Republican Party vice presidential candidate selection, 1944 Republican Party vice presidential candidate selection, 1944 This article lists those who were potential candidates for the Republican nomination for Vice President of the United States in the 1944 election. At the start of the 1944 Republican National Convention, New York Governor Thomas Dewey seemed like the likely presidential nominee, but his nomination was not assured due to strong support for Ohio Governor John W. Bricker and former Minnesota Governor Harold Stassen. Though Dewey wanted California Governor Earl Warren as his running mate, Warren was convinced that Franklin D. Roosevelt would win re-election, and refused to be anyone's running mate.
Franklin D. Roosevelt transformed American politics and started what political scientists call the "New Deal Party System" or the Fifth Party System. Between the Civil War and 1929, Democrats had rarely controlled both houses of Congress and had won just four of seventeen presidential elections; from 1932 to 1979, Democrats won eight of twelve presidential elections and generally controlled both houses of Congress. Roosevelt was elected in November 1932 but, like his predecessors, would not take office until the following March. After the election, Hoover sought to convince Roosevelt to renounce much of his campaign platform and to endorse the Hoover administration's policies.