January Read: Media vs. Candidate

Chicago : Illinois WPA Art Project,
Artist: Hazlett
Library of Congress

I, Governor of California, and How I Ended Poverty: A True Story of the Future , Upton Sinclair (1933)

The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair's Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics, Greg Mitchell (1992)

Sinclair launched his 1934 campaign the year before, when he published I, Governor, outlining his End Poverty in California (EPIC) program. The context was an economy where crops were destroyed while families of the unemployed went hungry. Some useful background is in the documentary segments here and here. [Clips not identified by the youtube poster, but presumably from this 1993 PBS documentary].

Sinclair was a longtime Socialist who had made previous runs for office as the party's candidate. He also was an entrepreneur who published his own books and sold them by mail order.

Offering I, Governor in batches of ten, Sinclair proposed that buyers keep one and sell the rest to other potential readers. To promote this, copies of a form letter were included with books purchased. Sinclair asked that buyers sign and enclose a letter with each of book they sold in turn, to "keep the ball rolling till all the voters of the State know about the plan." Sinclair also urged readers to form book discussion clubs promoting EPIC.

From the documentary clips:

174 EPIC clubs had formed by 1934, and I, Governor became California's biggest selling title. After Sinclair declared his candidacy as a Democrat, "hundreds of EPIC clubs formed the heart of the campaign." The weekly EPIC News developed a circulation of half a million.

By the time of the August 28 primary, there were 1000 EPIC clubs. Through their work on voter registration, there were now 350,000 new Democrats—who outnumbered Republicans for the first time in the state's history. Sinclair swept the primary, with 436,000 votes.

The following day is when Greg Mitchell takes up the story.

Mitchell looks at how this race

...showed candidates the way from the smoke-filled room to Madison Avenue. Media experts, making unprecedented use of film, radio, direct mail, opinion polls, and national fund-raising, devised the most astonishing (and visually clever) smear campaign ever directed against a major candidate. "Many American campaigns have been distinguished by dirty tactics, Heywood Broun commented in October 1934, "but I can think of none in which willful fraud has been so brazenly practiced."

The political innovation that produced the strongest impact, both in the 1934 race and long afterward, was the manipulation of moving pictures. Alarmed by the Sinclair threat, MGM's Irving Thalberg produced outrageously partisan film shorts. For the first time, the screen was used to demolish a candidate—a precursor of political advertising on television.

Mitchell's day-by-day account of the period from August 29 through Election Day is a lively read. The diverse cast of characters who played some part in the outcome range from H. L. Mencken to Sister Aimee Semple McPherson.

The night after the primary win, Sinclair addressed California—and the country—in a radio broadcast that aired nationwide.

We'll never know if his suggested remedies could have worked, but it's hard to argue with much of what Sinclair had to say—

Consider what has happened in Germany. An obscene demagogue has seized power; a great civilized nation has fallen into the hands of gangsters...Do not attribute it to the magic of a demagogue's tongue. Those events...were planned, they were bought and paid for. It is the steel kings of Germany who have seized the country...

And now we have the same breakdown in the United States. The same poverty and insecurity. The same unemployment and suffering, the same Wall Street kind of bond slavery. Can we free ourselves or will Wall Street give us a dictator and fasten the chains about our ankles for a generation, and perhaps forever? Can democracy work? Can the people use its instruments in their own interest or can they be fooled and lied to...

...We are not proposing to replace the whole collapsing system by a new one all at once [but]...a first step, a trial stage.

...There are half a million persons in our state out of work. They cannot be permitted to starve. These persons can never again find work while the present system endures. They are being supported by public charities...driving the state to bankruptcy and the taxpayers to ruin.

Sinclair proposed that the State rent idle factories, where the unemployed would produce goods. These would be exchanged among a network of cashless, "production for use" enterprises that would develop. Linked to agricultural workers producing food on cooperative "land colonies," the industrial projects would build a new economy outside the normal capitalist channels.

Red-baiting began immediately. The idea of using scrip in an exchange economy inspired the opposition to circulate "dollar" bills, signed by "Utopian Sincliar." Mitchell's book reproduces a bill, "Good only in California and Russia - Not very good anywhere."

A version (found here):

And there were supposed endorsements, by non-existent groups.

(Image from a Business Week "political mudslinging through the years" item—which fails to note that the "League" was phony.)

It was Sinclair's promise to tax estates and corporations at increased rates that moved so many powerful groups—including the Democratic party establishment—to join forces against him.

The press attack was led by the Los Angeles Times. Mitchell describes how the paper had gone after Sinclair

...almost from the day the muckraker arrived in 1916...

Now it was up to the Times as defender of the status quo in Southern California...to set the tone for the anti-Sinclair campaign...

This began with an August 30 editorial, warning that not just California, but the entire country was threatened by "...a maggot-like horde of Reds ...termites secretly and darkly eating into the foundations and roof beams of everything that the American heart has held dear and sacred...

...the foe is camouflaged. The Reds are not lined up in solid ranks. Their menace is secret and subtle. Their agent may be your cook or your trusted friend or the movie star whom you admire on the screen..."

Times campaign coverage was directed by its political editor, Kyle Palmer—a key Merriam fund-raiser and speechwriter. When New York Times correspondent Turner Catledge arrived in LA near the end of October, he remarked on the one-sided coverage. Palmer's response—

"We don't go in for that kind of crap that you have back in New York—of being obliged to print both sides. We're going to beat this son of a bitch Sinclair any way we can...We're going to kill him."

But at the start of the campaign, Republicans were confronted with the weakness of their own candidate. An uninspiring party hack, sixty-eight year old Frank Merriam was "Old Baldy" even to much of his own team.

Mitchell points to an unprecedented decision: the power brokers bypassed the Party machinery that had always managed campaigns, opting instead for full control by a professional ad agency, Lord & Thomas.

That firm's national head, Albert Lasker, arranged for all the company's resources to be put into the fight. Lasker's most important innovation was his idea for a radio campaign. Until now, the medium had been used for little but running candidate speeches. Lasker proposed radio serials and soap operas imitating the formats of popular shows, but peddling Republican candidates and belittling the New Deal.

And where better to test Lasker's new political merchandising concept than in a state rich in writing and acting talent, a state presently playing host to the most melodramatic election campaign in the country...

To a behind-the-scenes operator, Merriam later complained that the campaign was "all about what a stinker Upton Sinclair is. But there's nothing about me." He was told—

You're a tough guy to sell, and we're going to do it our way. We're going to continue to say that Upton Sinclair is a no good son-of-a-bitch, and we're going to spend a lot of money for that. In the last ten days of the campaign we'll promote you with billboards and with your name all over the place.

That's what we have planned, and that's that.

Merriam's running mate, lieutenant governor George Hatfield, was being managed from San Francisco by Campaigns, Inc. Newly established, it was the first political consultancy firm in the country, and this was its first test. Founder Clem Whitaker considered Merriam incompetent; having turned down an offer to run Merriam's campaign, he made sure that Hatfield keep his distance from Merriam.

One of Clem's maxims was "You can't wage a defensive campaign and win." That was another reason he wouldn't assist Merriam directly. But that didn't mean Clem couldn't contribute to the cause...The Republican party had offered Whitaker a generous sum to help organize a bipartisan front group in San Francisco that would stir up anti-Sinclair sentiment in the state. Whitaker had some new ideas—utilizing modern advertising and publicity techniques—he wanted to try out. To attack meant more than stating the obvious. It was a way of defining the political situation.

Whitaker already had close relationships with seven hundred newspaper publishers throughout the state. One of the techniques he would pioneer during the campaign: providing small newspapers with free articles, editorials and cartoons—which the papers printed as if it were their own material.

The opposition worked on many levels. Key industrialists raised enormous sums, channeled to create front groups that placed propaganda in all available media. Lawyer Albert Parker, the operative behind the fake "Young People's Communist League" leaflets, organized employer intimidation measures against employees suspected of being pro-Sinclair. And with all those newly registered Democrats, Parker went into action on voter purge and vote challenge schemes.

Opponents combed over decades of Sinclair's writings. With the print record of a lifetime of attacks on the vested interests of American institutions, Sinclair quotes were available on nearly any subject. Furthermore, quotes were often taken out of context, or with the words of his fictional characters attributed to Sinclair himself. By accident or design, politically damaging quotes from Sinclair Lewis, were also attributed to candidate Sinclair. The Times and other sources publicized inflammatory quotes, real or distorted, as regular features.

Ultimately, it was Sinclair's volubility and candor that gave his opponents their best ammunition.

On September 26, when reporters asked what would prevent the unemployed from flocking to California if EPIC went into effect, Sinclair replied,

I told Harry Hopkins [federal relief programs administrator] in Washington that if I am elected half the unemployed of the United States will come to California, and he will have to make plans to take care of them.

Sinclair tried elaborating: that the unemployed already came to California, and that the federal government takes care of them where they are. And he joked that Merriam's plan was to make California unlivable, while EPIC would be the state's best advertisement.

After the conference ended, reporters discussed their lead stories for the next day. Mitchell quotes the reporter from the LA Times:

"...the important thing was what he said about half the unemployed coming to California..."

"But you know he didn't mean that," replied one reporter, who happened to be a friend of Sinclair's.

"Maybe he didn't mean it,"the Times reporter responded, "but he said it, and it's what my paper wants."

The next morning's headline: HEAVY RUSH OF IDLE SEEN BY SINCLAIR. And the lede's version of Sinclair's words:

"If I'm elected Governor, I expect one-half the unemployed in the United States will hop aboard the first freights for California," Upton Sinclair, Socialist-Democratic gubernatorial candidate said here today.

A Times editorial claimed that, with ten million out of work, five million indigents would arrive once Sinclair took office. And painted a picture of "fifteen times as many poverty-stricken, jobless indigent as we have already!...utter chaos...Red-incited mobs..."

The opposition spread "The Quote" throughout the state, by every available medium. Mitchell notes a New York Times appraisal of how the Merriam campaign played jobholders against the jobless—

That's what the paranoid warning about an invasion of indigents—transmitted via billboard, radio, and movie screen—was all about. In fact, the entire Merriam message was aimed at "the great white-collar class of the State. It is a unique sort of campaign... as it probably marks the first attempt at a large scale and effective organization of this class in the history of American politics."

The California Real Estate Association was very visible in efforts to terrify the middle class. The group manipulated the market, pulling half a million dollars' worth of property from sale, and making it known that future sales were conditional on Sinclair's defeat. The association organized its state-wide membership to target 800,000 property owners with scare tactics.

In actions by other powerful industries, MGM led the studios in threatening to leave the state if Sinclair were elected. That was on the record; out of public view, the studios deducted a percentage of employee salaries as forced donations to Merriam.

In the last weeks of the campaign, MGM produced a series of fake "newsreels." The first two were supposedly man on the street interviews, pitting respectable looking Merriam supporters against scruffy (and sometimes foreign-accented) Sinclairites.

The most inflammatory short appeared a few days before the election—"a breakthrough in political advertising on film, discarding the pretense of objectivity in favor of a naked appeal to the emotions."

The film opened with a railroad switchman, who claimed every freight train coming to his yard carried two hundred transients, including criminals. The scene cut to a local constable, then a judge, who amplified the narrative: that dangerous crowds including radicals were flooding into the state, and "if they stay...I don't know what will become of the working man."

The film continued with quick cuts of "tramps"—possibly actors—walking the rails. Some scenes looked like outtakes from the fiction film, "Wild Boys of the Road." In other, obviously staged scenes, "bums" answered questions from the "Inquiring Camerman." That dialog was scripted was evident in the awkwardly recited (and flubbed) lines.

Facts—such as Harry Hopkins' statement that current migration to California was actually much lower than the national average—were beside the point.

Sinclair had predicted many of the smears his opponents would use against him, as well as the unprecedented amounts of money they would spend to defeat his ticket. But he believed that the truth, spread through the EPIC clubs and press, would reach the people. By Election Day, he believed, the majority would see where their interest lay and vote accordingly.

In the end, Merriam received 1.1 million votes to Sinclair's 900,000 (with 300,000 to third-party candidate Raymond Haight). Many in Sinclair's camp believed Republican vote fraud and challenges to Democratic voters combined with Haight's candidacy had cost the election. Republicans did poorly in other races, and several EPIC candidates won local offices.

Supporters also believed Sinclair would have received another quarter million votes if FDR had endorsed him. [Publicly, Roosevelt had stayed out of the race. Privately, he had sent emissaries to work against Sinclair.]

On election night, Sinclair cabled a friendly senator to urge investigation of vote fraud. The next morning, his terse statement was, "I concede that the election has been stolen."

Among the consequences not intended by the anti-Sinclair forces:
Once elected, Merriam was so grateful to the Democratic establishment that he became an enthusiastic New Dealer—to the fury of his backers. A liberal Democratic Party began to gain strength in the state for the first time. And Hollywood liberals became more organized, in reaction to the heavy-handed tactics of the studio bosses.

It took a few more years for professional candidate management to dominate elections. Mitchell quotes Reagan in 1966, saying that the agency running his gubernatorial campaign had supplied "the know-how," and that he would never run for office again without them.

Whitaker's company continued as Whitaker and Baxter. They created the AMA-funded "socialized medicine" campaign that defeated Truman's national health insurance proposal of the late 1940s.

Mitchell quotes the firm's principles—

• Never wage a campaign defensively! The only successful defense is a spectacular, hard-hitting, crushing offensive.
• Attempt to create actual news instead of merely sending out publicity.
• More Americans like corn than caviar.
• The average American doesn't want to be educated; he doesn't want to improve his mind; he doesn't even want to work, consciously, at being a good citizen. [But] most every American likes to be entertained. He likes the movies, he likes mysteries, he likes fireworks and parades...So if you can't fight PUT ON A SHOW!

Writing in 1992, Mitchell notes—almost quaintly—"the vicious and dispiriting nature" of the Bush-Dukakis race of 1988, and the low voter turnout. And he notes general predictions that the next campaign would be 'a mudbath.'

Of course, the media-staged nature of campaigns only gets worse. While Fox is every bit as blatant as the LA Times was in 1934, the supposedly respectable media have been steered in much the same direction.

Mitchell describes Sister Aimee's jumping on the anti-communism bandwagon as a means of reviving her stalled career. Considering the relentless anti-Sinclair activities of preachers from both establishment and (previously apolitical) evangelical sects, it may be that this, too, was to predict our political future. Like the campaign consultants, preachers in 1934 may well have had their first lessons in using mass media for political manipulation.

Among Mitchell's cast is Will Rogers. We're still up against the truth in his crack— "I'm not a member of any organized party. I'm a Democrat." And most of our own Democrats are too tone-deaf to recognize, as Roosevelt did, the wisdom in Rogers' advice—

If somebody gets all excited and tells you, "Wall Street has just done a nose dive," tell them, "Those Republican organizations don't interest me in the least. Why there is 115 million of my subjects don't know if Wall Street is a throughfare or a new mouthwash."

Our Democrats will jump at the wrong conclusion from this month's Massachusetts election, and will fall over themselves moving rightward.

And in other grim developments, Corporate Persons are about to swamp any pretense of human participation in our political campaigns.

Sinclair operated out of faith in the people. His friend H. L. Mencken attacked his naiveté, once writing him that, "The longer I live, the more I am convinced that the common people are doomed to be diddled forever."

Mencken's cynicism may have been the more realistic viewpoint. Certainly, US political history is a story of the same divide and conquer tactics working again and again.

There's a Gore Vidal quote I haven't been able to track down. But it's something to effect of "the ruling class has been doing the same thing for over two hundred years—it's the best ruling class there is."