Thomas E. Dewey

Thomas Edmund Dewey (March 24, 1902 – March 16, 1971) was an American lawyer, prosecutor, and politician. He served as the 47th Governor of New York from 1943 to 1954. In 1944, he was the Republican Partys nominee for President. He lost the 1944 election to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the closest of Roosevelts four presidential elections. He was again the Republican presidential nominee in 1948, but lost to President Harry S. Truman in one of the greatest upsets in presidential election history. Dewey played a large role in winning the Republican presidential nomination for Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952, and helped Eisenhower win the presidential election that year. He also played a large part in the choice of Richard M. Nixon as the Republican vice-presidential nominee in 1952 and 1956.As a New York City prosecutor and District Attorney in the 1930s and early 1940s, Dewey was relentless in his effort to curb the power of the American Mafia and of organized crime in general. Most famously, he successfully prosecuted Mafioso kingpin Charles Lucky Luciano on charges of compulsory prostitution in 1936. Luciano was given a thirty-year prison sentence. He also prosecuted and convicted Waxey Gordon, another prominent New York City gangster and bootlegger, on charges of tax evasion. Dewey almost succeeded in apprehending Jewish mobster Dutch Schultz as well, but not before Schultz was murdered in 1935 in a hit ordered by The Commission itself.Dewey led the moderate or progressive faction of the Republican Party, in which he fought conservative Ohio Senator Robert A. Taft. Dewey was an advocate for the professional and business community of the Northeastern United States, which would later be called the Eastern Establishment. This group consisted of internationalists who were in favor of the United Nations and the Cold War fight against communism and the Soviet Union, and it supported most of the New Deal social-welfare reforms enacted during the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt.Deweys successor as leader of the progressive Republicans was Nelson Rockefeller, who became governor of New York in 1959. The New York State Thruway is named in Deweys honor.

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