Thomas D. Bailey

President Bailey, 1950

**Thomas Davison Bailey, Sr.** (born 4th August 1898) was a New Englander politician and attorney who served as the 11th President of the Commonwealth of New England from 1948 to 1954. A member of the Progressive Party, he served as the 72nd Governor of Connecticut from 1941 to 1948, before being elected as the 12th Vice President on a ticket with President Clifton Caldwell. He ascended to the office of President upon Caldwell's unexpected death a few months into his term, and served out the remaining five years. Upon his narrow defeat in the 1953 election, Bailey was succeeded by Federalist George A. Hemmingway.

Born in New Haven, Connecticut, to a fairly well-off middle class family, Bailey spent most of his early career as an attorney after attending Princeton University. Always somewhat politically involved, Bailey represented several clients of the Republican Party in politically charged cases - he registered as a Republican as early as 1923, and attended several national conventions as a delegate from Connecticut. When the Republican Party collapsed in the late 1920s owing to increasing divisions between the centrist and left-wing factions, Bailey initially joined the centrist Liberal Party, but later transferred his allegiance to the more left-leaning Progressive Party. Bailey built up his reputation within the party to the point where he was drafted by local Progressives to serve as their candidate for Governor of Connecticut in 1940. Elected to that office, he would serve as the 72nd Governor of Connecticut for the next seven years, elected to several more terms.

As the 1947 presidential election came around, the Progressives were deemed to have a genuine chance at the presidency against the increasing unpopular Liberal incumbent, Michael E. McPherson. The reformist Clifton Caldwell was chosen as the presidential nominee, and the comparatively moderate Bailey was selected by the national convention to serve as Caldwell's running mate. When Caldwell proved victorious over both President McPherson and the Federalists, Bailey was inaugurated as Vice President in February 1948. He had a relatively subdued role as Vice President, largely sidelined in the cabinet in favour of Caldwell's long-time political allies. As fortune would have it, Caldwell would suffer a fatal heart attack in October of the same year, and Vice President Bailey was sworn in as the 11th President of New England.

As President, Bailey initially retained Caldwell's cabinet and intended to pursue his policies, but soon deviated in the face of disagreements with the Caldwellites in the executive branch. They expected Bailey to essentially submit to their will, and viewed him as a placeholder President. Determined to prove otherwise, Bailey gradually rooted the existing cabinet out of their offices and replaced them with new figures more loyal to him. After the death of his wife in December 1948, President Bailey sparked significant controversy in 1950 by remarrying to the 28-year-old Kyllikki Edrice Somerkoski, a Finnish woman and a recent divorcee from an Egyptian husband. A moral panic and political fallout followed the President's remarriage, but this gradually subsided over time. In the 1953 presidential election, President Bailey won the first round to gain a full term, but was extremely narrowly defeated in the run-off by Federalist George A. Hemmingway, and grudgingly left office in February 1954, briefly returning to law practice in Connecticut.

Ever anxious to return to political life, former President Bailey ran for a seat in the Commonwealth Senate in the 1955 midterm elections, causing quite a stir. In a bitterly contested campaign, Bailey came out victorious against Federalist incumbent Albert J. Crowell, and returned to Boston to become an active opponent of the Hemmingway regime.