Editor’s note: Mark Bushnell is a Vermont journalist and historian. He is the author of “Hidden History of Vermont” and “It Happened in Vermont.”
The governor was disgusted with his party and wasn’t afraid to say so. His party had lost its way, and in the process had lost its confidence, too. No wonder. The last election had been a disaster. The next one might only be worse. The incumbent president looked almost unbeatable, but the governor did nothing to dampen speculation that he had his eye on the presidency. It would be a long shot, but what did George Aiken have to lose?
Aiken’s flirtation with a run for the presidency is little remembered. Indeed, it seems only two researchers have looked at the events in depth. One, former State Archivist Gregory Sanford, wrote about them in an essay for Vermont History, the journal of the Vermont Historical Society. Referring to the hurdles any presidential candidate faces running from sparsely populated Vermont, Sanford’s piece is titled “You Can’t Get There From Here.” The late Sam Hand, who was a much-admired professor at the University of Vermont, also looked at the Aiken presidential boomlet in his history of the state Republican Party, “The Star That Set.”
In 1936, the national Republican Party was reeling. Franklin Roosevelt returned to office in a landslide over Republican Alf Landon. Only two states had thrown their electoral votes to Landon — Maine and Vermont. The election also devastated the GOP’s representation in Congress, leaving the party with only 88 members in the House (out of a total of 435) and 16 in the Senate (out of 96). Only four Republicans managed to win election as governor in 1936. Aiken was one of them.
As the new governor of one of only two states to resist the Roosevelt landslide, Aiken drew national attention, particularly within the party. This was the case even though Vermonters were just doing what they habitually had done for generations, voted Republican. Aiken was bemused by the attention. After all, it would have been a much bigger news story had Vermont voted Democratic, he noted.
Aiken’s sudden national fame was remarkable. Just six years earlier, he had been merely a first-term state representative from Putney, better known for his flower-show talks, which drew on his experience as a horticulturist, than for anything he said at the Statehouse. But he was ambitious. Aiken won election as speaker of the Vermont House only two years into legislative office and became lieutenant governor two years after that. Now, having served as lieutenant governor for only two years, he had become governor.
During the 1930s, America was wallowing in the depths of the Great Depression and voters were showing more faith in Democrats to get the country out of it. The Democrats brought with them a belief that large governmental programs could help solve problems.
Those large-scale solutions rankled Aiken, who believed in smaller government and local control, particularly when it came to natural resources. For that reason, he was opposing plans by the federal government to build dams on the Connecticut River and other rivers in its watershed, just as he had fought similar efforts by private electric companies. Vermont stood little chance of winning this fight with the federal government if it acted alone, so Aiken and the governors of New Hampshire, Connecticut and Massachusetts joined forces in 1937 to create the Connecticut River Valley Flood Control Commission. Aiken did not oppose purposes the dams would serve — generating electricity and preventing flooding like the region had suffered in 1936 — but he argued that Vermont could not afford to have its natural resources tapped “without just recompense.”
Utilities, he knew, would export much of the power at a time when many Vermont farms were without electricity. Aiken didn’t want the federal government taking control of the hydropower because he wanted Vermonters to determine how to use it to promote the state’s economic development. Perhaps not incidentally, one of dams would have flooded Aiken’s ancestral home in Dummerston. The Roosevelt administration fought the commission, arguing that flood control was the business of the federal government.
Aiken drew national attention for his battle with Washington, just as he had for his victory in the midst of the Democrats’ 1936 rout. He used his celebrity within the GOP to offer suggestions on how it could challenge the Democrats’ grip on power. Rather than just criticizing Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, he called for the party to offer alternatives, which Republicans argued would bring more relief to Americans while protecting local control. And he said Republicans needed to broaden their appeal by addressing the concerns of blue-collar workers. If the party insisted on representing the interests of only the wealthy, he warned, “the next question it will have to answer is what color mothballs do we prefer?”
Pundits and party insiders began mentioning his name as a possible challenger to Roosevelt in the 1940 election, which was still three years away. Leo Casey, a Burlington native and publicity director for the national Republican Party, suggested Aiken consider running and began finding ways to raise the governor’s stature. Aiken apparently decided that, if nothing else, being a possible presidential candidate would give him leverage in his disputes with the federal government and the national GOP.
In 1938, Aiken was offered the perfect platform for airing his views – an invitation to speak at the National Republican Club’s Lincoln Day dinner in New York. At Casey’s insistence, Aiken requested and got the most prestigious speaking slot, the one that would be broadcast nationally on the radio. Casey wanted Aiken to take advantage of the opportunity, suggesting he make sure his speech was provocative. Aiken said he would, and Casey leaked word to journalists that the speech would be a humdinger.
Aiken didn’t disappoint. Looking out at the GOP leaders amassed in splendor at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, he said that the greatest praise he could give Lincoln “on this, his anniversary, is to say that he would be ashamed of his party’s leadership today.”
Old Guard Republicans, at whom Aiken’s had aimed his attack, were outraged. Some vowed to make sure he was not even re-elected governor. At the same time, newspapers, apparently prodded by Casey, began referring to Aiken as a possible presidential candidate.
To boost Aiken’s image, Casey wanted to get Americans thinking about Vermont and its virtues through books and even possibly a movie about the Green Mountain Boys. In another way, however, he sought to distance Aiken from his home state and its minimal political clout. Instead of “Aiken of Vermont,” Casey repackaged his man as “Aiken of New England,” since the region packed far more electoral punch.
Aiken had become a political heavyweight. But few knew he wasn’t really interested in running for president. The same month he gave his Lincoln Day speech, Aiken confessed in a letter to his friend Ralph Flanders, a machine tool industry executive and later a U.S. senator, that he had grabbed onto the idea of a campaign and now wished he knew how to let go.
For political reasons, Aiken told few others. He used his newfound influence to nudge the GOP in the direct he wanted it to go, and as a threat to Roosevelt if his administration sought to usurp Vermont’s property rights.
The deception apparently worked. In 1939, the Roosevelt administration, distracted by other problems, gave up its dam-building plans. By standing up to the Democrats, and the leaders of his own party, Aiken had gotten what he wanted.
But when it came to serving in state government, Aiken wasn’t one to bide his time. Four years after becoming governor, he ran for the U.S. Senate. The seat he won in 1940 seemed to suit him. He remained in the Senate for 34 years.
