Garment Row Saul
| 🧵 | |
| Era | The Fifties |
|---|---|
| Age | 34-40 |
| Home | New York, NY |
| Demographic | Jewish, urban, liberal |
| Lean | progressive |
| Race | white |
Saul is a Lower East Side garment manufacturer whose politics were shaped by the ILGWU union and by the war against Hitler. He is an urban Jewish liberal, the most left-wing voter in the cast, and also a committed anti-Communist.
Who they stand for
Jewish New York is the most Democratic white constituency of the decade, and also the most liberal. It voted for Franklin Roosevelt four times, thanked Harry Truman for recognising the state of Israel in May 1948, and stayed loyal to Adlai Stevenson in 1952 and 1956 after the rest of the white North had moved to the Republicans. Its main institutions are the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union under David Dubinsky, the Liberal Party Dubinsky founded in 1944 after Communists took the American Labor Party, and Americans for Democratic Action. This anti-Communist left had expelled its own Communists before Senator Joseph McCarthy's campaign began, and McCarthy attacked it anyway. The Red Scare falls on this community with an antisemitic edge, from the House Un-American Activities Committee to the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. The McCarran-Walter Act of 1952, passed over Truman's veto, kept the national-origin quotas that had shut out Jewish refugees from the Holocaust. This constituency filed legal briefs supporting the NAACP in Brown v. Board of Education, and it was willing to vote for a liberal Republican such as Jacob Javits, elected senator in 1956, because its loyalty was to political principles rather than to a party.
Playing to them
Saul responds well to a President who challenges the Red Scare openly, refuses to stay silent about Senator McCarthy, restrains the House Un-American Activities Committee and the loyalty boards, and defends the American Civil Liberties Union's clients on principle. After that, he wants civil rights enforced, the immigration quotas opened up, the United Nations and Israel supported, and New Deal programmes extended into housing and health care. He is not a pacifist and he is not soft on Moscow. A firm line against the Soviet Union abroad costs him nothing, but using a war scare to justify a political purge at home costs everything. He will not forgive a President who lets McCarthy operate unchecked, who tolerates segregation to keep Southern Democrats onside, or who signals sympathy to antisemites.
A President who takes the civil-liberties position that wins Saul's support loses the support of Minute Women Vivian and War Widow Bridget outright, and also loses ground with Air Base Andy. A President who spends heavily on social programmes to win Saul loses the support of Farm Wife Edna and Old Country Olga. A President who presses hard on civil rights to win Saul loses the support of Dixiecrat Dale.
Where they live
The five states where Garment Row Saul makes up the largest share of the electorate in the fifties:
- Washington DC
- Hawaii
- California
- Massachusetts
- Vermont