Charles McNary Notification Celebration

In Spring/Summer 1994 edition of The Keynoter, William Alley gives us a great background on the selection of longtime Republican Senator Charles McNary as the running mate of 1940 Republican presidential nominee Wendell Willkie. McNary was the last Oregonian to be nominated by a major party ticket for President or Vice President. We have written here in the past about a number of major and minor party nominees for Vice President Oregon has produced over the years. We are now at the 80th anniversary of the notification ceremony of Charles McNary on his selection as the 1940 vice presidential nominee. Democratic nominee Henry Wallace was also to have a notification event in Des Moines, Iowa during the same few weeks. Hopefully there is some Iowa and Wallace fan that can write that article.

First, it is important to know what a notification ceremony is, as political parties no longer hold such events. The closest thing that might come to a notification event in modern times is the press conference where a nominee will announce their selection of the vice presidential nominee.What is a committee of notification?  According to An Introduction to Political Parties and Practical Politics written by noted Berkeley Professor of Political Science Perley Orman Ray in 1912.

With the naming of a candidate for vice president, it only remains for the convention to authorize the appointment of a committee consisting of one from each State, formally to notify the presidential candidate of his nomination and a similar committee to notify the vice-presidential candidate. The business of the convention then being at an end, it adjourns sine die. These committees on notification subsequently visits the nominee at his home, or meet him at some appointed place. The chairman, or some other previously selected member, makes a formal speech notifying the candidate the action of the convention. Thereupon the candidate delivers his "speech of acceptance"           (p.164-165)

Modern conventions have no notification committees that travel out to nominees homes to hear of their acceptance. Now this all takes place at the highly choreographed political conventions we are accustomed to experiencing today. The 1940s were still the infancy of television. Most families did not see televisions enter their homes until after WWII in the 1950s. The political campaigns of the 1940, '44, and '48 were the last to be done before the majority of Americans owned televisions. Conventions were still affairs for the newspaper and radio services.

Modern day conventions wrap the whole process in a bow for the media. Instead of nominees being selected and ending the convention to travel to them to hear if they accept, the nominees now accept nomination before the actual convention. Nearly all nominees for vice president are known well in advance of the convention. The final night of the convention culminates with the presidential nominee and vice presidential nominee awash in a sea of delegates, balloons and bands. This was not the case in 1940, when Charles McNary accepted his nomination.

The McNary notification day celebration was held in Salem Oregon, that was just recovering from their centennial celebrations. McNary or Charlie Mac as he was affectionately called by locals would spend three days in Salem to rest and prepare for the event to be held at the State Fairgrounds on Tuesday August 27, 1940. Crowds as big as 50,000 were expected and they had seating for 15,000. Salem would observe the day with a half work day and the state government would be closed on the 27th and it was expected that private employees would follow their lead so Oregonians could take part in the festivities. The Salem Chamber of Commerce planned for an air display of 75 planes to honor their favorite son candidate McNary. Here is McNary and guest of honor Harold Stassen at the BBQ for the Press and VIPs at the McNary farm.

Ralph Cake, the Republican National Committeeman from Portland was the lead organizer of the event. Cake was in charge of introducing the Chairman of the Republican National Committee, Congressman Joseph Martin of Massachusetts. Martin was in charge of introducing the keynote speaker from the Republican National Convention and guest of honor at the McNary celebration, Minnesota Governor Harold Stassen. He would then be given the honor of introducing McNary. Below is a photo from the Capital Journal of the Press and VIP luncheon at the McNary farm.

There were dozens and dozens of members of the press, radio men and even cameramen recording for news services (at this time it was very common for moviegoers to watch news updates in movie theaters before and between films). A number of bands were in attendance to provide musical interludes between speeches. Some 12,000 were in attendance at the fairgrounds while millions of Americans would listen via the radio. McNary started the day off with a lunch at his farm for press and the various dignitaries that were to attend.

This photo is of 12 year old editor/reporter for the Valsetz Star interviewing Governor Stassen during the event. The Capitol Journal of Salem covered her covering the event from Fircone (the McNary Farm) for the luncheon. Dorothy Ann Hobson had been the editor since she was at least 9 years old as evidenced by the stone in the Oregon Capitol State Park. Ms. Hobson was well known to Oregon and national politicans and Senator McNary was thrilled that she was able to make the trip from her small logging community in Polk County to his event. They kept in touch via letters. She got her start in the paper by being the local paper carrier. When the editor of the paper announced they would be giving up the newspaper business young Dorothy took over the work of the paper.

At the event, he spoke for nearly 30 minutes and then did the rounds with the press and ended the day in meetings with state and local party leaders. It was announced at sometime during all the festivities that Senator McNary would be returning to DC after Labor Day to resume his duties in the Senate. RNC Chairman Martin also mentioned that they would be sending McNary to the midwest to campaign for the Republican ticket in September and make at least 6 major campaign addresses. The first being on agricultural interests in the United States.

A few items have shown up over the years of the McNary Notificaton Day celebration. These items in the following photos all come from Oregon APIC member John Gearhart's personal collection. I will do my best to explain each item.

Here is a close up of McNary. You can hear a version of the speech McNary gave thanks to the Oregon Historical Society. I'm not sure what to make of this recording. They identify it as his acceptance speech at the RNC in Philadelphia. Yet, you can't hear any audience in the convention hall. The speech itself makes it hard to place. He thanks the GOP Convention for nominating him back in June, as if this speech was being recorded after the convention. He does mention his Nomination Committee and thanking his neighbors. This leads me to believe that this recording might be something he did after both the RNC and his notification event. If this was a live recording of either of those events you would hear the crowd.

Several articles mentioned that the crowd at the State Fair complex was very boisterous and at one point McNary even interacted with the crowd during the speech after a farmer went "Whoop! Whoop!'. I didn't hear McNary responding to that farmer in this speech either. So it leads me to believe that this might have been something the RNC asked him to record for the radio press.

Both of these are original press photos of the event. There is a rather large original program from the event that is very hard to find, even here in Oregon. If it was made for the press in attendance, that would explain the difficulty in finding a copy. All these national press people would leave the state after the event and the only ones that would have them here would be the local Oregon press that attended the event.

Here is side one with the cover. It contains a bio of Senator McNary, a special message from Governor Charles Sprague, and photos of the other two guest speakers at the event; Governor Stassen and Congressman Martin.

This side appears to contain signatures of all the members of the notification committee. The following are items that collectors may have come across, as they are ribbons and most people attending probably had some sort of ribbon to designate what part of the celebration they were part of that day. The Press ribbon comes up on ebay every now and then. I have yet to see another of the committeeman ribbon show up online or in auctions. We know that there were both Committeeman and Committeewoman in attendance at this event, so there may well be a Committeewoman version of the white and blue ribbon out there.

These are all the notification day events we have been able to come across here in Oregon. If you have an item not pictured here please send it to us or leave it in the comments. This one of the last notification day events held in the country. A fun note to end on, one of the local community bands that played for Senator McNary in the summer of 1940 was the Keizer Community Band. The Keizer Heritage Museum even has a display of the band featuring photos of members with Senator McNary at his farm. You can listen to the music of the band and see some photos in this video produced by the Keizer Historical Museum. Alice Rose Jones, a former member of the community band discusses meeting Senator McNary in 1940 and getting her photo taken with him.

If you would like to read about his remarks, here is a link to the Oregonian coverage of his speech in the newspaper the day after the event. I have made the entire page into a PDF file for easy for reading.

As most of us know, Senator McNary was not elected Vice President. McNary's popularity in Oregon could not even help the ticket carry his home state. The GOP won no states on the west coast that year. Franklin Roosevelt would be the first president ever elected to serve a third term and 1940 would be the last election of his presidency prior to the start of WWII. Charles McNary would be the last Oregonian to serve on the ticket of either the Democratic or Republican parties in a presidential election.

No word of any specific buttons aside from the buttons handed out by the Willkie-McNary Democratic Club of Oregon the Saturday following the notification event. The day of the event we know buttons were on hand and given out to the some 12,000 in attendance, but no photos have come to light that tell us what pins they were. Perhaps they were the first of the Willkie-McNary pins? The buttons handed out later that weekend by the Dems for Willkie club simply said 'I'm a Democrat for Willkie' The president of the club was Dellmore Lessard and the Vice President was Allen W. O'Connell. We will keep hunting for any McNary specific items from either his VP campaign or previous senate campaigns here in Oregon. Collectors are always asking and I always hate disappointing them. Perhaps, still in some attic or basement in Salem there is a box of items just waiting to be rediscovered.

You can read the LIFE magazine special about Senator McNary by clicking the magazine cover below. The first part of the magazine deals with Willkie in his hometown and then starts covering McNary around page 75.

The 2020 Conventions are giving us our own unique history this year. In many ways the Democratic Convention might end up looking a lot like a Notification Day event. Only Biden and a small group of staff and press are going to be allowed in the convention center in Milwaukee. The Republican Convention has already been moved once and now many potential attendees are citing concerns with COVID-19 as a reason to bow out of not attending the new event in Florida. I wonder if someone eighty years from now will be writing about what unique events these were in American politics.