Candidates Declared •
Ellison D. Smith, incumbent Senator since 1909 •
Olin D. Johnston,
Governor of South Carolina Withdrew •
Edgar Allan Brown, State Senator
Campaign Senator
Ellison D. Smith was marked by President
Franklin D. Roosevelt for defeat because he had vociferously opposed many policies of the
New Deal.
Governor Olin D. Johnston announced at the
White House that he was going to challenge Smith in the Democratic primary and would be fully supportive of every Roosevelt policy.
State Senator Edgar Allan Brown also threw his hat into the ring pledging that he would back Roosevelt and would be the most effective candidate in bringing home the bacon. Johnston's complete backing of Roosevelt earned him the endorsements of several liberal organizations, such as the Labor Nonpartisan League (LNPL) and the
Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), but these two organizations were frowned upon in South Carolina. They advanced racial integration, advocated labor militancy and were believed to have been controlled by Communists. Smith hammered Johnston for having these ties claiming that Johnston "endorsed the nigger, and went one hundred percent for anything belonging to the New Deal, right or wrong, because he does not have guts to disagree." Smith then boasted of his endorsement by the racially exclusive
American Federation of Labor (AFL) and stress that a vote for Johnston would embolster the CIO to force the employment of blacks in factories alongside whites. Though Johnston did not defend rights for African Americans, he would largely ignore the issue of white supremacy, while Smith had campaigned for over thirty years on a two plank platform to "keep the Negro down and the price of cotton up" On August 11, Roosevelt's train stopped in
Greenville to a crowd of 15,000 with the three candidates aboard. He had spoken the previous day in Georgia against the re-election of Senator
Walter F. George and was expected to make an endorsement of Olin Johnston at Greenville. Roosevelt criticized Smith for his 1937 speech in the Senate that South Carolinians were willing to work for fifty cents a day. Yet before Roosevelt could finish his address, the train started to leave. Smith trumpeted up the fact that Roosevelt never explicitly endorsed Johnston and responded to Roosevelt's charge that his Senate speech was taken out of context. Johnston claimed that it was insinuated by Roosevelt whom he supported and he made it clear that he boarded the President's train in Georgia, whereas the other two candidates boarded just outside Greenville. Brown felt slighted by the President's brief remarks and withdrew from the race on August 27. Smith was supported by two powerful figures in South Carolina politics: Senator
James F. Byrnes and his friend Charleston mayor
Burnet Maybank. Unlike Smith, Byrnes was a well known pro-Roosevelt New Dealer and was also renominated in the
1936 Democratic primary by a margin of over 87%. Heeding advice from Byrnes, such as the recently passed
Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. It was also believed that at this point in time, however, that the large majority of people of South Carolina had become fed up with Smith and that he would've lost the primary if not for Roosevelt's interference or if he had done more to either please the state's influential textile mill owners ==General election==