Alben Barkley's Election as Senate Majority Leader was a narrow Senate contest shaped by President Franklin D. Roosevelt's campaign to preserve his influence in the chamber and by Harry S. Truman's refusal to yield to pressure over his vote. Barkley won the secret-ballot contest by a single vote on July 21, 1937; the struggle exposed tensions between presidential power and the Senate's control of its own leadership, and established Truman and Barkley as friends and allies.

Vacancy and stakes

The contest began with a sudden vacancy. On July 14, Majority Leader Joseph Robinson, who had been leading the fight for Roosevelt's court bill, died of a heart attack in his apartment across from the Capitol. Senator Royal Copeland, a physician, had warned him only days earlier to slow down. With the bill's fate temporarily deferred until a new majority leader could be chosen, the leadership election became a pivotal moment for the New Deal in the Senate.

Barkley faced Pat Harrison of Mississippi, the conservative chairman of the Finance Committee. Roosevelt was determined that Barkley should win. He sent an open letter addressed to Alben in which he described Barkley as the acting majority leader, a move many senators regarded as an arrogant intrusion into Senate business. The succession contest thus became more than a choice between two candidates: it tested whether the President could shape the Senate's leadership without provoking resistance from the institution whose support he needed.

Pressure and Truman's position

The White House campaign included direct efforts to influence senators. James A. Farley's private poll suggested that Harrison would win by one vote. Senator William H. Dieterich of Illinois, who had promised to support Harrison, received a call from Chicago political boss Kelly offering him a say in the appointment of two federal judges if he voted as Roosevelt wanted. Dieterich changed sides.

Truman faced pressure through a different channel. On July 19, Thomas J. Pendergast told him that the White House had asked Pendergast to tell him how to vote. Truman told Pendergast that he had already promised Harrison his support and could not go back on his word. James A. Aylward also phoned to urge him toward Roosevelt's choice. Truman later described refusing Aylward as difficult, but refusing Pendergast as harder still; he said this was the only time Pendergast had ever called him about a vote, usually making his views known by telegram. Pendergast reportedly said that the outcome made little difference to him.

The episode left Truman angry not only because of the pressure but because the White House had approached Pendergast instead of speaking to him directly. Truman felt he was being treated like an office boy and pushed around, rather than accorded the consideration due to a senator. The approach, in his view, implied that others still regarded him as Pendergast's senator. He tried to speak to Roosevelt, but when told the President was unavailable, he complained to press secretary Steve Early. The episode therefore brought a personal slight and a dispute over political independence together in a single vote.

The caucus and the conflicting accounts

Barkley's recollection adds a complication to the account of Truman's commitments. Barkley later said that Truman had come to him under pressure to vote for Harrison and asked to be released from a promise of support. Barkley admired Truman's directness in coming to him rather than concealing the difficulty. The accounts place Truman between a stated promise to Harrison and Barkley's understanding that Truman had pledged to support him; they show how the contest put both personal honor and political obligation under strain.

On July 21, Democratic senators met in the Senate Office Building's white-marble Caucus Room and chose their leader by secret ballot. Barkley won by one vote. The narrow margin underscored how consequential the senators' individual choices had become amid the White House's efforts to secure his election. After the result, Truman immediately pledged Barkley his support. The two men became friends and allies thereafter. Barkley later considered how he might have regarded Truman had he lost by exactly that one vote, a reflection of how close the contest had come to shaping their relationship differently.

Consequences for Roosevelt and the Senate

The leadership fight drained momentum from Roosevelt's court bill. On July 22, the Senate sent the measure back to the Judiciary Committee by a margin of 50 votes, and it died there. Roosevelt had suffered his first and worst defeat since taking office. Truman considered the court fight a mistake that had been badly managed, and believed Roosevelt had deserved the defeat.

The election's significance lay both in its immediate result and in the limits it revealed. Roosevelt's influence could alter individual senators' calculations, as the switch by Dieterich illustrated, but the effort to secure Barkley's leadership also generated resentment over presidential interference. Truman's refusal to change his vote under pressure became a defining episode in his relationship with the White House, while his support for Barkley after the caucus established a durable political alliance. The Senate's leadership choice and the court bill's defeat together marked the cost of trying to direct the chamber from outside it.