Volume 17 , Issue 27

1952 Stevenson's "Hole-In-the-Shoe" Campaign

Do you remember back to 1952 and Adlai Stevenson's "hole in the shoe" campaign for President? Some were saying, "If Ike would only come up with a hole in his sole, us poor folks would vote for him next month for sure. And so would all the other poor folks in the country."

They were referring to the celebrated picture of Governor Stevenson which revealed that the Democratic nominee was practically walking around in his socks insofar as one foot was concerned.

It happened on Labor Day of 1952, when a newspaper cameraman in Flint, Michigan, took the picture below. Stevenson supporters around the country began wearing silver lapel pins of the sole with the hole, and the photographer won a Pulitzer prize. Stevenson himself, however, won only nine states in the election two months later, and went on to be plowed under yet again by President Eisenhower in 1956.

Do you remember a photo of Marion S. Monfort, Alva, Woods County, Oklahoma, when he ran for State Senator on Democrat ticket in 1952, against a Woodward man, W. P. Williams? And ... Have you seen the photo of Marion Monfort as a poster boy at the 1952 Democratic Convention where he was looking disheveled with his feet up on a desk with a hole in the shoe sole. We have learned he was an avid worker for Adlai Stevenson back in 1952, and the "hole-in-the-shoe" picture became associated with Stevenson's campaign.

As I read further the "hole-in-the-shoe" picture did not woo many, but it made some suspect the governor's ingenuity and led them to believe it was the first time in his life he had ever had a hole in his shoe.

The picture got the governor more publicity than any picture taken of him before or since, and rumor had it that it had done him more good in the key states than any of his utterances on foreign policy, taxes, corruption, or the Korean "police action.
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