Meet The Candidates – Earl Warren – April 10, 1952 – CBS Radio – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –
As the horserace for President of the United States got underway in 1952, initially one of the key contenders for the White House was California Governor Earl Warren. Warren enjoyed a wide popularity among constituents in California.
After his election as governor, Warren emerged as a potential candidate for president or vice president in the 1944 election. Seeking primarily to ensure his status as the most prominent Republican in California, he ran as a favorite son candidate in the 1944 Republican primaries. Warren won the California primary with no opposition, but Thomas Dewey clinched the party’s presidential nomination by the time of the 1944 Republican National Convention. Warren delivered the keynote address of the convention, in which he called for a more liberal Republican Party. Dewey asked Warren to serve as his running mate, but Warren was uninterested in the vice presidency and correctly believed that Dewey would be defeated by President Roosevelt in the 1944 election.
After his 1946 re-election victory, Warren began planning a run for president in the 1948 election. The two front-runners for the nomination were Dewey and Robert Taft, but Warren, Harold Stassen, Arthur Vandenberg, and General Douglas MacArthur each had significant support.[77] Prior to the 1948 Republican National Convention, Warren attempted to position himself as a dark horse candidate who might emerge as a compromise nominee. However, Dewey won the nomination on the third ballot of the convention. Dewey once again asked Warren to serve as his running mate, and this time Warren agreed. Far ahead in the polls against President Harry S. Truman, the Democratic nominee, Dewey ran a cautious campaign that largely focused on platitudes rather than issues.[79] Warren campaigned across the country on behalf of the ticket, but was frustrated by his inability to support specific policies. To the surprise of many observers, Truman won the election, and this became the only election Warren ever lost
After his 1950 re-election, Warren decided that he would seek the Republican nomination in the 1952 presidential election, and he announced his candidacy in November 1951. Taft also sought the nomination, but Dewey declined to make a third run for president. Dewey and his supporters instead conducted a long campaign to draft General Dwight D. Eisenhower as the Republican presidential nominee. Warren ran in three Republican presidential primaries, but won just a handful of delegates outside of his home state. In the California primary, he defeated a challenge from Thomas H. Werdel, whose conservative backers alleged that Warren had “abandoned Republicanism and embraced the objectives of the New Deal.” After Eisenhower entered the race, Warren realized that his only hope of nomination was to emerge as a compromise nominee at the 1952 Republican National Convention after a deadlock between supporters of Eisenhower and Taft.
Earl Warren is interviewed on this CBS Radio Program Presidential Profiles: Candidacy And Issues as one of the potential nominees in the 1952 Presidential election. This was first broadcast on April 10, 1952.
Note: Apologies for the terrible sound in places – news and documentaries are notoriously neglected where preservation is concerned and always get short shrift when it comes to filing and cataloging.
