Thomas E. Dewey

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In May 1953, Governor Dewey set up a nine-member Advisory Board to help the State Safety Division’s Bureau of Safety and Accident Prevention and appointed Edward Burton Hughes (the Deputy New York State Superintendent of Public Works) as Chairman. The Advisory Board was formed to draft accident prevention policies and programs.

Dewey's third term as governor of New York expired at the end of 1954, after which he retired from public service and returned to his law practice, Dewey Ballantine, although he remained a power broker behind the scenes in the Republican Party. In 1956, when Eisenhower mulled not running for a second term, he suggested Dewey as his choice as successor, but party leaders made it plain that they would not entrust the nomination to Dewey yet again, and ultimately Eisenhower decided to run for re-election. Dewey also played a major role that year in convincing Eisenhower to keep Nixon as his running mate; Eisenhower had considered dropping Nixon from the Republican ticket and picking someone he felt would be less partisan and controversial. However, Dewey argued that dropping Nixon from the ticket would only anger Republican voters while winning Eisenhower few votes from the Democrats. Dewey's arguments helped convince Eisenhower to keep Nixon on the ticket. In 1960, Dewey would strongly support Nixon's ultimately unsuccessful presidential campaign against Democrat John F. Kennedy.

Although Dewey publicly supported Nelson Rockefeller in all four of his campaigns for Governor of New York, and backed Rockefeller in his losing 1964 bid for the Republican presidential nomination against Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, he did privately express concern and disappointment with what he regarded as Rockefeller's "spendthrift" methods as governor, and once told him "I like you Nelson, but I don't think I can afford you." In 1968, when both Rockefeller and Nixon were competing for the Republican presidential nomination, Dewey was publicly neutral, but "privately, according to close friends, he favored Nixon."

By the 1960s, as the conservative wing assumed more and more power within the Republican Party, Dewey removed himself further and further from party matters. When the Republicans in 1964 gave the conservative Senator Goldwater their presidential nomination, Dewey declined to even attend the Republican Convention in San Francisco; it was the first Republican Convention he had missed since 1936. Still, however, he did publicly support Goldwater for president in the election.

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.

In the mid-1960s, President Johnson tried to convince Dewey to accept positions on several government commissions, especially a national crime commission, which Johnson wanted Dewey to chair. After Nixon won the presidency in 1968, there were rumors that Dewey would be offered a Cabinet position, or a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. However, Dewey declined all offers to return to government service, preferring instead to concentrate on his highly profitable law firm. By the early 1960s, his share of the firm's profits had made him a millionaire, and his net worth at the time of his death was estimated at over $3 million (or over $20 million in 2021 dollars).

Dewey was offered the position of Chief Justice of the United States by Dwight D. Eisenhower and again by Richard Nixon in 1969. He declined the offer both times.

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