The Path to Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson #1)

by Robert A. Caro

Michigan’s Sixteenth Congressional District, which included part of Detroit, and adjoining Dearborn, site of a giant Ford Motor Company plant, had once been considered a safe Democratic district. Running for his third term in 1936, Congressman John Lesinski had polled 61 percent of the vote, defeating his Republican opponent by 21,000 votes. But in 1938, the margin had been reduced to 10,000–55 percent. And in 1940, the Republican candidate in the Ford-dominated Sixteenth was a Ford: Henry’s cousin Robert. Arriving back in Dearborn to begin his campaign, Lesinski found “hundreds” of ROBERT FORD FOR CONGRESS billboards, and numerous other indications of “unlimited financial backing”—including no fewer than a dozen well-staffed campaign headquarters. Clearly, the district wasn’t safe any longer. It contained voters of fifty-eight nationalities, so literature printed in foreign languages was a necessity. In the 1936 and 1938 elections, the Democratic National Committee had sent truckloads of foreign-language pamphlets to the district—100,000 in Polish alone. Now Lesinski was informed that not one piece of foreign-language literature had been received in the district.