As a New York City prosecutor and District Attorney in the 1930s and early 1940s, Dewey was relentless in his effort to curb the power of the American Mafia and of organized crime in general.

This group consisted of internationalists who were in favor of the United Nations and the Cold War fight against communism and the Soviet Union, and it supported most of the New Deal social-welfare reforms enacted during the administration of Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt.

She also left "a headstrong assertiveness that many took for conceit, a set of small-town values never entirely erased by exposure to the sophisticated East, and a sense of proportion that moderated triumph and eased defeat.

"[7] One journalist noted that as a boy "he did show leadership and ambition above the average; by the time he was thirteen, he had a crew of nine other youngsters working for him" selling newspapers and magazines in Owosso.

Among Dewey's neighbors on Quaker Hill were the famous reporter and radio broadcaster Lowell Thomas, the Reverend Norman Vincent Peale, and the legendary CBS News journalist Edward R.

[24] On that account, Dewey successfully lobbied for an overhaul in New York's criminal procedure law, which at that time required separate trials for each count of an indictment.

Carter had developed trust with many of these women, and through her coaching, many of the arrested prostitutes – some of whom told of being beaten and abused by Mafia thugs – were willing to testify to avoid prison time.

[38] Dewey was such a popular candidate for District Attorney that "election officials in Brooklyn posted large signs at polling places reading 'Dewey Isn't Running in This County'.

[43] When he left the District Attorney's office in 1942 to run for governor, Dewey said that "It has been learned in high places that clean government can also be good politics...I don't like Republican thieves any more than Democratic ones.

Hollywood film studios made several movies inspired by his exploits; Marked Woman starred Humphrey Bogart as a Dewey-like DA and Bette Davis as a "party girl" whose testimony helps convict the mob boss.

[45] A popular story from the time, possibly apocryphal, featured a young girl who told her father that she wanted to sue God to stop a prolonged spell of rain.

Although he was defeated, Dewey's surprisingly strong showing against the popular Lehman (he lost by only 1.4%) brought him national political attention and made him a front runner for the 1940 Republican presidential nomination.

[55] During the Second World War construction in New York was limited, which allowed Dewey to create a $623 million budget surplus, which he placed into his "Postwar Reconstruction Fund."

[57] Although working mothers, helped by various civic and social groups, fought to retain funding, federal support for child care facilities was considered temporary and ended on March 1, 1946.

According to one study Dewey was a fiscal conservative but believed that Republicans should not attempt to repeal the New Deal; rather, they should advance competing social welfare programs that emphasized individual freedom and economic incentives instead of the Democrats' tendency towards centralization and collectivism.

He was considered the early favorite for the nomination, but his support ebbed in the late spring of 1940 as Nazi Germany invaded its neighbors, and Americans feared being drawn into another European war.

As a result, at the 1940 Republican National Convention many delegates switched from Dewey to Wendell Willkie, who was a decade older and supported aid to the Allies fighting Germany.

[64] In the general election campaign, Dewey crusaded against the alleged inefficiencies, corruption and Communist influences in incumbent president Roosevelt's New Deal programs, but mostly avoided military and foreign policy debates.

In a debate before the Oregon primary with Harold Stassen, Dewey argued against outlawing the Communist Party of the United States of America, saying "you can't shoot an idea with a gun."

[69] Given Truman's sinking popularity and the Democratic Party's three-way split (the left-winger Henry A. Wallace and the Southern segregationist Strom Thurmond ran third-party campaigns), Dewey seemed unbeatable to the point that the Republicans believed that all they had to do to win was to avoid making any major mistakes.

It was like a locked room in a musty mansion whose master never entered ... he seemed a bit bewildered at the unanimous front put up by his Albany advisers [during the campaign], regretted not having taken a final poll when his own senses detected slippage, and couldn't resist a potshot at "that bastard Truman" for having successfully exploited farmers' fears of a new depression.

In a 1949 speech, Dewey criticized Taft and his followers by saying that "we have in our party some fine, high-minded patriotic people who honestly oppose farm price supports, unemployment insurance, old age benefits, slum clearance, and other social programs... these people believe in a laissez-faire society and look back wistfully to the miscalled 'good old days' of the nineteenth century... if such efforts to turn back the clock are actually pursued, you can bury the Republican Party as the deadest pigeon in the country."

"[83] In the speech, Dewey added that the Republican Party believed in social progress "under a flourishing, competitive system of private enterprise where every human right is expanded ... we are opposed to delivering the nation into the hands of any group who will have the power to tell the American people whether they may have food or fuel, shelter or jobs.

"[84] Dewey believed in what he called "compassionate capitalism", and argued that "in the modern age, man's needs include as much economic security as is consistent with individual freedom.

"[85] When Taft and his supporters criticized Dewey's policies as liberal "me-tooism", or "aping the New Deal in a vain attempt to outbid Roosevelt's heirs", Dewey responded that he was following in the tradition of Republicans such as Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, and that "it was conservative reforms like anti-trust laws and federal regulation of railroads ... that retained the allegiance of the people for a capitalist system combining private incentive and public conscience.

[91] Although closely identified with the Republican Party for virtually his entire adult life, Dewey was a close friend of Democratic Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, and Dewey aided Humphrey in being named as the Democratic nominee for vice-president in 1964, advising President Lyndon Johnson on ways to block efforts at the party convention by Kennedy loyalists to stampede Robert F. Kennedy onto the ticket as Johnson's running mate.

"[114] A magazine writer described the difference between Dewey's private and public behavior by noting that, "Till he gets to the door, he may be cracking jokes and laughing like a schoolboy.

"[115] Leo W. O'Brien, a reporter for United Press International (UPI) who was later elected to Congress as a Democrat, recalled Dewey in an interview by saying that "I hated his guts when he first came to Albany, and I loved him by the time he left.

Others discover job-rich construction projects, state buildings, even highways, directed to friendlier [legislators]... [He] forced the legislature his own party dominates to reform its comfortable ways of payroll padding.

Even when temporarily out of office, in the middle 1930s, he rigorously resisted any temptation to be vulgarized or exploited...he could easily have become a millionaire several times over by succumbing to various movie and radio offers.