Edwin Jaeckle - State Chairman and Beyond

State Chairman and Beyond

In 1938, Jaeckle threw his support behind Dewey, a racket-busting New York City district attorney, to be the next New York governor. Jaeckle was the sole upstate chairman to push for Dewey's nomination behind the scenes; he also served as Dewey's floor manager at the state convention.

Dewey lost the general election to the Democratic incumbent Governor Herbert Lehman; but the Jaeckle-Dewey partnership was now established and the two men would advance each other's interests off and on over at least the next decade.

After the 1938 election, Jaeckle assumed the chair of the GOP State Executive Committee and, with it, de facto leadership of the state party organization. His election to the Republican state chairmanship came in 1940. He ran Dewey for governor again in 1942, this time successfully. Dewey would retain control of the office for twelve years.

After Dewey's successful gubernatorial career, Jaeckle set to work helping campaign for the presidency in 1944, campaigning against Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In analyzing Dewey's success in maneuvering for the Republican nomination that year, Time Magazine concluded it was due to the " . . . power and precision of the politicos who surround Dewey" -- "a group of political advisers perhaps unequalled since the first Roosevelt Brain Trust." Preeminent among them, the article listed Jaeckle, describing him as a "bulky, well heeled Buffalo lawyer, who almost singlehanded turned Buffalo's meager Democratic majorities into Republican landslides."

However, during the campaign against Roosevelt, Dewey broke with Jaeckle over strategy. As Jaeckle recalled in a 1971 interview with The Buffalo Evening News, "I played the game until after the election, then I quit as state chairman." The two men later reconciled, and Dewey asked Jaeckle to join his 1948 presidential run against incumbent Democrat Harry S. Truman. Jaeckle agreed and served as Dewey's floor manager at the 1948 Republican National Convention. During the general election campaign, Jaeckle rode the campaign train with Dewey and did most of his political work.

With polls showing Dewey in the lead, the governor chose to adopt a restrained campaign strategy. Once again as in 1944, however, the two men saw strategy differently and Jaeckle cautioned Dewey against this laid-back approach. Dewey lost the election in one of the most surprising upsets in presidential campaign history.