Wendell Lewis Willkie (born Lewis Wendell Willkie) (February 18, 1892 – October 8, 1944) was a lawyer in the United States and the Republican nominee for the 1940 presidential election, despite having never held a prior elected political office. Although Willkie received more votes than any previous GOP candidate had ever managed to get (22.3 million votes), he lost to Franklin D. Roosevelt in an Electoral College landslide: 449 to 82 (Willkie carried only 10 states). Willkie was born in Elwood, Indiana, the son of Herman Willkie. At home, he was called by his middle name Wendell, so when an Army error in 1917 transposed his first and middle names, Willkie did not correct it as he preferred the new ordering. He was also a named partner at the now New York-based law firm of Willkie Farr & Gallagher.

Willkie was educated at Indiana University where he was a member of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity, and at the Indiana University School of Law - Bloomington. After fighting in World War I, Willkie moved to Akron, Ohio, and soon gained status in the local Democratic Party. In 1929, Willkie became a legal counsel for the New York-based Commonwealth & Southern Corporation, the country's largest electric utility holding company. He rose through the ranks of the company, and became president in 1933. He had been an active campaigner and a Roosevelt delegate at the 1932 Democratic National Convention, and might have seemed an unlikely candidate to challenge either Roosevelt or one of the president's favorite New Deal programs. He initially backed former Cleveland mayor, Newton D. Baker, in 1932, but once FDR captured the nomination, Willkie supported him and contributed to his campaign. He was enthusiastic to help the country out of the Great Depression.

Soon after the election, Roosevelt proposed legislation creating the Tennessee Valley Authority, an organization with far-reaching influence that promised to bring flood control and cheap electricity to the extremely poor Tennessee Valley. However, this organization would compete with existing power companies in the area, including Commonwealth & Southern. This prompted Willkie to become an active critic of the New Deal, especially the TVA. Willkie had stated publicly since 1930 that it would be unconstitutional for the federal government to enter the utility business, and now this was quickly becoming reality. In April of 1933, Willkie testified against the TVA legislation before the House of Representatives. His testimony compelled the House to limit the TVA's ability to build transmission lines that would compete with existing utility companies (including C & S). However, FDR got the Senate to remove those restrictions and the resulting law gave the TVA extremely broad power. Because the government-run TVA could borrow unlimited funds at low interest rates, C & S was unable to compete, and Willkie was forced to sell C & S to the TVA in 1939 for $78.6 million. Willkie formally switched parties in 1939 and began making speeches in opposition to Roosevelt's New Deal.

Long before the 1940 Republican National Convention, held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the three "main" candidates for the nomination were considered to be Senators Robert Taft of Ohio and Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan and Thomas E. Dewey, the "gangbusting" District Attorney from Manhattan. All three men had campaigned vigorously during the primary season, but only 300 of the 1,000 convention delegates had been pledged to a candidate by the time the convention opened. This left an opening for a dark horse candidate to emerge.

As a former Democrat and a Wall Street-based industrialist who had never before run for public office, Willkie seemed an unlikely candidate for the nomination. He had received backing from media magnates who helped to build a grassroots network; key Willkie supporters were Ogden Reid of the New York Herald Tribune, Roy Howard of the Scripps-Howard chain and John and Gardner Cowles, publishers of the Minneapolis Star and the Minneapolis Tribune, as well as the Des Moines Register and Look magazine. But Willkie's popularity was thinly spread, with a May 8 Gallup poll showing Dewey at 67% support among Republicans, followed by Vandenberg and Taft, with Willkie at a mere 3%.

To isolationists Willkie seemed one of them, saying, "No man has the right to use the great powers of the Presidency to lead the people, indirectly, into war"; the next day headlines blared, "MUST AVOID WAR, WILLKIE DECLARES."

The Nazis' rapid blitz into France shook public opinion to its roots, even as Taft was telling a Kansas audience that America must concentrate on domestic issues to prevent the New Deal from using the international crisis to extend its powers at home. In New York, Republican Congressman Hamilton Fish III warned that Roosevelt had become Churchill's willing accomplice in leading his nation to war against Germany to make the world safe for international communism. He denied being an isolationist, saying he was actually a non-interventionist who wanted negotiated settlements of disputes rather than American involvement in foreign wars. Nevertheless, sympathy for the British was mounting daily. By mid-June, little over one week before the convention, Gallup reported Willkie was in second place with 17% as Dewey started slipping. Willkie was stumping the country getting the votes of businessmen and German-Americans. (His father was a German immigrant.) As the delegates were arriving at Philadelphia, Gallup reported Willkie had surged to 29%, Dewey had slipped 5 more points to 47%, and Taft, Vandenberg and Hoover trailed at 8, 8, and 6% respectively.

Hundreds of thousands, perhaps as many as one million, telegrams urging support for Willkie poured in, many from "Willkie Clubs" that had sprung up across the country. Millions more signed petitions circulating everywhere. At the convention itself, keynote speaker Governor Harold Stassen of Minnesota announced for Willkie and became his official floor manager. Hundreds of vocal Willkie supporters packed the upper galleries of the convention hall. Willkie's amateur status and fresh face appealed to delegates as well as voters. The delegations were selected not by primaries but by party leaders in each state, and they had a keen sense of the fast changing pulse of public opinion. Gallup found the same thing in data not reported until after the convention: Willkie had pulled ahead among Republican voters by 44% to only 29% for the collapsing Dewey. On the first ballot no one came close to a majority. As delegates belonging to "favorite son" candidates were released, the incessant cries of "We want Willkie" inside the hall mirrored not only public opinion at home, but the political calculus inside the heads of the delegates. Finally, on the sixth ballot, Willkie received a majority of the ballots cast and won the nomination.

Having given little thought to who he would select as his vice-presidential nominee, Willkie left the decision to convention chairman Joe Martin, who suggested Senate Minority Leader Charles L. McNary of Oregon. Despite the fact that McNary had spearheaded a "Stop Willkie" campaign late in the balloting, the candidate picked him to be his running mate and McNary was nominated by acclamation. Willkie crusaded at a high emotional pitch against the New Deal and the government's alleged lack of military preparedness. During the campaign, Roosevelt preempted the military issue by expanding military contracts and instituting a military draft. Willkie supported the draft but then reversed his approach and accused FDR of warmongering. http://www.nps.gov/archive/elro/glossary/wilkie-wendell.htm "The anti-Roosevelt underground campaign in 1940 was venomous, and (US Secretary of State) Flynn accused the Republicans of conducting the 'most vicious, most shameful campaign since the time of Lincoln'. Much of the abuse centered on Eleanor and the Roosevelt family" (Lash, p.629). Eleanor Roosevelt herself wrote, "We realize now that Mr Willkie was backed by forces which were a greater menace than many of us were willing to believe. There was a fascist tendency for an appeasement policy toward (Nazi) Germany which terrifies many of us and makes us feel that the decision of the Willkie backers to keep up their organization is none too good for the country" (Lash, p.633)

On election day Roosevelt received 27 million votes to Willkie's 22 million, and in the Electoral College, Roosevelt defeated Willkie 449 to 82. (Willkie carried 10 states: Maine, Vermont, Michigan, Indiana, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Colorado.)

After the election, Willkie became one of Roosevelt's most unlikely allies. To the chagrin of many in his party, Willkie called for greater national support for controversial Roosevelt initiatives such as the Lend-Lease Act and embarked on a new campaign against isolationism in America. On July 23, 1941, he urged unlimited aid to the United Kingdom in its struggle against Nazi Germany. That same year he traveled to Britain and the Middle East as Roosevelt's personal representative, and in 1942 visited the USSR and China in the same capacity. In 1943, Willkie wrote One World, a plea for international peacekeeping after the war. Extremely popular, millions of copies of the book sold. In 1941, Willkie helped to establish Freedom House together with Eleanor Roosevelt.

Willkie spoke often of the need to end racism in America, and addressed a convention of the NAACP in 1942, one of the most prominent whites ever to do so at the time. When a violent race riot broke out in Detroit on June 20, 1943, Willkie went on national radio to criticize Republicans and Democrats both for ignoring "the Negro question", and to illustrate the similarity between racism and Fascism, saying "The desire to deprive some of our citizens of their rights -- economic, civic or political -- has the same basic motivation as actuates the Fascist mind when it seeks to dominate whole peoples and nations. It is essential that we eliminate it at home as well as abroad." During this time Willkie also worked with Walter White, executive secretary of the NAACP, to convince Hollywood to change its portrayal of blacks on film.

According to Gardner Cowles, publisher of the Des Moines Register and a close associate of Willkie's, his visit to China led to a bizarre consequence: Madame Chiang Kai-shek, the hugely ambitious wife of China's ruler, developed the idea that she could seduce and marry Willkie, use China's wealth to help him become president in 1944, and thus become the most powerful woman in the world. Cowles claimed that the affair was consummated in China, and that on a visit to the U.S. a few months later, she told him "If Wendell could be elected, then he and I would rule the world. I would rule the Orient and Wendell would rule the western world." He pointedly did not dismiss the possibility that Willkie, had he been nominated, might have accepted her highly improbable offer on some level.http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/11-4-2003-47260.asp

In the 1944 presidential election Willkie once again sought the Republican nomination, choosing his wife's hometown, Rushville, Indiana, as his campaign headquarters. But his liberal progressive views gained little support due to the rightward shift of the Republican Party. Willkie did not support the eventual 1944 Republican nominee, Thomas Dewey. Willkie began working with the new Liberal Party of New York to launch a new national party, but his unexpected death ended that movement.

In April, 1941 Willkie joined the law firm of Miller, Boston & Owen and shortly thereafter changed the name to Willkie, Owen, Otis, Farr & Gallagher (and presently, Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP).

After surviving several heart attacks, Willkie finally succumbed, dying on October 8, 1944 at age fifty-two. His 1940 running mate, McNary, had died six months earlier, the only occasion where both halves of a major party ticket passed away during the term for which they sought election. Shortly before Willkie died, he told a friend, that if he could write his own epitaph and had to choose between "here lies a president" or "here lies one who contributed to saving freedom," he would prefer the latter. Eleanor Roosevelt in her October 12, 1944 My Day column eulogized Willkie as a "man of courage.... (whose) outspoken opinions on race relations were among his great contributions to the thinking of the world." She concluded, "Americans tend to forget the names of the men who lost their bid for the presidency. Willkie proved the exception to this rule." (1)

Willkie is buried in East Hill Cemetery, Rushville, Indiana. In honor of his brief time practicing law in Akron as well as his national reputation, the Bar of the Summit County Courthouse erected a brass bas relief which is prominently displayed in the main hall.

Willkie's name was prominently mentioned by keynote speaker and Democratic Senator Zell Miller at the 2004 Republican National Convention. Miller praised Willkie as a politician who embodied a non-partisan spirit of co-operation during wartime and praised his support of President Roosevelt's creation of a military draft. He compared John Kerry negatively and blasted the senator for being critical of President Bush's foreign policy. Miller did not note, however, that Willkie had been a Democrat for the majority of his adult life and had supported FDR in 1932 and 1936.

State of the Union, a play by Howard Lindsay and Russell Crouse which was filmed by Frank Capra in 1948, is loosely inspired by Willkie and the role played in his campaign by his mistress Irita Bradford Van Doren.

Willkie is also featured as a character in Philip Roth's counterfactual history novel, The Plot Against America, in which Willkie opposes Charles Lindbergh in the 1940 presidential election.

A large dorm complex at Indiana University is named after him, and for several decades was home to the Willkie Co-op, an experimental housing cooperative that emphasized student operation of dormitory service.

In a humorous reference in the Bugs Bunny animated cartoon Falling Hare, Bugs is pestered by a gremlin while trying to fly a World War II bomber. When Bugs realizes what the gremlin is, he timidly asks, "Could it be a - [whispering] gremlin?" In a foreign accent, the gremlin shouts in Bugs' ear, "It ain't Vendell Villkie!" This recalls an incident at the 1940 Republican National Convention when the head of a state delegation from the Midwest announced "two votes for Villkie" in a Scandinavian accent. This sound bite, broadcast on nationwide radio, enjoyed a brief vogue as a humorous catchphrase.

In alternative story novel by S.M. Stirling Marching Through Georgia it is mentioned that Roosevelt retired after his second term and Willkie became his successor as President.

# Eleanor Roosevelt, "My Day." October 12, 1944.

*Kavanagh, Dennis. ed. A Dictionary of Political Biography: Who's Who in Twentieth Century World Politics. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, 505. *Lash, Joseph. "Eleanor and Franklin". W W Norton, New York (1971) *Roosevelt, Eleanor. "My Day." October 12, 1944. * Barnard, Ellsworth. Wendell Willkie, fighter for freedom (1966) * Madison, James H., ed. Wendell Willkie: Hoosier Internationalist. Indiana U. Press, 1992. 184 pp. * Neal, Steve. Dark Horse: A Biography of Wendell Willkie (1989) * Parmet, Herbert S. and Marie B. Hecht. Never Again: A President Runs for a Third Term (1968) * Peters, Charles. Five Days in Philadelphia: 1940, Wendell Willkie, and the Political Convention That Freed FDR to Win World War II (2006)

* Willkie, Wendell L. An American Program (1944) * Willkie, Wendell L. One World (1943)

* Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site * 1940 Time magazine cover (featuring correct spelling of his surname) * Willkie Farr & Gallagher website * Academic-style site on Willkie * Freedom House

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