(4 of 5)
Practical Politician. The Republican Congressional Committee consists of 21 Republican members of the House of Representatives. Its capital, if it gets the same bankroll from the National Committee that it got in 1936, will be $350,000. Its job is to help those Republican candidates who have a fighting chance to get into Congress to do so. This it does by adding to their local campaign chests, writing speeches for them, and helping to publicize their campaigns. The Committee, soon to be enlarged, currently has a staff of three secretaries, two statisticians and two newspapermen, operating under Executive Secretary Earl Venable. Running it calls for craftiness, energy and a head for vote-getting detail, three qualities for which Joseph William Martin Jr., however little his name has appeared in the headlines, is pre-eminent in his party. In 1936, the abysmal failure of Republican strategy was nowhere better demonstrated than in the fact that money was overconfidently squandered trying to win in Congressional districts where the fight was hopeless, saved in districts where the fight was close. Overconfidence is not one of Joe Martin's faults. Less sanguine than the Gallup poll, he visualizes not much more than 75 new seats this year and would probably settle now for 65. The Illinois primary, though internal warfare between the State's two Democratic machines may help him to elect six Republican Representatives in addition to the six who represent the party now, will not be much more than a preliminary gun next week. By the end of May there will be 95 Republican candidates in the field and by the end of July, 156. To Joe Martin, the candidate is always more important than the issue, the place more vital than the program, but by last week he and grey-haired Mr. Venable, whose job is to pre-audit votes for the Congressional Committee as Emil Hurja did for Franklin Roosevelt in 1936, were at least assured of where the autumn's battle would be briskest.
In 1936, 56 districts that elected Democratic Representatives did so by 5% majorities or less and it is these districts which can be principally expected to enlarge Joe Martin's herd. He does not plan to lose any of his present Congressmen. He hopes to gain six seats in New England (two each in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut). Gallup Poll gives the G. O. P. 39 new seats in the Central States. Joe Martin is currently counting on only 22, with ten from Ohio where Republicans anticipate defeating Governor Davey. The Committee expects eight new Congressmen from the corn & wheat belt, one or two from the Rocky Mountain States and two on the West Coast, from Oregon and Washington, where the Gallup Poll gave them none. Another item on the G. O. P.'s curiously negative balance sheet is of course the noisy Democratic split in Pennsylvania (see p. 16). Hoping then for a sure gain of 13, Joe Martin and his committee were last week inclined to revise their estimates upward as far as 23.