1948: An Unforgettable Election
By Barnett Laschever (’50)
A young U-M journalist stays awake all night counting the election returns.
I was ready to collapse into bed, in the comfortable Veterans Housing project built for World War II U-M students, when the phone rang. It was my editor at the United Press in Detroit. He said the election between Dewey and Truman was too close. Would I recheck my returns and stay awake until dawn? If so, he would “sweeten” my monthly $12 paycheck.
It was 1948 and Thomas Dewey, a Michigan grad, and incumbent President Harry Truman both wanted to make 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue their home address for the next four years. But no one thought Truman had a chance for reelection—not the newspapers, not the national polls, not even many Democrats thought he had a ghost of a chance to stay in the White House.
At the time, I was an Ann Arbor correspondent for the Detroit News, United Press (UP), and the International News Service in Detroit. On the night of this election, which had now captured the imagination of the entire country, I had collected the returns from all precincts in Ann Arbor and phoned them into Detroit. Now, according to my editor, I had to do it all over again. But UP was going to “sweeten my paycheck.”
I did what was asked. I recounted my votes, called precincts that hadn’t closed down, phoned them into UP, and then prepared to sit out the night until dawn’s early light.
What made this election fascinating is that Dewey was so certain he was a shoo-in for the job that he didn’t campaign. Michigan-based GOP friends of Dewey had even sculpted a statue of him and had it ready to be erected on the lawn in front of Angell Hall.
But first, let’s turn the clock back and ask: Just who was Thomas Dewey, and why did he think he was destined to be president?
Dewey was born in Owosso, Michigan, where his dad published the local newspaper. At the University, young Dewey wrote for the Michigan Daily. But his talents as a singer were extraordinary. He was a member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, a national men’s fraternity of music, and he lent his deep baritone voice to the University’s Glee Club. Indeed, he considered a career as a professional singer until a throat ailment derailed that ambition.
After graduating from Michigan in 1923, Dewey took his law degree from Columbia and became a crime fighter. With a team of lawyers and a small army of police officers, Dewey was an outstanding prosecutor who sent so many Mafiosi and other assorted criminals to prison he was known as the “Gangbuster.” New York gave him its Hundred Year Association of New York’s Gold Medal Award.
Among the mugs he successfully prosecuted was Dutch Schultz. Schultz was so mad he rallied mobsters in a plot to kill Dewey, but after New York crime bosses realized it was too risky, they rubbed out Schultz instead.
In June of 1948, Dewey received the GOP nod for president and nearly everyone in America thought 
he was a shoo-in to beat Truman—everyone except Harry.
Truman fooled everyone. He worked his tush off whistle stopping the entire country from the back of his campaign trains.
Come dawn on November 5, 1948, Truman, almost miraculously, was the people’s choice. Smiling, he held up the Chicago Daily Tribune with its wrong, blazing iconic headline: “Dewey Defeats Truman!”
As for me, I almost feel foolish to report that the UP “sweetened” my paycheck by $1.
After his demoralizing defeat, Dewey never ran for office again. To this day, I wonder where U-M stashed away his statue.
Freelance writer Barnett Laschever (’50) is a veteran travel writer, author of five children’s books, co-author of a guide to Connecticut, and he writes a vinegary column, “The Ranting Retiree” for the Lakeville CT Journal. He and his wife, Dolores, a former Michigan Daily editor, live in an old farmhouse in Goshen, CT.