Presidential candidate and promise him substantial control of the party's national convention opening in Philadelphia next week. It would be necessary, Mr. Pepper suggested, for the convention to invite General Eisenhower to write his own platform and to pick the Vice~Presidential nominee. Moreover, the Senator said, the general should be assured that the Democrats would never make partisan claims on him, and he should be presented not as a "Democratic" candidate but the candidate of a convention "speaking not as Democrats but simply as Americans." Pepper managed to gain support from ADA. The Draft Ike movement gained support from the CIO, the Liberal Party of New York State, Democratic local leaders (Jacob Arvey of Chicago, Frank Hague of New Jersey, Mayor William O'Dwyer of New York City, and Mayor Hubert Humphrey of Minneapolis), as well as ADA leaders Leon Henderson and James Roosevelt II. Eisenhower made repeated statements that he would not accept the Democratic Party's nomination well into July, just ahead of the 1948 Democratic National Convention. When Eisenhower, who accepted to become president of Columbia University in January 1948) made three statements refusing the nomination during July 1948, Pepper and others gave up and provided lukewarm support to Harry S. Truman. His third and last denial, sent by telegram to Pepper, ended the "Eisenhower Boom", and delegates began to reconsider Truman. (Pepper also made a bid for presidential candidacy but withdrew it.) On the evening of July 9, 1948, Roosevelt conceded at "Eisenhower-for-President headquarters" that the general would not accept a nomination. During the convention (July 12–14, 1948) and after, concern persisted that the Eisenhower Boom had weakened Truman's hopes in the November 1948 elections. In 1950, Pepper lost his bid for a third full term in 1950 by a margin of over 60,000 votes. Ed Ball, a power in state politics who had broken with Pepper, financed his opponent, U.S. Representative George A. Smathers. A former supporter of Pepper, Smathers repeatedly attacked "Red Pepper" for having far-left sympathies, condemning both his support for universal health care and his alleged support for the Soviet Union. Pepper had traveled to the Soviet Union in 1945 and, after meeting Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, declared he was "a man Americans could trust." Because of his left-of-center sympathies with people like Wallace and actor-activist Paul Robeson and because of his bright red hair, he became widely nicknamed "Red Pepper". At a speech