complete data on receipts and expenditures affecting the presidential campaign, and its report makes available what is probably the most complete and accurate over-all picture of the financing of a presidential election ever recorded. The notable recommendations of this committee will be discussed later.

Type
American Government and Politics
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 39 , Issue 5 , October 1945 , pp. 899 - 925
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1945

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References

2 Hereafter referred to as the CIO-PAC.

3 United States Congress, House of Representatives, Special Committee to Investigate Campaign Expenditures, 1944, Report No. 2098 (78th Cong., 2nd sess., January 2, 1945, pursuant to H. Res. 551). Hereafter this will be cited as Anderson Committee, Report. Hearings, printed for the use of the Committee, will be cited as Anderson Committee, Hearings.

4 United States Congress, Senate, Special Committee to Investigate Presidential, Vice Presidential, and Senatorial Campaign Expenditures in 1944, Report No. 101 (79th Cong., 1st sess., March 15 (legislative day March 13), 1945, pursuant to S. Res. 263). Hereafter this will be cited as Green Committee, Report. Hearings, printed for the use of the committee, will be cited as Green Committee, Hearings.

5 In a number of instances loans made during 1941 were cancelled later by the Individuals making them. In no instance, however, did a loan exceed $5,000, either alone or when added to other outright contributions.

6 Data from reports filed in the office of the Clerk of the House.

7 Data from reports filed in the office of Clerk of the House.

8 The writer is indebted to officers of the Democratic National Committee for this figure and for the following interesting classification of the expenditures of the Committee, January 1 to December 16, 1944

The relatively large disbursement for “Treasurer's Activities” suggests that raising campaign funds is an expensive business.

9 In 1928, the Democratic National Committee spent $550,000 for this purpose, the Republican $420,000. Radio expenditures had never before represented as much as twenty-five per cent of the disbursements of either national committee.

10 Compiled from Green Committee, Report, Appendix IV, pp. 102–121, and Appendix VII, pp. 134–137. Organizations spending $100,000 or more are included.

11 Hereafter referred to as URFC and RFCPA, respectively.

12 In 1943, however, $181,575 was returned to state committees; New York, Ohio, and Wisconsin received most of it.

13 From a letter accompanying the report signed by L. Johnson, secretary to E. T. Weir, chairman of the committee.

14 New York Times, Jan. 11, 1945.

15 Green Committee, Report, pp. 7–30, and Appendix VII, pp. 134–137.

16 Hereafter cited as NC-PAC.

17 Anderson Committee, Report, pp. 3–4.

18 Green Committee, Report, pp. 17–18; Anderson Committee, Report, pp. 7–8.

19 Green Committee, Report, pp. 26–30, describing the activities of the so-called State Republican League and Republican Citizens Committee of New Jersey.

20 Adapted from the Green Committee, Report, p. 79. Expenditures in senatorial campaigns are omitted.

21 The total in 1940 was $20,796,224. See “Campaign Finance in the Presidential Election of 1940,” in this Review, Vol. 35 (Aug., 1941), p. 713.

22 Compiled from reports filed in the office of the Clerk of the House.

23 Separate reports of contributions were filed in the office of the Clerk of the House by most of these finance committees.

24 Data from reports filed in the office of the Clerk of the House, except number of contributors to the Democratic National Committee. For this information the writer is indebted to Mrs. Mary C. Salisbury, the comptroller. In both parties the number of contributors is estimated from the receipts issued, with “repeaters” deducted, and is approximate only. This table includes individual contributions only; group contributions, including transfers from Republican Finance Committees (see Table V) are omitted.

25 Data from reports filed in the office of the Clerk of the House. Only individual contributions are included. Contributions of less than $100 were not summarized in the reports of the United Republican Finance Committee, which made it impractical to group them separately from the contributions of $100 to $500. To have differentiated these two groups would have involved making summaries from thousands of receipts filed.

26 In 1936, 45.4 per cent of the funds of the national committee represented gifts of $1,000 or more; in 1940, 32 per cent.

27 See Green Committee, Report, pp. 151–241, for a complete list of contributions of $500 or more to all political committees of which they had record.

28 Data from, reports in office of Clerk of the House supplemented by Green Committee, Report. A much fuller list is to be found in the Report, pp. 140–151.

29 See footnote 28, above.

30 For a fuller discussion of this point, see the writer's Money in Elections, pp. 161–164 and 194–202; “Campaign Funds in a Depression Year,” in this Review, Vol. 27 (Oct., 1933), pp. 776–778; ibid., Vol. 31 (June, 1937), pp. 484–498; ibid., Vol. 35 (Aug., 1941), pp. 722–723.

31 In identifying the interests of contributors, Who's Who in America, Poor's Register of Directors of Corporations, and the directories and telephone books of many cities were used.

32 Henry R. Luce, publisher of Time-Life-Fortune, who contributed $10,500 to the campaign, gave only to state and county committees.

33 Mr. Hartford gave $3,000 to the URFC and his wife gave $1,000 to the same organization.

34 Mr. Avery and his wife each contributed $3,000 to the Republican National Committee.

35 For example, Frank Sinatra gave $5,000 to the NC-PAC.

36 List of income-tax payers from a copy of the Treasury Department press release dated June 25, 1945.

37 The following similar instances were noted: James H. Rudd, New York City; I. A. O'Shaughnessy, St. Paul; F. M. E. Schaefer, Brooklyn brewer; John Harvey Victor, Chicago.

38 On almost the same date that Mr. Phillips contributed $2,500 to the Democratic National Committee, his wife gave the same amount to the Republican National Committee. On the records this was first entered as “Mr.”; afterwards the “Mr.” was crossed out in pencil and changed to “Mrs.”

39 United States Congress, Senate, Special Committee to Investigate Campaign Expenditures of Presidential, Vice-Presidential, and Senatorial Candidates in 1936, Report No. 161 (75th Cong., 1st sess., March 4, 1937). For a discussion of some of the issues, see this writer's “Labor's Political Contributions,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 54 (Mar., 1939), pp. 56–68.

40 See Anderson, Report, pp. 4–6, and Green Committee, Report, pp. 20–24. The organization and operation of the PAC was fully described by Sidney Hillman in his testimony before the Green Committee. See Hearings, pp. 5–58.

41 From reports on file in the office of the Clerk of the House. See, also, Green Committee, Report, p. 23.

42 See Anderson Committee, Hearings, pp. 3–19, 52–94Google Scholar, and Report, pp. 2–6; also Green Committee, Report, pp. 22–23.

43 Anderson Committee, Report, pp. 5–6.

44 Idem.

45 Anderson Report, p. 12; Green Report, p. 80.

46 Report, p. 12.

47 Green Committee, Report, p. 82.

48 Idem.

49 Recommendations (2) and (7), pp. 81 and 82.

50 Report, p. 83.

51 Ibid., pp. 83–84.