When 'Mad Men' In Media Took Control of Campaigns

Upton Sinclair is back, thanks to 'There Will Be Blood' movie ties. But in 1934 his race for governor gave birth to the modern media-based political campaign.

When 'Mad Men' In Media Took Control of Campaigns
By Greg Mitchell
E & P
NEW YORK (January 11, 2008)

It's good to see Upton Sinclair back in the news again amid the raves (which I don't quite share) for the new film "There Will Be Blood," very loosely based on his 1927 novel "Oil!" Even though Sinclair earned a nod in many of the articles and reviews of the film, which stars Daniel Day-Lewis, few have commented on the original source material.

So here's one tidbit: The novel, one of Sinclair's finest, was "banned in Boston," as Catholics there objected to sexual passages, references to abortion, and other heresies. Truth be told, this did not displease the famous author, as it provided a nice boost for sales. After he journeyed to Boston from California, photographs of him hawking the book on the streets, wearing a signboard that promoted what he called the "Fig Leaf Edition," appeared in newspapers around the country. Talk about manipulating the press!

But Sinclair's most lasting contribution to modern media follies came seven years later when the former socialist ran for governor of California as a Democrat (a tale I told in my 1992 book "The Campaign of the Century"). As another election year begins this month, it is worth looking back at how the modern "media" campaign began.

On Aug. 28, 1934, Sinclair swept the Democratic primary for governor and all hell broke loose across the state, then across the continent. On the day after, the Los Angeles Times, under Harry Chandler, denounced Sinclair's "maggot-like horde" of supporters, and the Hearst press was no kinder. The movie studios threatened to move back east if Sinclair took office.

Sinclair, author of "The Jungle" and dozens of other muckraking books, led a grassroots movement called EPIC (End Poverty in California). His friend H.L. Mencken explained in a column, "Upton Sinclair has been swallowing quack cures for all the sorrows of mankind since the turn of the century, is at it again in California, and on such a scale that the whole country is attracted by the spectacle." Will Rogers wrote much the same thing.

The prospect of a socialist governing the nation's most volatile state sparked nothing less than a revolution in American politics. With an assist from Hollywood -- and leading newspapers -- Sinclair's opponents virtually invented the modern media campaign. It marked a stunning advance in the art of public relations, "in which advertising men now believed they could sell or destroy political candidates as they sold one brand of soap and defamed its competitor," Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. later observed.

The 1934 governor's race, in short, showed the candidates the way from the smoke-filled room to Madison Avenue, from the party boss to the "spin doctor." Media experts, making unprecedented use of film, radio, newspapers, direct mail, opinion polls, and national fundraising, devised the most astonishing smear campaign ever. "Many American campaigns have been distinguished by dirty tactics," columnist Heywood Broun commented, "but I can think of none in which willful fraud has been so brazenly practiced."

The political innovation that produced the strongest impact was the manipulation of moving pictures. MGM's Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg produced fake newsreels, using Hollywood actors. W.R. Hearst helped distribute them. For the first time, the screen was used to demolish a candidate, a precursor of political attack ads on television.

No institution dishonored itself quite like the California press. One anecdote that illustrates this: In October that year, The New York Times' star reporter Turner Catledge (later top editor of the paper) came to California. Naturally, he hooked up with the Los Angeles Times' political editor Kyle Palmer, who pretty much selected the state's chief executive every four years -- hence his nickname, "The Little Governor."

Decades before the press combed through Barack Obama's books and Mike Huckabee's old sermons, the L.A. Times printed out-of-context excerpts from Sinclair's many books on its front page every single day. Palmer was also advising and even writing speeches for Sinclair's opponent. Over dinner, Catledge asked Palmer why the paper refused to be fair and balanced. "Turner, forget it," Palmer replied. "We don't go in for that kind of crap that you have back in New York, of being obliged to print both sides. We're going to beat this son of a bitch Sinclair any way we can. We're going to kill him."

And so they did. Sinclair's huge lead evaporated -- especially after those fake newsreels hit the screen -- and Gov. Frank Merriam won re-election. Kyle Palmer continued to rule California politics for decades. And today, "media politics" still dominates most elections.