Harry Truman’s miraculous campaign for president in 1948 has become part of American political lore. Just about every American who can see has seen the famous picture of a beaming Truman holding up a copy of the Chicago Tribune with the headline blaring “Dewey Defeats Truman.”
Yet 1948 was not the most hopeless political campaign of Harry Truman’s career. The odds against Truman in his 1940 reelection bid for the United States Senate were even more daunting than his presidential race against an overconfident Thomas E. Dewey.
Some people seem to be blessed with good fortune and life smiles upon them, but Harry Truman was not one of those people. Little in Truman’s life seemed to come easily for him. He had endured spectacular and embarrassing failure repeatedly. His own mother-in-law regularly berated him and reminded him that her daughter, Bess, could have done much better.
Truman’s rise to the United States Senate had been aided immeasurably by the support he had received from the Kansas City political machine headed by Boss Tom Pendergast. In 1939 the Pendergast machine was in utter disarray and coming apart at the seams.
Pendergast had been oddly insistent upon retaining Emmett O’Malley as Insurance Commissioner for the State of Missouri; almost no one understood why the boss would concern himself with a minor state official. O’Malley was something of a hapless fellow, with a penchant for mistakes and never small mistakes. As it happened, O’Malley was also magnificently corrupt.
When Lloyd Stark was elected governor of Missouri with the strong support of Pendergast, the boss was horrified and enraged when Stark promptly fired Emmett O’Malley.
Rumors immediately began circulating that federal officials were investigating both Tom Pendergast and Emmett O’Malley. Despite having likely raked off hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars in graft, Tom Pendergast had an addiction that led to his fall: a gambling habit. The boss made lavish bets and was none too good at it, which caused him to have a never-ending need for cash. Pendergast and O’Malley had conspired to accept an enormous bribe from insurance companies at the expense of Missouri consumers. Part of the bribe was paid, but the parsimonious insurance companies further enraged Boss Tom by reneging on paying the full amount.
Ultimately, Pendergast was convicted of income tax evasion, as he did not report receiving the bribes on his taxes, and was sentenced to prison. Emmett O’Malley was not far behind.
Maurice Milligan, brother of Congressman Jacob “Tuck” Milligan, was the U.S. Attorney and he certainly had a grudge to settle with Pendergast and his political machine. Hundreds of indictments came down and a host of machine officials were fined, sentenced to prison or removed from office. Both the city manager and police chief of Kansas City quickly resigned.
Harry Truman himself marveled, noting, “Evidently everybody in Jackson County got rich but me.”
With the Pendergast machine deeply wounded, Senator Harry S. Truman could no longer count on the huge majorities he had received from Jackson County in his 1934 campaign. With the fall of Tom Pendergast, Harry Truman became an especially inviting target for an ambitious politician and there were few more ambitious than Governor Lloyd Stark.
The differences between Lloyd Crow Stark and Harry Truman could hardly have been greater.
Stark was enormously personally wealthy. The governor was the heir to the Stark Nurseries, which had developed and marketed the Golden Delicious apple. The Stark family orchard was the oldest in the country and at one time, the largest in the world.
Imperious and autocratic where Harry Truman was earthy, friendly and entirely approachable, Lloyd Stark had a habit of rubbing people the wrong way.
Harry Truman was loyal to a fault and was always offended to discover someone did not share that particular trait. Lloyd Stark had few loyalties when those loyalties collided with his ambitions. Stark, in an abundance of caution, had not supported Truman or any other candidate in the Democrati