Perhaps best known for being part of the premature and false newspaper headline, "Dewey defeats Truman," Thomas E. Dewey was a prosecutor, governor of New York, and two time Republican presidential candidate. Dewey was born in Michigan in 1902, graduated from the University of Michigan in 1923, and received his law degree from Columbia in 1925. After spending several years in private practice, Dewey joined the U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District of New York in 1931. He rose rapidly, and by 1935 he had been appointed special prosecutor for the investigation of organized crime in New York. That position helped him gain national prominence.
In his role as special prosecutor, Dewey obtained 72 convictions out of 73 prosecutions against a variety of mobsters, drug dealers, racketeers, pimps, and loan sharks. Dewey's effectiveness was such that mobster Dutch Schultz took out a contract on his life, an attempt that was foiled only when other mobsters, led by Charles "Lucky" Luciano, had Schultz killed, fearing the backlash if Schultz had succeeded in having Dewey killed.
Dewey won his first political office in 1937, becoming district attorney for Manhattan. He continued to go after gangsters in his new position, while expanding his reach to Wall Street financiers and New York City politicians, though he was less successful in these pursuits. He was unsuccessful in his first bid for New York governor in 1938, and his bid for the Republican nomination for president in 1940 also met with failure. But in 1942, he won the first of three successive terms as governor of New York.
As governor of what was then America's largest state, Dewey gained a reputation as a moderate. He referred to himself as a "New Deal Republican." His administration established the first state agency to eliminate discrimination in employment, and he presided over a major expansion of roads, bridges, and other parts of New York's transportation infrastructure. His administration was also free of any major corruption scandals. He captured the Republican nomination for the presidency in 1944, against a still-popular President Franklin Roosevelt. He managed to hold Roosevelt to his lowest percentage in any of his four election victories. Dewey immediately became the favorite for president in 1948. He faced a divided and dispirited Democratic Party, which was dealing with splits on both its right flank, with the candidacy of Strom Thurmond of the States' Rights Party, and on its left flank with the candidacy of Henry Wallace of the progressive party.
But Dewey and the Republicans failed to count on the indomitable will and campaign skills of President Harry S Truman. Truman, nominated by the Democrats, constantly attacked the "do-nothing" Republican congress, while highlighting his own policies benefitting farmers and labor. Dewey, in contrast, ran a campaign generally considered listless and vague, trying not to offend anyone. The result was one of the most stunning upsets in American politics, with Truman defeating Dewey by 4 percentage points in the popular vote and 114 electoral votes.
After the election, Dewey won for a third term as governor of New York. In 1952, he was instrumental in helping Dwight D. Eisenhower capture the Republican nomination over the conservative forces of Senator Robert Taft of Ohio. He then retired to become a successful corporate attorney, also becoming friend and counsel to future president Richard Nixon. He rejected an attempt by Nixon to put him on the Supreme Court and died in Florida in 1971.
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