David L. Lawrence - National Politics

National Politics

Lawrence had attended his first Democratic National Convention as a page in 1912 and would attend every subsequent convention until his death. He was instrumental in the nominations of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1932 and John F. Kennedy in 1960, and became known as the “maker of presidents”. In the weeks leading up to the 1948 Democratic National Convention, Lawrence was one of the few urban bosses to support Harry S Truman's attempts to win the Presidential nomination.

At the 1948 Democratic Convention in Philadelphia where Harry Truman was seeking the Democratic presidential nomination with Lawrence's support, however, Lawrence would surprise liberals and conservatives alike by shifting the Pennsylvania delegation away from the more tepid civil rights plank that the Administration preferred to a more aggressively liberal one. Lawrence is sometimes credited with convincing Kennedy to choose Lyndon Johnson as his running mate to balance the ticket and mend a rift between northern and southern Democrats.

In 1958, during the heat of the Governor's race, then Mayor Lawrence was eventually exonerated of influencing the Federal Communications Commission along with U.S. Senator from Florida George Smathers to grant a television license to what would become WTAE-TV between its ownership group and that of what would become WPXI. The U.S. House hearings with Lawrence present were high drama.