The Pendergast machine referenced in this article is what eventually made Harry Truman Vice-President:
Kansas City, Mo. (1934)
03/27/1934: A battle between the Pendergast machine and reformers
in the Democratic Party primary provoked associates of the Pendergast machine
to shoot to death four people, at least one a bystander.
Category: public
Suicide: no
Cause: politics
Weapon: firearms[1]
The "Pendergast machine" got Truman nominated for the Senate, and helped him win the election. (But they didn't "run" the state.) He made his own reputation in the Senate, and that led to FDR picking him for VP.
ReplyDeletePendergast himself had been sent to prison in 1939 for income tax evasion, i.e. by the Roosevelt Justice Department. By 1944 there was nothing left of the "machine".