Subseries: Patrick Lucey, 1985 April 10
Note

• Access online.
• Also on Audio 1030A/64-65.

INTRODUCTION

BIOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUND
Scope and Content Note: Born in La Crosse and grew up in Ferryville. Father, Gregory Charles Lucey, ran a grocery and general store in Ferryville. Mother's maiden name was Ella McNamara. He is the oldest of seven children. Campion High School, Prairie du Chien. Attended St. Thomas College, 1935-37, then returned home to run a grocery for three years which his father had acquired. Went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1940. Attended for two semesters. Was drafted in August 1941 and served in the military for four and a half years. Discharged on Christmas day, 1945. Graduated in June 1946 from UW.

EARLY POLITICAL INTEREST
Scope and Content Note: In college he was interested, but did not run for class office and was not involved with the Young Democrats or the Young Progressives. Recalls the Smith campaign of 1928, probably because his family was the only Irish Catholic family in town. Very interested in the 1932 Franklin Roosevelt campaign; attended Roosevelt's victory party in Prairie du Chien, held in the lobby of William Carroll's hotel. Could name all the members of Roosevelt's first cabinet. Parents thought of themselves as Democrats, like most Irish Catholics, but thought well of the La Follettes. Recalls attending a church picnic in Glen Haven during Bob La Follette's 1928 campaign. Also, recalls a speech in Ferryville by Phil La Follette. In 1940, the first election in which he could vote, he voted for Roosevelt for president, Progressives on the state level, and a number of Republicans at the county level.

BY 1946, CONSIDERED HIMSELF A NEW DEAL DEMOCRAT
Scope and Content Note: Did not attend the Progressive Party convention in 1946. Actively supported the local Democratic slate and organized a rally for that slate in Ferryville. Did some campaign work for Frank Antoine, who was running as a Democrat for the state assembly.

1948 ASSEMBLY RACE
Scope and Content Note: Antoine decided to run for Congress, which left the Democratic assembly slot open on the ticket. Antoine asked Lucey to run for the assembly. “At first blush it looked like kind of a hopeless deal because our assemblyman was the speaker of the assembly, Don McDowell. But then I looked at the Blue Book and saw that Frank came within two hundred votes of beating him in '46, which was not a great year for Democrats.” Lucey ran and was elected, Republicans had a tough primary and the loser then ran as an independent, pulling enough votes from the incumbent to permit Lucey to win. Had there not been an independent candidacy, Lucey may well have won anyway, but the independent candidacy “assured my victory.”

CANNOT RECALL WHICH PRIMARY HE VOTED IN IN 1946, BUT WOULD GUESS HE VOTED FOR LA FOLLETTE

FIRST INVOLVEMENT WITH THE DOC
Scope and Content Note: Subscribed to the Capital Times. Recalls reading John Wyngard's column in the La Crosse Tribune, from which he got “to know the cast of characters”--Bob Tehan and the like. “Except for some inkling of what was going on, I really was sort of in the dark, and was sort of a loner out there in Crawford County because I had these ideas that, since the Progressive Party had collapsed with Bob La Follette's loss in '46, that the Democratic Party was the way to go and that we had to turn the Democratic Party into a liberal vehicle. That was why I was so adamant about Carl Thompson winning over our local leader Bill Carroll (in 1948).” Came to Madison in June 1948 to a convention held at Central High School. “That was a real eye-opener for me because for the first time I saw people like Horace Wilkie, Carl Thompson, and Henry Reuss.... That was the first time I realized that what I was doing out in Crawford County was really part of a movement and that I was very much in sync with what these people were doing with whom I'd had no communication at all.”

1948 DEMOCRATIC SLATE
Scope and Content Note: Lucey not too involved in preparing the slate. “My channel of communication in all that was Jim Doyle.” Henry Reuss did not want to run for lieutenant governor because he had lost the mayor of Milwaukee election and “didn't feel he wanted to get bruised up a second time in the same year. As it turns out, if he had run, he would have been elected.”

ROLE OF DEMOCRATS ELECTED TO THE LEGISLATURE IN 1948
Scope and Content Note: “I think we saw it as an opportunity to make a record for the Democratic Party.... I had my own legislative program as a freshman legislator, very much in the minority. I introduced a tobacco marketing bill, which is one of the issues that I had campaigned on. I was very involved in reform of elementary and secondary education. And I remember I used to spend a lot of time down in the state superintendent's office and we didn't have computers in those days; and so every time we came up with a new aid formula I would apply it to three Crawford County districts to see” how three different sized districts were affected. Sponsored a bill to integrate the National Guard and the public schools. Also had a bill on fair employment practices and a “little Hoover commission” to reorganize state government in the interest of efficiency. Republicans ignored his and other Democratic measures, but “we did make a record.” Imposed a lot of roll call votes on the Republican majority. Worked closely with the Democratic senators on the budget. Was appointed to the agriculture committee. The legislature was very understaffed. The chair of the agriculture committee, a dentist from Walworth County, had a very safe district and did not bother to answer his constituent mail. “And so I had access to the secretary for the committee to handle the voluminous correspondence that I was sending back to Crawford County and to the whole third district, because afterall I was district chairman of the party and I was trying hard to get the district organized with the view to running for Congress in 1950.” Because the legislature paid so poorly, “I felt that as far as politics was concerned, it was either up or out, that I couldn't afford to stay in the legislature at a hundred dollars a month.” Was basically a fulltime legislator. “A wonderful relationship with some” of the old Progressives in the legislature. “They had utter contempt for the leadership of the Republican Party at that time--Vernon Thomson and Mark Catlin.” “Some of them had the rule that they'd vote with the leadership on procedure, but they'd vote with us on substance.”

ORGANIZING LOCAL DOC UNITS
Scope and Content Note: Travelled a lot with Tom Fairchild, taking turns as the presider and the featured speaker. “If we could get them to sign up for their membership and elect officers all on one trip, we figured that was a very successful evening. And usually it was only possible because somebody else had made a preliminary trip into the county in advance to get things setup and to get names to send invitations to and all that sort of thing.”

END OF TAPE 60, SIDE 1

INTRODUCTION

MORE ON ORGANIZING LOCAL DOC UNITS
Scope and Content Note: Tried to avoid direct confrontations with the statutory party. Some statutory chairmen would resist; some would welcome the new effort. In many of the rural counties, the statutory party people were interested only in postmasterships and rural mailcarrier jobs. Many were Irish Catholics “because back in the early '30s that seemed to be almost synonymous with being a Democrat.” “I had one chairman tell me about what a wonderful relationship he had with the Republicans over in the courthouse. He said, 'You know, I don't challenge them and they don't challenge me. We get along just fine.' Which meant that the Republicans ran unopposed.” If the organizing was in his part of the state, Lucey would do the advance work. Recalls trying to organize Racine County: Jerry Flynn and Sam Rizzo were leaders of two different factions. Three or four hundred people showed up. When it was time to ask for nominations of officers for the Racine DOC, one moved and the other seconded that nominations be put off for a month or so because the attendence was not large enough to be representative, “which said to me that neither of them was sure he had a majority.” On the other hand, often it was difficult to turn out enough people to have a decent election. In Iowa County, the statutory chairman did not like the idea of the parallel organization and ran for DOC chairman because his wife was acting postmistress and he wanted her to keep her job. Reuss and Lucey were running the meeting and had their own favorite candidate for county chair. The guy they did not want to win, won by one vote out of seventeen cast. “We counted them several times, but the result was always the same. We finally, with long faces, I'm sure, announced the result that this gentleman had been elected chairman of the new party as well as continuing to be chairman of the statutory party.” In urban counties labor was very much in evidence and many former Progressives came to these meetings. In Racine, Jerry Flynn represented traditional Democrats. In Milwaukee, former socialists came to the meetings.

1949 FOUNDING CONVENTION OF THE DOC
Scope and Content Note: Recalls no big issues. Enthusiasm. Lucey chaired the agriculture committee.

DOC CONTROLLED POST OFFICE PATRONAGE AT LEAST BY 1951
Scope and Content Note: Lucey was hired as DOC executive director after his defeat in the 1950 congressional race. He worked at that job from January 1951 until September 1952 when he resigned to run Fairchild's campaign for the senate. Jerry Fox was chair of both the statutory party and the DOC for part of that time. “At any rate, it was very clear that post office patronage was in the hands of the party that I worked for, because I used to dictate letters to the Post Office Department for Fox's signature indicating our choice.” National Committeeman and Committeewoman were selected by the delegates to the national convention. Lucey does not recall how vacancies were filled, however.

1950 CONGRESSIONAL RACE
Scope and Content Note: Did not feel he had much of a chance. Felt that in order to elect a U.S. senator or a governor, “we had to do a lot better in those southwestern ten counties than we had done in the past, and that by mounting a really effective campaign for Congress and, in preparation for that campaign, getting people to run for the various courthouse jobs and getting legislative candidates, that I would improve the chances of Tom Fairchild in the senate race and Carl Thompson in the gubernatorial race. And that was a lot of my motivation in making the effort. Plus the fact that I had the feeling that Gardner Withrow, who had been a Progressive in good standing in his youth and had come out of the railroad brother- hoods...that he had broken with his tradition, had voted for Taft-Hartley, and that there were ample grounds in terms of the issues to oppose him. And yet, because he came out of the brotherhoods, the conservative labor group tended to support him.” Strangely, Withrow was endorsed by both the Republican Voluntary Committee and the AFL. Lucey did receive more votes than any Democrat had previously received in that congressional district. Withrow, like most Republicans at the time, pretty much ignored his opponent, Lucey. Actually Lucey thought for a time that he might have a conservative opponent because a conservative had received the RVC endorsement during the primary, but another conservative entered the primary and split the conservative vote. Withrow won the primary with only a bare plurality. “I did manage to get full slates of candidates in most of the ten counties.”

MORE ON 1948 ASSEMBLY ELECTION
Scope and Content Note: Truman got more votes in Lucey's assembly district than Lucey did. Lucey was invited to ride on the Truman campaign train, which was going near Crawford County. “Well, my first thought was, 'Will that help or hurt me in my district?' Well then my ego got in the way of my judgement and I decided that the thing to do was to ride on the president's train irrespective of what effect it might have.” This is when he first met Hubert Humphrey. Lucey was impressed that Truman had something different to say to each local candidate to whom he was introduced.

MARGUERITE ROGERS RAN FOR LUCEY'S ASSEMBLY SEAT IN 1950
Scope and Content Note: Lucey persuaded Marguerite Rogers, who had been elected register of deeds seven times in a row in Crawford County, to run for his assembly seat, feeling “she would be a cinch to be elected to the assembly.” She lost. Rogers' county level elections had been an aberration. She was quite receptive to the DOC.

1950 ELECTIONS
Scope and Content Note: People were very enthused after the 1948 showing of the Democratic Party, but Bob Tehan warned that it would take ten years to elect a Democratic governor. “I think a lot of people weren't in on that conversation and thought that we could do it a lot quicker. and who knows, if it hadn't been for the war in (Korea), '50 might have been a different outcome. We got beat up terribly on that. Somehow McCarthy and these guys were able to make the charge stick that the Truman administration was soft on communism even at the every moment that we were killing people for being communists in (Korea).” “Joe-McCarthy in 1950 came into the Checkerboard Inn in Prairie du Chien and described Pat Lucey as a 'Commiecrat.'” Early in 1950, however, things looked good and this lured four Democrats into the Democratic senatorial primary.

1950 DEMOCRATIC SENATORIAL PRIMARY
Scope and Content Note: Tom Fairchild's father did not hold out much hope for Tom being elected. Tom was nearing forty years of age. His father thought he could be reelected attorney general. “So his father said, 'Well Tom, better to start the practice of law at forty than at forty-two.'” Democratic senatorial primary had four candidates, “a very interesting combination.” “I wanted Tom to win that thing, but as a candidate for Congress out there in the third district, I was very careful....”

END OF TAPE 60, SIDE 2

INTRODUCTION

MORE ON THE 1950 SENATE CAMPAIGN
Scope and Content Note: Lucey stayed neutral because he would have to work with the winner during the general election.

PRE-PRIMARY ENDORSEMENTS
Scope and Content Note: “You know, we inherited from the La Follettes this notion that the party shouldn't endorse and that the primary should be free and open and so forth. It was almost as though that there was something crude or corrupting about endorsing fellow candidates.” Lucey had some uneasiness with the no endorsement policy because it was “inherited from the very pure La Follette progressives when, of course, in the La Follette days the slate-making occurred probably with less democracy than occurs in a convention setting.” Since old Bob had been the victim of slate-making by the Republicans, the Progressives opposed endorsements by conventions. Lucey is surprised that 1200 to 1400 people will show up for a convention “that is little more than just a get together and an occasion to adopt a platform with some planks that the candidates will wisely not take very seriously. It's amazing to me that people continue to come to conventions when they don't really have much to say about who's going to be the nominee of the party.” They come, apparently, to renew acquaintances and to simply be with like-minded people.

LUCEY BECAME EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE DOC IN PART BECAUSE OF JOE McCARTHY
Scope and Content Note: He does not know whose idea it was. He met with a group of six or eight in Madison--Thompson, Doyle, Wilkie, Virginia Hart. “The idea was that we had reached the point where if we could put somebody in the field to organize these counties and get ready.... And it was tied up to the McCarthy thing, too. In fact, I wouldn't have done it, but I really, as I look back on it, I had an exaggerated notion of the importance of Joe McCarthy.” An evil man who had a “deadly influence on many aspects of government and of life in this country.” Lucey thought of him at the time as a potential American Hitler, but realizes now his appeal was too narrow for that. Lucey felt the Democratic Party had the responsibility of eliminating McCarthy and McCarthyism from America. “So, when I took the job in January of '51 to be the party organizer, it was with the thought of preparing the party for that battle of the century when we would put our best and strongest candidate up against Joe McCarthy. And so it was very logical that once the primary was over and Tom Fairchild had defeated Henry Reuss that I should be asked to give up my party duties and become the campaign manager.” Lucey had great respect and some awe for party chair Jim Doyle and was concerned that his switch to the Fairchild campaign might not be considered appropriate. But Doyle said, “What's this all about. Our purpose was to beat Joe McCarthy and of course you ought to move up to take over the campaign.” Lucey had to recruit a replacement to run the get-out-the-vote and other things he was responsible for during the campaign as party executive director. He recruited John Gronouski, who was then a graduate student at the University. Lucey offered him the job over the phone simply on the recommendation of Esther Kaplan, without ever having met him. “And years later we used to laugh about it because he made an all-out effort to get out that vote, and of course what vote did he get out? He got out an Eisenhower vote.”

DUTIES AS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF DOC
Scope and Content Note: “The party organization requires constant maintenance.” Finding replacements for county chairmen; recruitment of candidate for local offices and the legislature. “You've got to worry about your slate, your state slate, and in 1952 we were still out recruiting people to run for lieutenant governor and attorney general and so forth. The business of having four qualified people running for the U.S. senate in 1950 was not a typical situation by any means.”

FINANCING THE POSITION OF EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AND OTHER PARTY EXPENSES
Scope and Content Note: Henry Maier opposed hiring an executive director. As a compromise to get Maier's support, Jim Doyle agreed that Lucey's salary would be raised from sources outside the state. The Committee for an Effective Congress “took on the responsibility from Jim of raising the money.” Was paid 500 dollars a month plus expenses. Was married in the fall of 1951 and had a baby in June of 1952. All the money for his salary and expenses was raised from outside the state. Other money for running the party was raised from membership dues. The annual Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner raised some money at 25 dollars a plate. A contribution plan. Pledges from postmasters and rural mailcarriers. “Usually their enthusiasm for that had a rather short half life, I'd say.”

1952 SENATORIAL PRIMARIES
Scope and Content Note: Lucey had exercised “occupational neutrality” during the primary. “It was really a very sad experience as far as Henry (Reuss) was concerned because Henry had run and lost for mayor, had begged off for running for lieutenant governor when he could have won, and then ran for attorney general in 1950 and lost.... Here we are in '52 and he devoted a year of his life to running for the senate. Fairchild comes on the scene late in the game and beat him in the primary.” Meanwhile, Len Schmitt, who was to the left of Harry Truman, ran in the Republican primary against McCarthy. “That campaign generated a lot of interest and a lot of money.”

1952 SENATE CAMPAIGN
Scope and Content Note: After the primary, Lucey's first job was to convince people, especially those outside Wisconsin, that McCarthy could still be beat. Fairchild ran better in November than Reuss would have. Unlikely he could have won, even if he had started campaigning a year earlier. Given the amount of straight ticket voting in those days, it is unlikely Fairchild could have created a greater gap between McCarthy's vote and Eisenhower's than he actually did. Anecdote about almost getting secretary of state Fred Zimmerman, a Republican, to permit his name to be affixed to four hundred thousand penny postcards asking voters to vote for him and to cross over and vote for Fairchild for senate. When the postcards were ready to go to press, Lucey called him to read the final copy and Zimmerman backed out. Lucey was only three blocks from the capitol and Zimmerman's office when he made the call. “And to this day I think if I had taken that proof up to him in person instead of on the telephone, it might have made the difference.” Hard to say if that would have made the difference in the election. Does not recall how he arranged this with Zimmerman, but it might have been through his son, Bob Zimmerman, who was a friend of Lucey's from his days in the assembly. Anecdote about Edward P. Morgan, who had been J. Edgar Hoover's specialist on communism and who broke with Hoover. Morgan thought the efforts of the FBI to root out communists were being undermined by McCarthy. The Sunday before the election, the Fairchild people brought Morgan to Milwaukee to do a half hour show on Wisconsin's only TV station, WTMJ; a half hour of prime time cost 500 dollars. WTMJ, the day of the show, insisted it get a copy of Morgan's text before letting him go on the air. Morgan had no text, but dictated his speech to Lucey's wife, Jean. “So he walked down to the station with this text in his briefcase and the station manager didn't even think to ask for it.” He then gave his speech and it was almost verbatim what he had earlier dictated. “It was a very telling message.” Sent tapes of it to radio stations for broadcast the day before the election. “McCarthy was so upset by this that he finally acknowledged that he had opposition and he got Hoover to issue some kind of a statement trying to discredit Morgan.... It got to him.” The day after the telecast, Lucey was sitting in a Milwaukee restaurant and everyone within earshot was talking about that TV show. Lucey had questioned whether there were enough TV sets in Wisconsin to justify spending 500 dollars for this show, but someone came up with the statistic that there were as many TV sets in Wisconsin in 1952 as there had been in the entire nation in 1948. “Could have been five, but that somehow impressed me. So I said, 'Okay, we spend the 500 dollars.'” Lucey tried to get Fairchild to sharpen his attack in his speeches, which were often filled with qualifying phrases.

“JOE MUST GO” MOVEMENT
Scope and Content Note: Lucey did not get very involved in this, though sympathetic. Wanted it to succeed, but did not play an active role.

LUCEY BIOGRAPHY AFTER THE 1952 ELECTION
Scope and Content Note: Lucey returned as executive director of the DOC after the 1952 election. In December he presented a budget to the administrative committee and that budget contained no line item for his salary. He had decided to phase out the position because the party could not afford it any longer. Became a real estate salesman. Went from January 20, 1952 to sometime in March before making his first sale. Bought an interest in a lumber yard later that year and sold out six months later. Ran Jim Doyle's campaign for governor in the 1954 primary. Ran Elliot Walstead's primary campaign for U.S. senator in 1956. In 1957 he was chairman of Proxmire's campaign committee and later that year ran for and was elected party chair.

DOYLE'S 1954 PRIMARY CAMPAIGN FOR GOVERNOR
Scope and Content Note: “My two heroes in that period, other than Adlai Stevenson, were Doyle and Fairchild. On any issue where I found myself in disagreement with them, I went back and reexamined my position.” In 1952, the party was “grateful” to have Proxmire heading the ticket. It had been between him and Herman Jessen, “and Herman I don't think would have set the world on fire as a candidate.” But Proxmire lost by several hundred thousand votes.

END OF TAPE 61, SIDE 1

INTRODUCTION

MORE ON THE 1954 DOYLE CAMPAIGN
Scope and Content Note: Fran Rose spoke with Lucey about how Proxmire had done so poorly in 1952 and “we ought not to have to settle for Proxmire again” and that Doyle could probably be persuaded to run. Lucey drafted a letter to about a hundred party leaders around the state, asking their opinion of Doyle's potential candidacy. By a margin of three or four to one, the responses favored giving Proxmire another chance. Lucey took the responses to Doyle. “And Jim looks at this big thick stack of Proxmire supporters and leafs through this little thin stack of Doyle supporters. He says, 'Well, I can sense a ground swell as quickly as the next one. I think I'll run.'” Not a hard hitting campaign. Very gentlemanly. Underestimated Proxmire's grassroots support, his energy and his willingness to spend his own money on the campaign. Proxmire bought television time of fifteen minute segments or less in Madison, Milwaukee, Green Bay, and Wausau. He would then make a swing each week through these cities to do his TV spots, sandwiched around plant gate visits, etc. Lucey thought the warm Doyle would show up the tough Proxmire on TV, but it did not work that way at all, but rather the reverse. Did not have much money for the campaign. In fact, during the last days of the campaign, “I had Doyle on the phone raising money instead of making speeches.” First inkling “of what we were up against” came when Lucey took a list of 500 party people in Dane County and started calling them and they all asked why Lucey was calling instead of the candidate Doyle since Proxmire had called these same people personally. Campaign money came mainly from party members. “The record will show that we got 1500 dollars from the Teamsters and we had great reservations about whether or not we should accept it, but we were so desperate, we finally did.”

ELLIOT WALSTEAD CAMPAIGN IN 1956 SENATORIAL PRIMARY
Scope and Content Note: Lucey did not run the campaign, but worked for Walstead. Had recruited Walstead to run for attorney general in 1952, “and we all had great admiration for Elliot. And we lost the primary again, to Henry Maier.”

BILL PROXMIRE'S SENATORIAL CANDIDACY IN 1957
Scope and Content Note: Lucey had always been '“less than enthused”' about Proxmire candidacies. But he was on his way home from work In 1957 and heard of McCarthy's death, “and I got home and I said, 'I think the only way the Democrats can win this thing is for Proxmire to be the nominee.' And my wife agreed. And I picked up the phone and I called Bill. And the next morning he came by for breakfast and I gave him a check for 500 dollars, which was a lot of money in those days, and agreed too that he'd use my name in any way that he wanted. And so he said, 'Well, all right, you're the chair- man of the committee.' Now the fact is that as far as running a Proxmire campaign, nobody runs a Proxmire campaign except Bill.” The day before the election Lucey called Proxmire's wife to let her know he did not think Proxmire would win and to try to prepare her for the let down. “And she says, 'But Pat, you don't understand, we're going to win.' So I hung up the phone after a few pleasantries and I thought, 'My God, I waited too long to call her. She's locked in on this thing.' So much for my sagacity in figuring out how the campaign was going to come out.”

WHY LUCEY RAN FOR PARTY CHAIR IN 1957
Scope and Content Note: Proxmire felt the party did not do for his campaign what he thought it should have done. Proxmire became determined that Philleo Nash be replaced as party chair at the October convention. Proxmire instructed Lucey to find a candidate for party chair whom Proxmire could support. “I wound up volunteering my own services 'cause I couldn't find anybody. There were so damned many factions in the party and I had to get somebody that was acceptable to the Proxmire people and acceptable to the old Doyle bunch and so forth. And it just became more and more apparent that I was the only one that could do it. And I didn't go into it wanting to run for chairman. In fact, that was the last thing I wanted to do. Finally, when Jean decided that she could live with it, I went back to Prox and said that I would do it.” It was alleged that Philleo Nash had turned down a check from the DNC for the Proxmire campaign.

MORE ON THE 1957 SENATE RACE
Scope and Content Note: A lot of people did not like Proxmire. Nash made an effort, through hearings around the state, to find a candidate other than Proxmire. An effort was made to get Reuss to run. Clem Zablocki finally ran and challenged Proxmire to a debate. Proxmire accepted, but later had a schedule conflict and sent Lucey as his stand in, which upset the Zablocki people. Anecdote about Melvin Laird, “ever the mischief maker,” who asked Reuss, in the company of Zablocki, if he would oppose the dean of the Wisconsin Democratic delegation in Washington if that person (Zablocki) decided to run for the senate. Reuss, thinking Zablocki would never run, said he would not. “That was all the encouragement that Clem needed.”

PARTY FACTIONALISM
Scope and Content Note: Nash was elected party chair narrowly over Horace Wilkie. That was the only convention Lucey did not attend and he thinks he might have been able to influence the outcome if he had. Most people were on the same side of things--personalities or issues-- convention after convention.

END OF TAPE 61, SIDE 2