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I had thought so until I had been out in the field. She hadn't been out in the field. She'd been sitting there in the central office in touch with politicians, of course.

Johnny Gilchrist was a very smart man and a very close friend of Al's, a dear friend. He loved him. They were boys together. He was very clever, I thought, and had much better judgment than the typical politicians. Johnny saw early that the fact that Al was a Roman Catholic, that he was Irish, that he came from a poor city background, that he had an accent that was strictly New York, if not Brooklyn, was a handicap to him. He would be regarded as vulgar and common in some parts of the country, as well as that Roman Catholics were regarded with suspicion in many places. He get that idea very early.

He said, “We must counteract that. We must send people who are really enthusiastic for Smith, who know him well, who are enthusiastic about him, and who are not themselves a product of the city slum, who are not themselves Roman Catholics, who are Protestant, Christian and refined (that was Johnny Gilchrist's word, not mine), know the best people, out to tell these doubtful Democrats about what kind of a man Al Smith really is. They must endorse him. They must say way they like him.”