Dewey purposely avoided many of the key issues that confronted the 80th

Congress. He refused to take any stand on the Tidelands Oil controversy, deeming it a

political liability. In December 1947, William Pheiffer had advised Dewey to avoid

taking a stance on the quitclaim controversy, lest the Democrats charge that Dewey

had been "smeared with oil." The rhetoric coming out of Texas seemed "radical" to

Pheiffer, and he believed the political liabilities outweighed any possible benefits.69

Although the GOP platform endorsed state control, the Governor refused to confirm

or deny his position and treated the issue with silence. Dewey's failure to make the

Tidelands controversy even a minor aspect of the campaign was one of many refusals

to publicly align himself with Congressional Republicans. As early as February 1947,

the Albany group had been planning a campaign that organized labor could endorse.70

In 1948, he distanced himself from the Taft-Hartley act and focused instead on his

successful track record of labor mediation. The Labor Affairs division of the RNC,

working closely with Brownell and the Albany campaign staff, produced a number of

press releases titled "Labor News for Your Reader." The two most-widely circulated

of these publications, distributed to labor presses for their Labor Day editions, barely

mentioned Taft-Hartley. The second listed of the labor accomplishments of Dewey

and Warren. On the New York question, the release claimed that "Consequently,

many of the evils which the Taft-Hartley Act seeks to correct do not exist in New

York."71 Dewey's 1948 pronouncements barely touched on Taft-Hartley and instead




69 Thomas Pheiffer, Letter to Thomas E. Dewey, 9 December 1947. Copy in Folder 18 (Tidelands Oil
Case), Box 49, Series II, Dewey Papers.

70 Herbert Brownell, Memo to Thomas E. Dewey, 17 February 1947. Copy in Folder 12 (Memo -
Dewey To), Box 40, Series II, Dewey Papers.

71 Labor News, "The Labor Records of Governors Dewey and Warren," undated. Copy in Folder
(Labor News), Box 138, Brownell Papers.