Already he was demonstrating an instinctive strategy that was to be a basic part of his political success - an ability to bridge the gap between city and country Democrats.
By June, Mike Pendergast had seen enough of Harry S. Truman in action to convince him that he was a potential winner. He invited him to a meeting of the Tenth Ward Democratic Club and announced that my father had the organization’s support. Mike gave a speech, describing Dad as “a returned veteran, a captain whose men didn’t want to shoot him” - an interesting comment on army mores in World War I. As my father has said repeatedly, in discussing his relationship with the Pendergasts, he was grateful for this support. He knew he needed every available vote to win the election. There were now no less than five candidates campaigning. But he had already made it clear that he had the backing and ability to run a pretty good race on his own. Thus, there never was and never would be any subservience in his relationship with the Pendergasts. But there was another element, which some of Dad’s critics have mistaken for subservience - party loyalty.
To my father, being a Democrat was and is an article of faith. He could not run on a Republican ticket if an angel from on high appeared with a flaming sword and ordered him to do so. He supported the Pendergasts because they were Democrats, and they supported him for the same reason. His Missouri blood responded to the idea of loyalty with the same fervor that the idea inspired in the emotional hearts of Pendergast’s Irish. I am not suggesting that this made life easy. On the contrary, it involved him in some agonizing conflicts.
Even with Pendergast backing, my father continued his strenuous day and night campaigning. He had shown himself to be a political innovator by his shrewd appeal to the veteran vote - a new force in American politics. Later in the campaign, he came up with another innovation. He was one of the first to use the airplane as a political weapon.
One of his fellow veterans, Eddie McKim, persuaded a local flier to take Dad up above the biggest political picnic of the summer, at Oak Grove, and bombard the assembled farmers with Truman leaflets. According to Eddie McKim, the plane was “one of those old Jennies that was held together with baling wire.” They circled the picnic grounds and disgorged their pamphlets with no difficulty. But then the pilot tried to land in a nearby pasture. “He had a little trouble stopping the plane and it ended up about three feet from a barbed wire fence,” Eddie McKim said. “Our candidate got out as green as grass. But he mounted the rostrum and made a speech.”
On the eve of the election, an ominous force put in an appearance. Grim-faced men stood outside the doors of several Protestant churches in Independence and handed out pink “sample ballots.” When someone asked them what they were doing, they simply replied, “A hundred percent.” It was the local slogan of the Ku Klux Klan, and it meant 100 percent American. Only one man on the county ticket was endorsed by the Klan. Opposite his name they had written, “Church affiliation, Protestant, record good.” Opposite the name of Harry S. Truman was written “Church affiliation Protestant, endorsed by Tom and Mike.” The Pendergasts were Catholic, of course, and the Klansmen, with their instinctive talent for bad taste and worse judgment, were attempting to inject religious hatred into the campaign. The Examiner, reporting the story, went out of the way to point out how unfair this slur was against my father who had been “only supported by the Pendergast faction after he had been out campaigning for some months.”
When the Klan appeared in Missouri, no one was especially alarmed. It seemed a fairly harmless patriotic organization at first. The Independence Examiner wrote a mild editorial, disapproving of its bed sheets and secret meetings but praising the patriotic aspects of its
By June, Mike Pendergast had seen enough of Harry S. Truman in action to convince him that he was a potential winner. He invited him to a meeting of the Tenth Ward Democratic Club and announced that my father had the organization’s support. Mike gave a speech, describing Dad as “a returned veteran, a captain whose men didn’t want to shoot him” - an interesting comment on army mores in World War I. As my father has said repeatedly, in discussing his relationship with the Pendergasts, he was grateful for this support. He knew he needed every available vote to win the election. There were now no less than five candidates campaigning. But he had already made it clear that he had the backing and ability to run a pretty good race on his own. Thus, there never was and never would be any subservience in his relationship with the Pendergasts. But there was another element, which some of Dad’s critics have mistaken for subservience - party loyalty.
To my father, being a Democrat was and is an article of faith. He could not run on a Republican ticket if an angel from on high appeared with a flaming sword and ordered him to do so. He supported the Pendergasts because they were Democrats, and they supported him for the same reason. His Missouri blood responded to the idea of loyalty with the same fervor that the idea inspired in the emotional hearts of Pendergast’s Irish. I am not suggesting that this made life easy. On the contrary, it involved him in some agonizing conflicts.
Even with Pendergast backing, my father continued his strenuous day and night campaigning. He had shown himself to be a political innovator by his shrewd appeal to the veteran vote - a new force in American politics. Later in the campaign, he came up with another innovation. He was one of the first to use the airplane as a political weapon.
One of his fellow veterans, Eddie McKim, persuaded a local flier to take Dad up above the biggest political picnic of the summer, at Oak Grove, and bombard the assembled farmers with Truman leaflets. According to Eddie McKim, the plane was “one of those old Jennies that was held together with baling wire.” They circled the picnic grounds and disgorged their pamphlets with no difficulty. But then the pilot tried to land in a nearby pasture. “He had a little trouble stopping the plane and it ended up about three feet from a barbed wire fence,” Eddie McKim said. “Our candidate got out as green as grass. But he mounted the rostrum and made a speech.”
On the eve of the election, an ominous force put in an appearance. Grim-faced men stood outside the doors of several Protestant churches in Independence and handed out pink “sample ballots.” When someone asked them what they were doing, they simply replied, “A hundred percent.” It was the local slogan of the Ku Klux Klan, and it meant 100 percent American. Only one man on the county ticket was endorsed by the Klan. Opposite his name they had written, “Church affiliation, Protestant, record good.” Opposite the name of Harry S. Truman was written “Church affiliation Protestant, endorsed by Tom and Mike.” The Pendergasts were Catholic, of course, and the Klansmen, with their instinctive talent for bad taste and worse judgment, were attempting to inject religious hatred into the campaign. The Examiner, reporting the story, went out of the way to point out how unfair this slur was against my father who had been “only supported by the Pendergast faction after he had been out campaigning for some months.”
When the Klan appeared in Missouri, no one was especially alarmed. It seemed a fairly harmless patriotic organization at first. The Independence Examiner wrote a mild editorial, disapproving of its bed sheets and secret meetings but praising the patriotic aspects of its
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