Dewey truly did not want a third term.79 Throughout the summer, the Governor

moved to squash any possibility for a return to Albany. Only after it appeared that

Dewey's handpicked successor, Lieutenant Governor Joseph Hanley, could not win

and the crucial Wall Street element of the party threatened to withhold funds did

Dewey reluctantly assent to seek re-election, and then only if Hanley was given the

Senatorial nomination."s On September 4, Dewey announced that he was indeed a

candidate to much acclaim from the press and his party.81 Republicans around the

nation saw the Dewey announcement as good news. Arthur Krock noted that even

members of the Taft camp saw it as positive, with the exception of "those who believe

that the party should revert back to 1900," and those that sought a return to

isolationism. The columnist believed that a successful re-election campaign would

make Dewey the early favorite for the 1952 nomination.82

 The New York GOP platform, released on September 6, read more like the final

report of an outgoing administration rather than a statement for the future. The

document praised the past eight years of Republican rule in New York and

emphasized gains made since the end of the war. The platform claimed that the state

had the broadest social welfare program of any state in the union and consistently met

the needs of its people. It claimed that the state had maintained successful labor

relations without punitive measures, citing programs such as increased minimum

wages, expanded workman's compensation laws, disability measures, and


79 The Dewey papers have only one painfully weak folder on the 1950 election. Richard Norton Smith
gleaned most of the behind the scenes events of the 1950 campaign from a number of oral history
interviews, much of which is beyond the scope of this chapter. See Smith, Thomas E. Dewey and his
Times, pp.557-565, fns 31-36.

80 Ibid.

81 See, for example, the editorial in the NYT. New York Times, 5 September 1950.
82 Arthur Krock, quoted in New York Times, 11 September 1950.