helen gahagan douglas--the "pink lady" and victim of tricky dick's dirty tricks

[niyad]

'Tricky Dick' vs. the Pink Lady
Nixon’s victory over Helen Gahagan Douglas was one of the nastiest in history, and a prototype for today's GOP smear tactics. In an exclusive excerpt from The Pink Lady, Sally Denton revisits the infamous Senate campaign.

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Sixty years before Hillary Clinton ran for president, and Sarah Palin for Vice President, Helen Gahagan Douglas was the first woman in America who had the capacity, the credentials, the ambition, and the political gravity to realistically aspire to the highest office in the land. During her rise as an American female politician she struggled to define herself in the highly charged climate of Red Scare America. Her trajectory from Broadway star, to California congresswoman, to vice-presidential contender, to senatorial candidate seemed unstoppable—until her 1950 Senate race against Richard Nixon.

Smears had happened before in political history, but not with such blatant lies and sophisticated
orchestration. In a carefully orchestrated whispering campaign of smear, fear, and innuendo that would go down in American history as the dirtiest ever—while also becoming the model for the next half-century and beyond—Nixon exploited America’s xenophobic suspicions and reflexive chauvinism with devastating consequences. Nixon’s henchman, Murray Chotiner, introduced his own brand of dirty tricks to the political campaign. Five years after the historic 1950 California match, Chotiner spoke to a Republican National Committee school for campaign workers about the Douglas-Nixon race and political strategy for the future. It would be one of many secret lectures Chotiner would give to “GOP schools” and where he would meet the protégés who would succeed him: Lee Atwater and Karl Rove. His 14,000-word syllabus, which became a legendary GOP dirty tricks manifesto, laid out a simple formula: “Discredit your opponent before your own candidate gets started…associate your opponent with an unpopular idea or organization, with just a suggestion of treason…above all, attack, attack, attack, never defend.”
book-cover---denton-pink-ladyThe Pink Lady: The Many Lives of Helen Gahagan Douglas. By Sally Denton. 256 pages. Bloomsbury Press. $26. ()

It was September 11, 1950. Eleanor Roosevelt addressed the record crowd on a balmy Southern California afternoon. Journalists noted that she wore a gray suit over a black blouse, and the Los Angeles Daily News reported on her “right nice hair-do.” Fashion and triviality aside, the former first lady and widow of FDR was eloquent and animated in her speech to the thousands who had gathered. She had traveled here from New York to support her dear friend, Helen, who was locked in one of, if not the, most bitter Senate campaigns in U.S. history.

It was here, at Bixby Park in Long Beach, while Mrs. Roosevelt appealed to the crowd, that Helen’s supporters first noticed Republicans passing out pink slips of paper. “The Pink Sheet”—implying that she was a communist, “hinting darkly at secret ties,” as one historian put it—would become notorious in the annals of political dirty tricks. It would earn for its creator the sobriquet of “Tricky Dick.” The nickname, which Helen attached to her adversary, would haunt Nixon for decades to come. Forever branded as the “Pink Lady,” Helen was the first Hollywood figure to rise meteorically in national politics, the first female to gain entrée into the male-dominated smoke-filled rooms of a Democratic national convention, the first American woman seriously considered as a vice-presidential contender.

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2009/11/16/tricky-dick-vs-the-pink-lady.html

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Political career

In the 1940s, Gahagan Douglas entered politics. She was elected to the United States House of Representatives from California's 14th congressional district as a Democrat in 1944, and served three full terms as "a principled advocate of women's rights, civil liberties and world disarmament."[6] During this time she openly had an enduring love affair with then Congressman (and afterwards U.S. President) Lyndon B. Johnson.[7] Mrs. Douglas was mentioned in the song "George Murphy" by satirist Tom Lehrer. The song begins, "Hollywood's often tried to mix / show business with politics / from Helen Gahagan / to Ronald Reagan ..."
Appointments and activities

"Democratic National committeewoman for California from 1940 to 1944; vice chairwoman of the Democratic State central committee and chairman of the women’s division from 1940 to 1944; member of the national advisory committee of the Works Progress Administration and of the State committee of the National Youth Administration in 1939 and 1940; member of the board of governors of the California Housing and Planning Association in 1942 and 1943; appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a member of the Voluntary Participation Committee, Office of Civilian Defense; appointed by President Harry S. Truman as alternate United States Delegate to the United Nations Assembly; elected as a Democrat to the Seventy-ninth, Eightieth, and Eighty-first Congresses (January 3, 1945-January 3, 1951); ... lecturer and author." [8] Excerpted from Bioguide Congress.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Gahagan_Douglas