Truman ’48 win came at a cost for Iowa Democrats

CEDAR RAPIDS - Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Jack Hatch is pitching himself as the next Harry Truman, who scored a surprising come-from-behind win over Republican Thomas Dewey in 1948.

On the campaign trail, Hatch has been talking about that Truman win, which was memorialized in the iconic picture of the president holding a newspaper with the headline 'Dewey defeats Truman.”

'No one thought he could win. The polls said he was a dead duck,” Hatch said last week, predicting he will prove wrong those polls showing him trailing five-term Republican Gov. Terry Branstad by as much as 23 percentage points.

Just as most political observers are calling the gubernatorial election for Branstad, conventional wisdom in 1948 was that it was inevitable that New York Gov. Dewey would win the presidency.

'But he campaigned throughout the heartland, talking to farmers, business folks, and everyday Iowans,” Hatch told reporters. 'He took the message that he shared with Iowans across the country, and Harry S. Truman did win that election.”

Truman did win and he carried Iowa by 2.7 percentage points. However, if Iowa voters give the Democratic Party the support they did in 1948, the results might be good for Hatch, but devastating down the ballot, according to a Smart Politics of the 1948 election results.

Smart Politics reviewed the 1948 election results in Iowa and found that while Truman carried the state at the top of the ticket, very little else went the Democratic Party's way that cycle in the Hawkeye State.

Aside from Truman's victory and former Democratic U.S. Sen. Guy Gillette knocking one-term GOP U.S. Senator George Wilson out of office, the party was thoroughly demolished at the ballot box.

For starters, Republicans swept every statewide race for state governmental office:

' Governor: William Beardsley defeated Carroll Switzer with 55.7 percent of the vote

' Lieutenant Governor: Incumbent Kenneth Evans beat Iver Christoffersen with 52.6 percent

' Secretary of State: Melvin Synhorst defeated Philip Shutt with 52.2 percent

' Auditor: Lloyd Keller was victorious over Chet Akers with 52.4 percent

' Treasurer: Incumbent John Grimes defeated William Irwin with 52.8 percent

' Secretary of Agriculture: Incumbent Harry Linn beat Gale McClean with 54.0 percent

' Attorney General: Robert Larson defeated Harold Fleck with 52.6 percent

' Commerce Commissioner: Incumbent Carl Reed beat Sidney Ramsay with 52.9 percent

With 50.3 percent of the vote, Truman outperformed his nine other executive and legislative Democratic ballot mates in Iowa by 2.3 points.

With long-serving Democratic Treasurer Michael Fitzgerald and Attorney General Tom Miller running for re-election, that may be a difficult feat for Hatch.

But the news actually got worse for Iowa Democrats in 1948.

Republicans also saw all three of their incumbent candidates for judges to the Iowa Supreme Court win election that cycle: Halleck Mantz, John Mulroney, and W.A. Smith.

The GOP continued their stranglehold over the state legislature by winning more than three-quarters of all races: 23 of 29 State Senate seats and 80 of the 108 seats for the State House.

And finally, Republicans finished off the Democrats by sweeping all eight seats for the U.S. House of Representatives.

Incumbents Thomas Martin (1st CD), Henry Talle (2nd CD), Karl LeCompte (4th CD), Paul Cunningham (5th CD), James Dolliver (6th CD), Ben Jensen (7th CD), and Charles Hoeven (8th CD) all retained their seats while Harold Gross held the 3rd CD seat for the GOP after winning the nomination against incumbent John Gwynne.

All told, the victories by Truman and Gillette in Iowa were rather miraculous that year, though that might not quite be the narrative Hatch's campaign wants to sell at this stage of the race.