President Joe Biden’s performance in the first debate of 2024 has raised questions about a possible challenge to his re-election.
Florida Sen. Claude Pepper tried it in 1948, and it destroyed his bid for re-election two years later.
Pepper was the senator from Florida, first elected in 1936 in a special election. From the start, he was ambitious, never missing a chance to grab a headline. He was an unabashed supporter of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal, even when it cost him support in Florida.
When Roosevelt died in 1945, Harry Truman became president, and Pepper became bitter. He believed he was the one to carry on Roosevelt’s vision and had little respect for Truman.
A year before the Democratic Party Convention, Pepper endorsed Truman for re-election. “The president should be and will be nominated and should be and will be elected.”
But privately, he was considering a challenge to Truman. At first, he thought about a third-party bid, but former Vice President Henry Wallace was already staking out a third-party bid.
He decided to challenge Truman for the Democratic nomination. First, he would need the support of the Florida delegation. In 1940 and 1944, he was chairman of the Florida delegation, but by 1948, his popularity had fallen to the point that his leadership was in doubt.
Pepper was reelected in 1936, 1938 and 1944, but the results in 1944 were close, and his support for Russian leader Josef Stalin alienated many voters.
To convince Florida Democrats to support him, he said he was actually gathering supporters for Dwight Eisenhower, but Eisenhower made it clear he was not a presidential candidate for either party. As the Democratic National Convention began, Eisenhower sent Pepper a telegram. “I would refuse to accept the nomination.”
Pepper managed to capture just six of the state’s 20 delegates, a stinging rebuke. Despite the repudiation of his own party in Florida, Pepper became a leader in the effort to dump Truman. Pepper decided to launch his own campaign for president as the convention began in Philadelphia.
Pepper’s announcement was greeted with scorn. The New York Times said the Pepper candidacy was the “hottest and funniest” part of the convention. The newspaper said that while those against Truman were seeking someone to unify the opposition, Pepper’s candidacy “had the directly opposite effect.”
He claimed to have support from 22 states and could deny Truman the nomination on the first ballot, but when pressed, he said he could count on just 6½ votes, including his own.
He could not understand how Truman’s opponents were prepared to rally around a long list of candidates but would not support him. After just a day, he withdrew. “The best thing for me to do was to issue a clear, courageous statement and withdraw my candidacy.” He said he was releasing his delegates, not mentioning that he only had a handful.
A woman tried to ride a horse onto the convention floor, saying, “Everybody likes horses, everybody likes Pepper,” but a policeman turned her away.
Truman made no public comment about Pepper’s one-day candidacy but wrote to a friend, “The antics of one of the Florida Senators is right in line with what he usually does at every convention. He is merely a publicity hound.”
Newspapers in Florida condemned Pepper’s candidacy, with the Fort Lauderdale News predicting that it had destroyed any chance he had for re-election in 1950.
To the surprise of nearly everyone, Truman went on to win the election, upsetting Thomas Dewey, and he did not forget Pepper’s disloyalty.
Once the election was over, Truman became friends with George Smathers, then in his second term as a congressman from Miami. Smathers, almost alone among Florida Democrats, stood by Truman and campaigned for him. Truman easily carried Florida.
Smathers became a regular at the White House and was invited to visit Truman at Key West.
In 1949, Truman invited Smathers to the White House and told him to run for the Senate and defeat “That son of a bitch Claude Pepper.”
Pepper assumed he would have no opposition and dismissed a possible Smathers candidacy.
However, after one of the most bitter campaigns in political history, Pepper was defeated in the Democratic primary. He was out of politics for a dozen years, then returned as a member of the House of Representatives, achieving his greatest fame as a champion of the elderly. Smathers served three terms in the Senate before retiring.