Willkie moved to Akron, Ohio, where he worked as a corporate lawyer for the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company. In Akron he also quickly gained status in the local Democratic Party, and he was a delegate to the 1924 Democratic National Convention.

In 1929, Willkie became a legal counsel for the New York-based Commonwealth & Southern Corporation, the nation's largest electric utility holding company. Commonwealth & Southern provided electrical power to customers in eleven states. He rapidly rose through the ranks and became company president in 1933.

Willkie was a delegate to the 1932 Democratic National Convention. Once Franklin Roosevelt captured the nomination, Willkie supported him and contributed money to his campaign.

(After the 1940 election,) Willkie became one of Roosevelt's most unlikely allies. To the chagrin of many in his party, Willkie called for greater national support for controversial Roosevelt initiatives such as the Lend-Lease Act and embarked on a new campaign against isolationism in America.

In 1943, Willkie wrote the book One World, a plea for international peacekeeping after the war. Extremely popular, millions of copies of the book sold.

In 1939 Willkie made a highly-publicized appearance on the popular "Town Hall" nationwide radio program, where he debated the merits of the private-enterprise system with Robert H. Jackson, President Roosevelt's Solicitor General and a possible candidate for the 1940 Democratic presidential nomination. Most observers felt that Willkie won the debate, and many liberal Republicans began - for the first time - to view him as a dark horse presidential candidate.

Willkie formally switched political parties in 1939 and began making speeches in opposition to the New Deal. However, Willkie did not condemn all New Deal programs, and he supported those programs that he felt could not be run better by private enterprise. His objection was that the government had unfair advantages over private businesses, and thus should avoid competing directly against them.

The 1940 presidential campaign was conducted against the backdrop of the Second World War.

Although the United States was still neutral, the nation - and especially the Republican Party - was deeply divided between isolationists, or those who felt the nation should avoid helping any of the warring powers and not take any steps that could lead America into the war, and interventionists, who felt that America's survival depended upon helping the British and other allied powers defeat Nazi Germany.

The three leading candidates for the 1940 Republican nomination were Senators Robert Taft of Ohio and Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan, and Thomas E. Dewey, the "gangbusting" District Attorney from Manhattan.

Willkie seemed an unlikely candidate as he was a former Democrat and a Wall Street-based industrialist who had never before run for public office.

He had received backing from media-Scribe magnates; key Willkie supporters were

New York Herald Tribune (Ogden Reid)

Scripps-Howard newspaper chain (Roy Howard)

Minneapolis Star (John and Gardner Cowles)

Minneapolis Tribune (John and Gardner Cowles)

Des Moines Register (John and Gardner Cowles)

Look magazine.

Willkie's supporters established a national grassroots network, but his popularity was thinly spread, with a May 8 Gallup poll showing

May 8 Gallup poll

Dewey at 67%

Vandenberg and Taft

Willkie at a mere 3%.

Willkie consistently spoke of the need to aid the British in their fight against Germany; this made a direct contrast with the other leading Republican candidates, who were isolationists.

While Taft stressed that America needed to prevent the New Deal from using the international crisis to extend socialism at home, the Nazis' rapid blitz into France shook public opinion.

By mid-June, little over one week before the convention opened, Gallup reported Willkie had surged to second place with 17%, and that Dewey was slipping.

Willkie was stumping the country getting the votes of liberal and East Coast Republicans who were concerned about the Nazis' conquest of western Europe.

As the convention delegates were arriving at Philadelphia, Gallup reported

Dewey had slipped to 47% Willkie had moved up to 29%, Taft trailed at 8% Vandenberg trailed at 8% Hoover trailed at 6%

With the surrender of France to Germany on June 25, 1940, and the belief that Britain was under imminent threat of a Nazi invasion, the 1940 Republican Convention opened in an atmosphere of great excitement and national stress; this is believed to have boosted Willkie's chances even further.

Hundreds of thousands, perhaps as many as one million, telegrams urging support for Willkie poured in, many from "Willkie Clubs" that had sprung up across the country. Millions more signed petitions circulating everywhere.

Hundreds of vocal Willkie supporters packed the upper galleries of the convention hall.

Willkie's amateur status and fresh face appealed to delegates as well as voters.

Gallup found the same thing in data not reported until after the convention: Willkie had pulled ahead among Republican voters by 44% to only 29% for the collapsing Dewey.

Willkie's supporters in the galleries kept yelling "We Want Willkie" over and over, adding to the excitement and pro-Willkie momentum.

Willkie won on the sixth ballot.

Willkie had three main themes

The alleged inefficiency and corruption of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal programs.

Roosevelt's attempt to win an unprecedented third term as President.

The government's alleged lack of military preparedness.

Willkie claimed that he would keep most of FDR's New Deal welfare and regulatory programs, but that he would make them more efficient and effective.

Just before the Republican Convention, "Willkie Clubs" started to magically spring up everywhere.

Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) member Oren Root was closely tied to the J.P. Morgan banking dynasty and it was he who created and directed the "Willkie Clubs".

Willkie was presented as a common "Midwesterner" to the American voting public, but in fact, he had moved to New York City long ago, became the President of the nation's largest electric utility holding company, and was a major supporter of FDR. Willkie was also a close friend of CFR member Thomas Lamont, chairman of the board of J.P. Morgan.

Wendell Willkie was not some Main Street U.S.A common Joe, but a Wall Street banking insider.

Earnest Cuneo, code-names "Crusader", was the top American liaison between BSC (British Security Coordination), FDR, OSS (forerunner of the CIA), the State Department, the Treasury, and the Justice Department. In a CIA file brought to light by Professor (Thomas) Mahl, Cuneo acknowledged that the BSC "went beyond the legal, the ethical, and the proper".

Cuneo's admission fits with the testimony of British agent Bickham Escott, who said that when he was recruited he was told, "If you join us, you mustn't be afraid of murder."

the delegates were eager to hear him demolish the New Deal; they were even more than eager to cheer some challenging declaration of faith. But inflexible Mr. Hoover mushmouthed his delivery; the clear, hot words of his finest address got lost (as always) deep in his bulldog chops. He stood there awkwardly, a near-great man whose fate has been to cast his mother-of-pearl words before mobs who, whether friendly or bitter, always yell "Louder".