Half a Century on Campaign Trail : TV Convinces Veteran Political Volunteer That It’s Time to Quit

She hobbled on a broken leg for Wendell Willkie, and registered temporarily as a Democrat to recruit for Ike Eisenhower.

The “Little Flower,” Fiorello LaGuardia, taught her how to campaign. She sat in on strategy meetings in ritzy hotel rooms choked with the cigar smoke of fast-talking pols.

“All talking at once and all smoking. It’d get so thick you couldn’t see the people,” Jean Pipes recalled. It was fun back then, but to Pipes, 73, the joy has left politicking, so she is bowing out.

She has had a long political life--one that began in childhood.

Mother Was a Democrat

Father was an ardent Republican. Mother was an ardent Democrat.

“Two weeks before the election, my mother would say, ‘Would you ask your father to please pass the biscuits,’ ” she said, laughing.

It all stayed with her. She swung to the right with her father and the GOP, and made politicking a career in New York, Chicago, California and Florida for almost half a century.

She supported Alf Landon’s run against Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1936. He lost. She campaigned for Wendell Willkie four years later. FDR beat him, too.

“It was fun then, though you knew you’d probably lose,” Pipes said. “When you ran against Roosevelt, you knew you were going to lose.”

Convinced to Retire

Some of her candidates won and some lost. The last one lost. Gov. Bob Graham unseated Republican Sen. Paula Hawkins, and the race convinced Pipes to retire.

“I just felt it changed so,” she said at her home in Boynton Beach, south of Palm Beach, Fla. “I didn’t think I approved of it.”

Part of the problem, she said, is the negativism. Candidates stockpile huge war chests and buy bundles of television time to attack opponents, nit-picking at foibles and records.

“In almost every campaign across the country, it was picking on the other guys. They got so busy tearing each other apart, they forgot to tell the people what they were going to do (if elected). There’s no fun in that type of thing.”

But it was fun in the old days. There were coffee and doughnut tables on street corners, and campaigners chatted openly with voters. They plastered signs in subways, handed out campaign buttons, and, of course, distributed literature detailing a candidate’s background and platforms.

“I don’t know how much all of it was true,” she said, laughing hoarsely.

Campaigns were festive, like small-town football game parades.

Hot Dogs and Imagination

“That’s exactly what it was like. We marched down the street. We would have candidates join us in an open truck. We’d have microphones. We’d have a band with us. We’d have motorcades all the time. We’d have a rally and give away hot dogs. You had to use your imagination.”

Television, which was futuristic half a century ago, became the sword of politics. It replaced a lot of the flesh-pressing and barnstorming that Pipes remembered wistfully.

“They (candidates) don’t get to meet the people. The only way voters see them is on ads on TV.”

More than four decades ago, meeting the voters was essential. That she learned from Fiorello LaGuardia, the charismatic, liberal Republican who was mayor of New York City.

“He taught me more about campaigning than anyone else. He taught me to get out and work. You’d meet the people. Which is why I’m getting out of politics now. It’s stopped being that.”

To “Win for Willkie,” Pipes and other campaigners swung through Harlem, the Bronx, the waterfront, and other New York districts for votes.

Hobbled on Cast

But her toughest political job followed Willkie’s loss. She collected promised campaign contributions, struggling through New Jersey neighborhoods in a plaster cast because she had broken her leg by falling off a curbstone.

“You really worked. Campaigning was fun then. Probably because I was younger.”

And, of course, she was a woman--one of the few in those smoky rooms.

“Sometimes there were only three or four in a group of 20 or 25. And I felt very uncomfortable.”

It meant mundane chores: fetching refreshments, folding envelopes.

She Got the Coffee

“They wanted us not to speak out about what we believed in. They wanted us to get the coffee ready and collect doughnuts and things like that,” Pipes said.

But she endured, opting to campaign for male politicians instead of women’s rights. Time honed Pipes’ political savvy, strengthening her hand in campaign planning.

“I wasn’t the type of woman who was out for women’s activities. I was interested in trying to get a candidate in. I was interested in great government.”

She is a staunch Republican.

“I’m either a very moderate conservative or a very conservative moderate. I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

She has supported every GOP presidential nominee since Landon. Six won, six lost. In odd-numbered years, she campaigned for Republicans in national, state and local races.

Ploy for Eisenhower

Party devotion once called for defection. As a ploy for Dwight Eisenhower’s 1952 presidential bid, Pipes turned colors and registered as a Democrat--for six weeks.

“I was organizing Democrats for Eisenhower. I told them I registered Democrat to talk them into voting for Eisenhower. Which I did,” she said.

After Ike was Richard M. Nixon. Pipes had met him and wife, Patricia, in California while working for his 1950 U.S. Senate campaign.

“I think he’s great. And that Pat Nixon worked right along with everybody else.”

Pipes served as the Palm Beach County co-chairwoman of Nixon’s 1968 presidential victory. Eighteen years later, she has only one regret, she said.

“I think he should have burned the darn tapes,” she said.

Rubbed the Wrong Way

But a sour falling-out developed at a leadership conference early in Nixon’s 1972 reelection campaign. Three gentlemen in particular--John Mitchell, H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman--rubbed her the wrong way, well before they did the same to the nation as the Watergate scandal unfolded.

“I didn’t like what they were telling me so I just walked out. We were to do what we were told and nothing else. Which isn’t unusual in politics, but you’re not told, you’re asked.” It was the only campaign she ever quit.

Zena Mehler, a friend of Pipes’ and a fellow volunteer, said the 1972 election laws drastically shifted decision-making power from the grass-roots level to the national campaign offices. But they hung on to their work.

“She throws herself wholeheartedly into any campaign,” Mehler said.

Husband Also Active

Pipes’ late husband, J. Willard Pipes, was a Pepsi Cola executive and also active in politicking. For almost 50 years, she helped organize campaigns--but never for money.

“I will not take a paid job. Then, I can’t think or believe what I want to.”

The weeks of providing speakers, answering telephones, and juggling mundane details such as campaign sign-posting as Hawkins’ Palm Beach County campaign co-chairwoman are behind her. She may work on another campaign, but insisted that she will not run one.

She still belongs to the National Federation of Republican Women and has considered writing a book.

“But I doubt it. I can’t figure out a computer.”

History Made Fresh

Her tales transcend technology and make history fresh and personal. She remembers listening to Lyndon B. Johnson speak at a beverage convention in Dallas in 1963.

“The next day, he was President.”

From a downtown hotel, Pipes watched John F. Kennedy’s motorcade wind toward the moment of his assassination.

“It went as far as we could see it. We saw the rest on TV.”

On Election Night in 1948 in Chicago’s Sherman Hotel, Republicans celebrated the victory of Thomas E. Dewey. Pipes was among them. Not a few voters bedded down thinking Harry Truman had been edged out of the White House.

“We were hoofing it up that Dewey had won. The next morning we found out we hadn’t.”

The years and campaigns followed. Truman gave way to Ike, who was replaced by JFK and so on. The Sherman Hotel, she noted, has since been torn down.