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Document 169128

HERBERT HOOVER
Former President comments on Willkie's 1944 campaign.
Conclusion of TLS: "Herbert Hoover", 1p, 6¼x2¼. No place, no date but early 1944. In full: "Willkie has in effect announced his candidacy and is actively organizing to go into the primaries over the country." On June 24, 1940, when Republican delegates and party leaders gathered for their convention in Philadelphia, they found themselves deadlocked: none of the leading candidates could win enough delegates to win the nomination. Former President Hoover, one of 12 candidates, received 17 first ballot votes. Although 48-year-old Wendell L. Willkie arrived at the convention with the fewest number of delegates (he hadn't entered any primaries), his supporters slowly and steadily won the nomination for him on the sixth ballot by convincing enough delegates that he was the best compromise candidate. Willkie was a corporation lawyer until 1933, when he became President of Commonwealth and Southern Corporation, a private utilities company. He gained renown as an opponent of public power but remained a Democrat until 1939, when he joined the Republican party. In the 1940 campaign he endorsed many New Deal reforms and repudiated isolationism, but he lost to President Franklin D. Roosevelt by almost five million votes. During World War II, Willkie toured the world as President Roosevelt's envoy and advocated a postwar international organization to promote peace, most notably in his best-selling book, One World (1943). These actions cost him support among conservative Republicans when he ran in the 1944 presidential primaries. After losing several early primaries, he retired from politics. Willkie died on October 8, 1944, 30 days before the election. Neatly cut from a larger letter. Fine condition.

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