Press enter after choosing selection

Sesquicentennial Interview: Neil Staebler

When: 1974

This interview was conducted in 1974 as part of the I Remember When television series produced by the Ann Arbor Public Library.

Transcript

  • [00:00:12] NEIL STAEBLER: This area has been heavily Republican over a long period of time. Of course, the whole state was. I remind you that from the time of Stephen Mason to Franklin Roosevelt. The only times the state voted Republican were once in the 1890s, and again, for Woodbridge Ferris, when the [INAUDIBLE] Party split the Republican Party. Otherwise, it was a one-party state. Washtenaw County was faithfully faithful to the state's position. It went Republican every time between Lincoln's second election when it voted Democratic, and in fact, 1972, they been Republican all that time. The city was pretty heavily Republican during most of that time. There were more occasions when people voted Democratic or voted for individuals who were Democrats. But the preponderance would always lay with the Republicans. I can remember some of the exceptions when Democrats came in. The Congressman Beakes, for whom Beakes Street was named, was a Democrat. Then in 1932, during the great New Deal sweep, we had a Democratic congressman from this district, but not from this particular area. Then no further Democratic Congressman until 1964 when Wes Vivian was elected. But in the city, there were more occasions when Democrats were elected. My father was elected mayor in 1929 and served two terms. But he followed a number of other Democrats. There was a pocket of Democratic strength in some of the earlier years, growing out of the presence of a lot of Germans in this area. The Germans up to the end of World War I, were Democrats. They switched in large numbers to the Republican side when Wilson and the 14 points were repudiated. That pocket of Democratic strength persisted for quite some time. I remember one involvement with that strength or in that area. The only time, I guess that Van Wagoner ran for governor and he had been a state very popular highway commissioner. His local representative, Oswald Koch, K-O-C-H enlisted me to help in the Van Wagoner campaign. He decided, and I tagged along, that it would be good to conduct a model campaign out in the old German area, which was then the second ward, the southwest quadrant of Ann Arbor. We staged a really classic campaign. We went to every house several times and we distributed literature, and we really saturated the area. They figured that we would get back that old German Democratic vote. But we doubled the Democratic vote in the area, but we also doubled the Republican vote. The margin was greater than ever. But it was one of the early lessons I picked up in politics. Some of the other people who were strong Democrats were the Wursters. Ernst Wurster had been Mayor of Ann Arbor and Sheriff. I forget whether his term as Sheriff was before or after he was mayor, but very prominent individual in the community for a great many years. The Luicks were Democrats. A great many of the families that now have prominent Republican representatives that were prominent then as Democrats through the early forebears. My father's election took place after quite a spell of Republican mayors and that group who encouraged, and I shouldn't have omitted the most prominent name of all, Walz. William Walz, who was then a vice president of one of the Ann Arbor Bank or the forerunner of the Ann Arbor Bank was for many years, city chairman of the Democrats and encouraged my father to run. My father was successful. This was my early participation in politics. I wrote speeches for him. During his term of office, the depression occurred. That was a very trying time for everybody in public office because no level government was really prepared for handling welfare and relief on the scale that immediately became necessary. I remember that the city's total welfare appropriation was gone in maybe two months. The city was then concerned and what to do. All of us reached out in a lot of different directions. I got my father's consent to convene a study group on unemployment compensation. We searched around to find people who knew something about it and got the two people in the country who were authorities. One was the treasurer of the Eastman Kodak Company. Another was a man named Haber, who was then at MSC in those days, who subsequently became professor and then Dean Haber here at the University. We quickly discovered that unemployment compensation had to be operated on a much wider scale than simply a municipality. But people were thinking very fast in those days, trying desperately to find answers to the economic problems that confronted the country. My father then ran at the end of his two terms for state representative in the Democratic ticket. I was campaign manager. I think I was responsible for his defeat. Almost every Democrat was winning those days, though in Ann Arbor, this was not necessarily the case. This remained rather staunchly Republican. But I developed a very elaborate campaign booklet in which we put in his ideas, and I'm afraid too many of mine, on what ought to be done at the state level. I probably had in it all the reforms and changes that were made in the next 20 years. But anyway, it was it frightened people in the community, and he lost by several hundred votes. But I always thought that if we'd done nothing at all, he'd probably have been swept in. This was overkill and my youthful enthusiasm. But the university remained rather staunchly Republican for quite a while.
  • [00:10:25] NEIL STAEBLER: I remember that when I was a student, 22 to 26, there were only a few Democrats in the faculty, and the Democrat on the faculty was something of an anomaly. They weren't quite regarded as sound people. In fact, it was the state of mind of the whole state. If you were proper thinking and responsible, you were a Republican. Only Democrats were vagrants and bartenders and ne'er-do-wells, or freaks. There were a few of these freaks in the faculty, but all the right thinking people knew that you had to tolerate them, but you didn't really take them very seriously. That was the state of mind I found when I became state chairman. In most localities, the people didn't oppose the Democrats, so much as just ignored him and despised him. This was an irresponsible state of mind, and you didn't, good people just weren't Democrats. It was that that we had to combat when Williams was first nominated and we had to really win respectability in most places. But I'm getting away from Ann Arbor. Ann Arbor always had tolerance and just no faith in Democrats. But I think that was attributable to, first of all, to the reform influences of the Democratic party. The Democrats remember had Bryan for a number of years, who reflected the populist positions and whose position on gold was quite out of keeping with the thinking of settled communities, and on many other subjects had position that a settled community like Ann Arbor didn't think reasonable. I think that prompted a lot of the feeling about Democrats and not being sound. I can remember as a boy, one of Bryan's visits, maybe his only visit to Ann Arbor, and standing on Main Street while the parade went by, and I think he ended up at the Whitney Theater and talked then. Of course, politics, in those days, remember was mostly personal. There's not much mechanical about it, no radio, no TV. If you wanted to influence people, you had to talk to them directly. Politics consequently had a scarcity value it doesn't have now. If you wanted to hear good oratory, you very likely had to listen to a politician. Bryan was one of those. My early years, the orator of the country was Beveridge, who had been, I think, Governor of Indiana and who came to Ann Arbor number of times. I took a time out to hear him, and I was impressed as everybody else. The best comparable orator that I have known was Alben Barkley, our Vice President, and the great speaker. I would think modern counterpart is Hubert Humphrey. It's that theme of being a very persuasive and popular and interesting speaker that runs through politics, but has become less and less important as the media have taken over and the speeches get written by ghost writers and people don't even deliver their speeches, they read them on these prompting machines so that the candidate himself is just a synthetic character or synthesis of other people's efforts, and he merely is the actor who works and delivers the lines. That isn't true always. A lot of speakers, even those who use prompting. Also good speakers, and again, deliver an impromptu speech, too. But the media is such a source of pressure because of its wide dissemination, there's been the demand to avoid any irregularities of speech any little flips that people make, so that there's been the need for utter perfection, and so a lot of the flavor has been taken out of political speeches. But also the small meeting was much more important than it is now. I think one of the sources of the malaise in politics is that the human flavor has gone out of politics and that we need to reintroduce or increase in utility, again, the small meeting, the face to face encounter, nothing like it really in politics. Being talked at by a machine is not the same as having a chance to get face to face with somebody in politics. Well, now, going back to some more Ann Arbor reminiscences, for a long time, in the Ann Arbor city government, the Democrats were represented by just one ward, which was the northeast corner of Ann Arbor, the old Fourth Ward, where the Democrats were preponderantly Irish up near St. Thomas Church. After the Germans deserted Democratic Party, and the Irish were the only foothold. For many years, the one Democrat in the council was from the Fourth Ward.
  • [00:17:55] NEIL STAEBLER: The Conlins are a product of that community. One of the Democrats who still lives, who represented, was Arnie Ulberg and another person who came from that ward with interesting career was George Sallade. George lived in that ward, not Irish, but lived in that area. I remember George coming to me when I was one of the rather sparse group of Democrats saying, what about my running for council in the ward. I consulted our good Democrats there and was advised that the Sallade was not a good Irish name and probably wouldn't be very successful and I reported to George. Next thing I knew he had run as a Republican and was elected. Then went on to the state legislature as a Republican, served a number of terms in Lansing. But his ideas were always closer to the Democratic parties than to the Republican, and he was quite uncomfortable in Lansing. He was one of the young Turks. When he decided to stop his candidacy in Lansing, he decided he'd better return to the Democratic Party, and so I was running at the time. He joined in my campaign and demonstrated his Democratic flavor again, and then soon after ran for county chairman and was elected and was a very effective county chairman, and is now ending a number of terms as district chairman. He's announced he isn't going to run again. One of the people who helped to put the Democratic Party on the level of respectability in this locality was Preston Slosson. In fact, I need to mention both Preston Slosson and Lewis Forsythe together because they appeared at about the same time in 1948, and the two of them together gave the Democratic Party a lift from which it's benefited ever since. Let me talk about Forsythe first. Lewis had been principal of Ann Arbor High School for many years. I don't know. He was principal and I was a student there. I had been in before the 20s and was principal many years after. But he was a Democrat but wasn't known as a Democrat. He was a rather severe disciplinarian, and he was known for that. When he announced that he was a Democrat, people were just shocked as all get out, both shocked and pleased that he was the complete answer to any notion that Democrats engaged in loose behavior. Here is Lewis Forsythe who imposed good behavior on all of us youngsters and then to find that that discipline was compatible with liberal ideas was really very startling in the community. When 48, he became our county chairman. I wonder whether I have the year straight. He became a candidate for state representative somewhere along there either then or later. But the two were not quite together. People took another look at the Democratic Party and added its serious challenge when Lewis Forsythe let people know he was a Democrat. Another person, before I get to Preston Slosson, who was related to this was Lewis Vander Velde. Lewis, who is still alive but not living in this community, but returns often, was a professor of history and really the founder of the historical collections of the university and by a kind of ironical touch, the building which houses the historical collections was given by the family of Bentley, who ran for Congress as a Republican, and whom I beat and he had been a member of Congress and then ran again for congressman at large, and I was successful in beating him, Alvin Bentley. But this is Lewis Vander Velde I'm talking about. Lewis lived in the First Ward and was a longtime Democrat and one of the rare people on the faculty. But when you added him to Lewis Forsythe and then added Preston Slosson, whom I'm going to talk about in a moment, it became really a shocker to the community that there were people of this substance who were Democrats. Lewis Vander Velde, very sound scholar and a person of great respectability, and willing to say he was a Democrat.
  • [00:24:59] NEIL STAEBLER: He had emerged in a little more helpful, in a more active manner just a few years before when we were trying in this area to get the Democratic Party out of the doldrums into which it had fallen. During the period, the Democratic Party fell to about its lowest level and I'm going to confuse people. In 30, I need to trace a little more, trace a little further back. In 32, it just emerged as a great tidal wave, anti-Hoover. Party was operating, and Horatio Abbott was national committeeman at the time, lived in Ann Arbor. Horatio rode the great popularity of the party and developed it and carried Michigan in 32. Then in 36, we elected the governor again, we hadn't in 34, we'd lost by then and 36 we did and the Comstock, who was from Alpena, but came to live in Ann Arbor. Then in 38 things receded. The party was very confused statewide, and the 40 Van Wagoner emerged as the governor again, and there was another high point. I need to make a correction of something I've just said. Comstock was governor in 32, a Democrat. We lost the governorship in 34. 36 Frank Murphy was elected governor. We lost in 38. There was no organized party, a very helter skelter party, people would emerge and disappear, and another would emerge and we would disappear. 40 Van Wagoner emerged and disappeared. In 46, the party reached a very low point. This was after the end of the war and when rationing was being still lingering on, and prices were up. Everybody was out of sorts with our war effort and with Truman. In Michigan, all those Democratic surges had subsided. Even Wayne County went Republican in 46, and what little impetus there had been for the Democrats subsided, and the Republicans were sure they had cured Michigan of its aberration. Then in 48, the Democrats staged quite a comeback. Truman, you remember, with the surprise election, the Republicans were so sure they had it in the bag with Dewey. In fact, in 48, I made so many bets and I was for purposes of pride, I would take the bets on an even basis, but anyone who wanted to could get all sorts of odds and against the Democrats. They just didn't have a chance, but I took them on an even basis. But I didn't have to buy any liquor for a year. I lived on my winnings and but no one had any confidence Democrats would do anything. That was the year Williams ran for governor. That was quite a series of accidents that he got elected. I suppose I oughtn't to dwell on it here, but let me give the local aspect of it. Here was Lewis Forsythe, emerging. He just retired as principal and coming out as a Democrat. Then there was Preston Slosson. Preston Slosson was the most important person to be mentioned here. Preston was a professor of history, a very respected and popular professor, one of the most popular ones the university has ever had. He was also a radio commentator. He had the remarkable facility on radio of talking just the prescribed length of time and winding up. No looking at watches, he would just time to talk just the right amount of time. His program is very popular. People knew him. We persuaded him to run for Congress in 48. This was at that moment when the Democratic cause was bleakest, and he was agreeable to running. He conducted a tremendous campaign, and the people listened to him, paid attention. He didn't win, but he gave the Democrats the best percentage that they had had up to the time of Wes Vivian's election, and the Goldwater wave. He made such a strong and reasonable presentation of the Democratic case that the Democratic Party has been taken seriously ever since. Well Preston is still living in Ann Arbor, still a warm and enthusiastic Democrat. As a result of Preston Slosson's candidacy and the simultaneous work of Lewis Forsythe and presence of Lewis Vander Velde and some other fine people of the time, the Democratic Party at long last was taken seriously in Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County. Ever since that time, it's been a serious contender that coincided with the first term of Mennen Williams, and I became, of course, very active in his administration and became state chairman. Many people from Ann Arbor got involved simultaneously. Ever after, things have been happening in the Democratic Party in Washtenaw County. One person who needs to be mentioned in connection with that was Margaret Price. Margaret Price was the wife of Hickman Price, who was an executive in Kaiser-Frazer Company moved here. They were Democrats. She became interested in the party, and was a candidate in 1948 on the Democratic ticket for Auditor General. You see, we've been following women's lib ideas for quite a while. She was the first woman in Michigan who ever got a million votes. She failed, I think by only 12,000 and then went on to lots of things in politics. She was county chairman, district chairman, and after Kennedy was nominated, became vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee and the family moved to Washington, and she and her husband lived there, and she died several years ago. The state our Democrats and legislature held a memorial for her just two years ago. I think in connection with the National Committee, we ought to mention Horatio Abbott a little more than I've done. Because Horatio was one of the dedicated Democrats at a time when the Democratic strength was at its ebb, and it helped to get Franklin Roosevelt nominated. With Democratic National Committeeman for a number of years after that.
  • [00:34:49] NEIL STAEBLER: We've had quite a stream of Democrats from this area, even though we haven't been Democratic area very long. Now, I got into politics, partly as my interest as a student. There were almost no Democrats among the students, and I was in school. In fact, I wasn't a Democrat either, when I was in school. The Democratic Party was regarded as such a miserable thing that no respecting person really admitted he was a Democrat at that time. But I didn't like the Republican Party and their smugness and many of their policies. Along with some of the rebels of the time, I organized the Round Table Club, and we brought speakers here many sorts. I remember we brought William Green here, who was the President, American Federation of Labor. That was a startling thing to do in those days. We brought quite a few of the famous people on a lecture basis. I was running a lecture course when I was in college. I remember one of the persons that we brought. I don't remember why we brought her for her political significance. It was Amy Lowell, and, the poet. Amy will always remain in mind as the woman who mastered the microphone. Just that time, we were getting to use microphones. We had one for her in Hill Auditorium, and the darn thing wouldn't work. She applied her instinctive procedure and whacked it, and it worked after that. I remembered her as a very forthright person, but after that interest in college, bipartisan education. Incidentally, in it I remember meeting John Dawson, who was a professor in the law school and who became after Preston Slosson, the next eminent Democratic candidate for Congress. But he was part of this group in the University. The Democratic Party bumbled along and wasn't really a very serious thing in the 20s.
  • [00:38:08] CATHERINE ANDERSON: While we're in the 20s, did you feel you got involved with politics from your own father being involved? As a young boy, were you very involved?
  • [00:38:17] NEIL STAEBLER: Yes, it really goes back beyond that. My grandfather was in politics, he was a supervisor. A member of the County Board of Supervisors, but after he moved to Ann Arbor and was a local resident here, he was poor commissioner and I can remember that some of my early experiences was quite harrowing for me. When he was away, and we lived right next door, he gave me the responsibility of responding to appeals for help, so vagrants would come and ask for a meal. I had his book of tabs, which entitled people to a meal. It's quite a harrowing experience to decide whether you're going to be the answer to somebody's hunger. I'm afraid I erred a little more on the side of public generosity that maybe wisdom warranted. I had some political connections. My mother was a co-chairman of the county committee. Back, I must say, in some of its weaker days, but she was a vehement person and after Roosevelt came in, and we had more to work with, she became a very active person in getting women organized. I've been subject to women's lib influences for a long time. But my first real work in politics was in helping my father. Then I found the county committee so weak and the party system really so bad. I distinguished myself in my first speech to the Democratic Party and talking about reforming it, telling it what was wrong. I've been at that ever since in trying to reform the Democratic Party and our political processes. I'm happy to say that aspect of my political work reached a culmination very recently at the Democratic conference in Kansas City, where we adopted a charter for the party that embodies a lot of the reforms and itself is a reform in putting into writing how the party works. The greatest perversion of party activities really has always occurred through the insiders use of the rules and the outsiders' ignorance of the procedures so that the insiders always try to keep outsiders from coming in and learning how the political process work. It was part of the change of politics from a manipulative party to a participative party. Really, 48 was the beginning in Michigan of the participative party. All prior to that time, there had been some variant of manipulative party. The manipulative party is the back room thing where a few people figure out what's going to be done and keep others in ignorance. Then suddenly say, so-and-so is our candidate and no one had a chance to do anything other than accept them. Well, you could always run against, but there wasn't much opportunity with weak party. The manipulated party wasn't very successful when played by a minority of Democrats, but it was the way politics operated.
  • [00:42:54] CATHERINE ANDERSON: You think there was a lot of back room politics in Ann Arbor up to around the late 40s?
  • [00:43:00] NEIL STAEBLER: Both parties played at back room politics. People didn't do much about doing it other ways. There had been the reform back in the 1910 and 12 era when the primary system was introduced. That was designed to curb the monopoly of political parties, but it didn't result in much activity. The whole tradition was still manipulative in this locality and in most of Michigan. The great changes that developed after 1948 or that began in 1948, was the opening up of the political parties to participation. Not just you can participate, but going out actively and trying to get people to participate. But that didn't come all at once. In the 32 was the great New Deal landslide. That didn't get people automatically organized. They came in briefly and rode the New Deal enthusiasm. But in Michigan, that subsided a great deal. Then it was a case of slowly building some interest in the political process. In the course of that, I got active in some non-partisan activities along with a dozen people in town, I organized the Citizen's Council. The main reason for organizing the Citizen's Council was to get people interested in public affairs. Believe it or not, most of the university was still an ivory tower. It was above politics. People believed in the eternal verities, but didn't want to soil their hands by getting down into, what was then, muck of politics. It was not quite as sordid as muck makes it sound. It was in at least done the Ann Arbor way. It was pretty respectable, but back roomish and partisan.
  • [00:45:36] NEIL STAEBLER: In the state, it was muck. The state, we had the Republicans were running a kickback system to keep their party going and anybody who did business with the state sent a percent of what he received to the Republican Party. It was a pretty shady affair. But the university people, the tradition was high thinking, but don't get near the parties. Well, the Citizens Council was designed to get people actively engaged in politics in a bipartisan way and did, and more and more people participated in a practical way. Now, of course, it's almost laughable that anyone should not participate in politics. You have people screaming to participate. It's not quite that universal. There is still a lot of disinclination to do much in politics. But it took the '30s to persuade people to actually engage. Part of the persuasion came from the exciting things happening in Washington, but the practical task of getting them involved still required people to go at it in a nonpartisan way in large part.
  • [00:47:08] CATHERINE ANDERSON: In relationship to your activities in the community. Now, you've lived here all your life and you went to school here and you've been highly concerned with the state party. Why have you stayed here? Why have you maintained your active life in Ann Arbor and stayed in this place?
  • [00:47:31] NEIL STAEBLER: This is one of the three most interesting places I've ever discovered and the others, one place in Massachusetts and one in Kentucky, that I ever thought compared to Ann Arbor as being a great place to live. The great virtue of Ann Arbor is that you have all the mix of a metropolitan community. A person from any country, any walk of life, any kind of philosophy, any skill is located here in Ann Arbor, and you can find them, and you can get acquainted with them. You can live the most interesting life here in Ann Arbor, of any place I can imagine. I would not want to live anywhere else. The people who retired to Arizona and Florida, I pity them. Dull communities. One can be a little smug about how exciting Ann Arbor is, and it sounds a little that way when you talk, as I'm now talking. But seriously, I really mean that there is the variety of thought and life here in Ann Arbor. It's unmatched. It's matched in some big places, but you have to work awfully hard to find it in those big places. Here, it's readily available.
  • [00:49:10] CATHERINE ANDERSON: Going back, that's really encouraging. Going back to the state politics, again, you were talking about earlier when we had the tape turned off. You're talking about how much better you think politics are now.
  • [00:49:24] NEIL STAEBLER: Yes. The politics has never had a golden age in this country. It came up from very hard knuckle practices, through very crooked practices, into closer to the sunlight. We've got it pretty well out in the open now. After we've got the latest batch of reform laws imposed, it'll be pretty honest. But it's been a pretty sordid affair in the past, and pretty exclusive. People who have used politics. You see it? The virtue of our American system is that it's so flexible. It can be whatever people want it to be. When only a small group wanted something, they could convert it into something that served their own uses. It's not healthy when it's run by a small group. The only health comes from the diversity and the number of people who engage in it. But for years, the Republican Party dominated the community. It was healthy in the sense that there was a wide variety of people in it. The Democratic Party was this little band outside who couldn't do anything very damaging because they didn't have any strength. But also were crotchety and narrow and suffered from all the ways you suffer when you don't have a diversity. But with the coming of the New Deal, they had to spread out. They became infused by people who believed in the New Deal, but didn't know how to run the political system. We were a confused outfit for a while. Then in those periodic disappearances, fallings away of the Democratic Party, they'd get back to a little band again of people who were pretty unrepresentative and then they'd expand again. But now we've got it permanently expanded so that we've got a quite wide variety of influences represented in the Democratic Party. Our problem in the future here is to keep a balance between students and townspeople or older people. I remember as a student, I was ardent in my ideas, and a few years later, I discovered they were pretty narrow and callow. But I didn't think so at the time, and I wanted to do far too much with the ideas and apply them much more widely, like students do now, they want to reform the country and via the Ann Arbor City Council. The effort is commendable. It results in a kind of a mess of mixed up thinking that doesn't yield any kind of effective result. But the whole evolution of the party and of the processes has been so great. Let me just illustrate. Ann Arbor never went in much for buying of votes. I never encountered that person. I used to hear about it a little bit. But vote buying was quite common in the state. Political parties used to try to win by rounding up the derelicts and people and getting to vote more than once for fifty cents or a slug of whiskey. The special interests would dominate a party. Michigan for a long time and the Republican Party was dominated by the lumber, the railroad, and the mining interests, who got the legislation, the sort they wanted, and the general public just didn't participate enough to keep the balance. Then these small groups dominating a party would develop legislation that was not representative of public thinking. We Democrats for a long time were guilty of that. Very often, our reforms weren't well considered. A small group would advocate a reform and because the party was so thin, this would become the party position, but contributed to the attitude of the Republicans in the community toward us. We were just not practical, not sensible, and not representative. Our platforms were ridiculous. The development of the party, getting more people representing more different points of view in the party, being more careful in the way we develop our programs, being more responsible in the people we select as candidates and getting better people to represent the party as candidates, and then opening up the party to the participation of anybody who wants to participate. These are the reforms, toward more responsibility, more honesty, and toward more balance in our representation.
  • [00:56:14] NEIL STAEBLER: I ought to tell you just to give you a little of that old flavor. It's so hard for abstractions to make it come alive. This isn't Ann Arbor, but Detroit. The man who was the youngest man ever elected a state senator in the state, James Lee. Later was assistant corporation counsel in Detroit, and then we put him on the state Utilities Commission. Jimmy described his first campaign, and I'll give you a little of the flavor of politics of those days, which was about 1911. He said that he and his manager set forth in a buggy to visit the political clubs. The party organizations were nonexistent, the back room again. The things were active with the clubs. Each club had its own club rooms, and all the club rooms were the second floors over a bar. The laws of those days prohibited any direct access to the bar so the club had outdoor stairs down to the first floor. He said the campaign consisted in going from club to club. My manager would go to a club and say, we have a candidate down below. The club members would come rushing down the stairs into the bar and the bar owner would then greet his the club members and the candidates and say, candidate for the State Senate James A. Lee is buying a round of drinks, boys, and so a great hurrah for the candidate. Then to give another plug to the candidate, he asked, now what will the candidate James A. Lee have? Jimmy said, I made the mistake in my first place of saying any soft drink, and that was a great pall cast over the gathering. He said the next club we got to, my manager said, let me handle this. The manager went up and notified him and everybody came down, the bartender gave his plug and the drink surrounded the candidate, James A. Lee. Then when he gave the second plug and then, well, what will the candidate James A. Lee have? The manager said, bartender don't give my man anything, but bicarbonate of soda. He's been on a toot for a week. Great hurrah from all the crowd. This was what appealed machismo the day and that was as deep as politics went in those days. Well, they had some vague feelings of issues, but they were not the outstanding attraction of politics.
  • [00:59:42] CATHERINE ANDERSON: You didn't have any campaigning experiences like those?
  • [00:59:46] NEIL STAEBLER: Yes, we did. Preston Slosson repeated the same thing and cast the same pall until we persuaded him that when there was a round of drinks being bought, we asked him to indicate a passionate devotion to Coca-Cola. You just love Coca-Cola, so that it is there wasn't that reflection cast. A little parallel my early days of state chairman. When we were trying to figure out how to get women into politics, and they finding it dreadfully difficult. My astute Vice Chairman Adelaide Hart pointed out, well, you're going to have to get the county committee meetings out of the bars, and we did, and that was a great contributing influence. Women didn't feel respectable in politics, or a lot of them didn't because of where they met. We got them out of bars, and by golly, women began taking part of politics.
  • [01:01:02] CATHERINE ANDERSON: You were state chairman of the Democratic Party, and did I hear you say before were you in the state legislature for a while?
  • [01:01:08] NEIL STAEBLER: No. Congress.
  • [01:01:10] CATHERINE ANDERSON: In the Congress in Washington?
  • [01:01:12] NEIL STAEBLER: Yes.
  • [01:01:13] CATHERINE ANDERSON: I didn't know that. What years were those?
  • [01:01:15] NEIL STAEBLER: Well, that was an accident, too.
  • [01:01:19] CATHERINE ANDERSON: I don't believe these accidents anymore.
  • [01:01:21] NEIL STAEBLER: I was a state chairman from 1950 to '61 and then National committeeman from '61 till I was in Congress, and I'm back again afterwards. But in '62, the state was facing an election of a congressman at large. That's a very difficult thing to run for, and we all knew it would only last one term because the legislature hadn't been able to agree on apportionment and would ultimately get around to doing that. But I tried to get various of our office holders to run, and the one that seemed likeliest was John Mackie who was then at State Highway commissioner. I went to John, worked on him, and he was interested. But time was going by. Finally, we had to decide, and so I gave him an ultimatum. I said, John, we got to decide this weekend. I'll call you Monday morning. If you're the candidate, I'll needless to say work for you. If you don't give me a yes, then that's your last chance and I'll have to be the candidate. When I called him that Monday morning, he said he couldn't decide. Well, I said you are deciding because this is the last chance. You decide right now and if you don't decide yes, you aren't a candidate. He couldn't decide so I became the candidate and ran one and served by one term. Then I ran against Romney the next time which was like, at that point, lying down on the railroad track in front of a train. But anyway, it was the best we could do for the Democratic Party at that point.
  • [01:03:27] CATHERINE ANDERSON: What are campaigns like for you? Do you get a lot campaigns more from a layperson's view, they seem very exciting. Are they really more work and more?
  • [01:03:37] NEIL STAEBLER: For a candidate, they're an immense amount of work. Now we're civilizing them a little bit and using the media more and giving a candidate a little more sleep. But I still believe in getting a candidate around to people and having him seen and letting there be a contact. That means use of the candidates' time. We try to keep as I say give them a little more sleep, so they look better on TV but when I was a candidate I never got more than four or five hours sleep, and we were out at campaigning late at night and out early in the morning.