Backing Gilchrest, Bush keeps with history

Sen. Millard E. TydingsDuring his tenure, President George W. Bush has never endorsed a primary challenge to an incumbent member of Congress - no matter how much they disagreed with his policies.

And Bush is not alone in history. No sitting president has backed the ousting of party members (at least via popular elections) in 70 long years, since Franklin Delano Roosevelt took on Senator Millard E. Tydings and several other Democrats from across the country.

Unhappy with members of his party who opposed parts of the New Deal, Roosevelt set his sights on lawmakers in Maryland, New York, Kansas, Georgia, South Carolina and Oklahoma. Newspapers across the country labeled it the "purge," which Charles Price and Joseph Boskin note came at a time the Nazis and Soviets were stamping out disloyalty in their own regimes.

In a press conference on August 16, 1938, Roosevelt picked up an editorial from the New York Evening Post and smiled as he read it aloud. It included this section about Tydings:

If men like Senator Tydings of Maryland said frankly, "I'm no longer believe in the platform of the Democratic party as expressed in the New Deal; I'm running for re-election as a member of the Republican opposition to the New Deal," then there would be no reason and no excuse for President Roosevelt to intervene against them.

The issue would be clear. The voter could take his choice between the New Deal and Tydings's record of consistent opposition to it. But Tydings tells the voters he supporters the "bone and sinew" of the New Deal. He wants to run with the Roosevelt prestige and the money of his conservative Republican friends both on his side.

In that case, it becomes the President's right and duty to tell the people what he thinks of Millard Tydings.

And tell them, he did.

Rep. David J. LewisRoosevelt made the editorial his official statement, and endorsed Sixth District Rep. David J. Lewis for Tydings' seat.

When shown a copy, Tydings turned it away, saying, "I do not want to see it."

This was a serious challenge. Tydings had looked vulnerable for some time, and Lewis had a long and accomplished record in public office. By the time he challenged Tydings, Lewis had been in and out of state and federal office for 35 years, even serving as the Speaker of the House of Delegates in 1920.

Roosevelt pursued his purge with his usual mastery of communication, taking to the radio and even personally campaigning in the state just days before the September 13 primary. He stopped in Crisfield, Denton and Salisbury, taking his motorcade through the Eastern Shore, whose farming communities Tydings needed to win.

Sen. Tydings: On primary day in AberdeenBut there were plenty of grim forebodings for Roosevelt, who addressed a crowd from in front of a building with a large sign that read, "We Want Tydings."

Tydings won confidently across the state. A third candidate, New Deal bureaucrat Arthur E. Hungerford, took a small slice of the vote as well.

That year, Roosevelt only unseated House Rules Committee Chairman John O'Connor of New York. (And even that victory over the seven-term incumbent turned out to be more trouble than it was worth. The winner, James Fay, lost the long Democratic district to a Republican in 1940, returning to win in 1942, and having the seat flip back to the Republicans again in 1944.)

In the immediate aftermath of the Lewis' loss, many credited Roosevelt's zealous involvement, and the sense that Tydings was being ousted by an "invasion." Lewis only reinforced this perception by opening a Washington campaign office and reportedly letting out-of-state consultants write his speeches.

Funnily enough, 1938 turned out to be the root of Tydings' eventual defeat. After he became a vocal opponent of Sen. Joe McCarthy, the Wisconsin Republican struck back with a doctored photo of Tydings and American Communist Party leader Earl Browder. The picture was a composite of a 1940 photo of Browder and a 1938 picture of Tydings. Tydings lost to Republican John Marshall Butler.