Notes:

Leslie L. Biffle was a national Democratic Party official from Arkansas. After serving as secretary for Arkansas congressional officials in Washington DC, Biffle became the Democratic Party secretary and finally the secretary of the U.S. Senate, serving from 1945 to 1947 and 1949 to 1953.

Leslie (or Les) Biffle was born on October 9, 1889, in Boydsville (Clay County) in northeastern Arkansas. His parents were William B. “Billie” Biffle, who was a local Democratic Party official, and Minnie Ella Turner Biffle. The family soon moved to Piggott (Clay County), and many today continue to cite Piggott as Biffle’s birthplace. Biffle attended schools in Piggott and Little Rock (Pulaski County).

In 1909, he moved to Washington DC to be secretary for U.S. Representative Robert Bruce Macon until 1912 and for U.S. Senator James Paul Clarke until 1916. From 1917 to 1919, Biffle served in France as an auditor for the U.S. War Department with the American Expeditionary Force. Returning to Washington, he continued his work in politics. He was a Methodist and a Freemason.

Biffle married Mary Glade Strickling of West Virginia in 1921.

In 1925, the Democratic leader of the Senate, Joseph Taylor Robinson, helped Biffle become the assistant secretary for the Democratic senators. Biffle then became the Democratic senators’ majority secretary in 1933. According to Life magazine, Robinson supposedly told Biffle, “Keep your eyes and ears open and your damn mouth shut,” while the Arkansas Gazette claimed Robinson had said, “Keep your mouth shut and your bowels open.”

As the majority secretary or “pair clerk,” Biffle arranged “pair votes” between absent Democratic and Republican officials. A bill before Congress sometimes lacked the necessary number, or quorum, of officials in attendance to be considered for a vote. As the majority secretary, Biffle would set up a “pair vote” in which an absent Republican’s vote was placed against an absent Democrat’s vote. This system ensured that bills received the necessary number of votes, while the “pair vote” canceled the two absent officials’ votes. With the volume of New Deal proposals, Biffle’s time as the majority secretary gave him invaluable experience navigating Washington politics and crafting national legislation.

In 1935, Biffle began a friendship with Missouri senator Harry S. Truman, and Biffle helped secure Truman’s nomination for vice president during the 1944 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois. In 1945, the Senate unanimously elected Biffle as secretary, an unprecedented move among both Democrats and Republicans.

When Republicans took the Senate majority in the 1946 elections, Biffle served as the Democratic Policy Committee’s executive director. During Truman’s 1948 election campaign, Biffle traveled through the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys. Oft-repeated accounts allege that Biffle dressed as a chicken farmer and drove a truck to poll voters, and Biffle’s analyses boosted Truman’s confidence during the close election.

From 1949 to 1953, Biffle again served as the secretary of the Senate. Due to his experience and relationships with Truman and congressional leaders such as J. William Fulbright, Biffle gained a reputation as a congenial and bipartisan political leader. As Senate secretary, he notified senators of congressional business, passed information among senators, relayed messages from the White House and congressional leaders, supervised congressional clerks and records, and assigned desks to congressional officials.

Articles appeared on Biffle in Newsweek, Fortune, Life, and the Washington Social Register, and magazines credited Truman with saying, “Les is worth ten votes on a roll call.” Anecdotes highlighted his office’s direct phone line to the White House and his walking the Senate’s aisles while whispering to congressional officials without moving his lips.

In 1949, Piggott leaders honored Biffle by naming that year’s Piggott Fourth of July Picnic “Les Biffle Day.” Attendees included Fulbright, Governor Sid McMath, and various federal and state officials. At the event, Vice President Alben W. Barkley debuted a bronze bust of Biffle, sculpted by Felix Weihs de Weldon, known for having sculpted the Iwo Jima Monument in Washington. The bust of Biffle stands at the Piggott Post Office.

Upon leaving the Senate, Biffle worked as a political consultant until he died on April 6, 1966. He is buried in the Fort Lincoln Cemetery in Maryland.

For additional information:
“Biffle: Remembering the Man beyond the Bronze.” Clay County Times-Democrat, February 15, 2006. Online at http://www.cctimesdemocrat.com/story/1374673.html (accessed May 21, 2015).

Butterfield, Roger. “Leslie Biffle.” Life, June 10, 1946, pp. 65–72.

“Ex-Secretary of Senate Dies.” Arkansas Gazette, April 7, 1966, pp. 1A, 2A.

“Leslie Biffle, Truman Confidant and Ex-Senate Official, Is Dead.” New York Times, April 7, 1966, p. 39.

Leslie Biffle Papers. Harry S. Truman Presidential Library, Independence, Missouri.

“Leslie Biffle, Secretary of the Senate, 1945–1947; 1949–1953.” United States Senate. http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/SOS_Leslie_Biffle.htm (accessed May 21, 2015).

“McClellan Adds Praise For Biffle.” Arkansas Gazette, April 7, 1966, p. 1A.

Aaron Coy Moulton
Fayetteville, Arkansas

SOURCE: http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=8437
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Leslie Biffle, Secretary of the Senate, 1945-1947; 1949-1953

This secretary of the Senate became nationally famous for his well-timed poll of chicken farmers. He also grabbed news headlines for exercising a function of his office that had fallen to few of his predecessors and none of his successors: he presided over the Senate. Among his most intimate friends was the president of the United States.

Born in 1889, Leslie Biffle grew up in Piggott, Arkansas, the son of a local Democratic official. He attended business school in Little Rock and moved to Washington, D.C. in 1909 as secretary to Representative Robert Macon. When Macon retired four years later, Biffle secured a patronage post in the Senate folding room. In 1925, Senate Democratic leader Joseph T. Robinson, a fellow Arkansan, named Biffle assistant party secretary. When the Democrats took control of the Senate in 1933, Robinson advanced Biffle to the role of majority secretary.

The dapper and diminutive five-foot-seven-inch secretary excelled as a legislative vote counter and political operative. At once gregarious and poker-faced, the blue-eyed Biffle won and kept confidences among senators of both parties. A master of the Senate's obscure folkways, Biffle regularly assisted new Democratic senators, including Harry S. Truman, who entered the Senate in 1935. The two men, close in age, political views, and modest demeanor, developed a deep friendship. Biffle played a major role at the 1944 Democratic national convention in securing the vice-presidential nomination for Truman.

In February 1945, Republicans joined the Democratic majority in unanimously electing Biffle secretary of the Senate. He also took on duties as the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee's secretary-treasurer and the Democratic national convention's sergeant at arms. Nine weeks later, Biffle's considerable influence soared when Harry Truman succeeded to the presidency. Summoned to the White House to be told of President Franklin Roosevelt's death, the new president made his first phone call to Biffle to ask that congressional leaders come at once. On the following day, Truman drove to Capitol Hill for a luncheon in Biffle's back office (S-224) with seventeen of his closest former congressional colleagues. Room S-224 soon became a favorite watering hole -- "Biff's Diner" -- for members, lobbyists, and others seeking to a back channel to the president's attention. Relying on Biffle for his accurate and frank political counsel, Truman maintained a special White House phone that rang directly to the secretary's desk. This earned the secretary nicknames that ranged from "the man who runs the Senate" and "the secretary of politics," to the "prince of wire-pullers." He was also known as the processor of "Biffle's Tomato Juice," a concoction from his rooftop garden that was widely valued as an antidote for hangovers.

On May 25, 1946, President Truman asked a special joint session of Congress for "temporary emergency" legislation to draft striking railroad workers into the armed forces. During Truman's speech, as members shouted their support of the president's drastic request, Secretary Biffle dramatically entered the packed House chamber, marched to the dais, and presented the president a slip of red paper that had just arrived from the White House. Truman glanced at it and announced, "Word has just been received that the railroad strike has been settled on terms proposed by the President." The chamber exploded in thunderous ovation. Skeptics later accused Truman and Biffle of staging this little drama to the president's advantage.

When the Republicans took control of the Senate in 1947, they elected their own secretary -- a move that led the Democrats to name Biffle executive director of the Democratic Policy Committee. Before leaving as secretary, however, he got to exercise a unique responsibility of his office. Senate Rule I authorized the secretary to perform the duties of the chair in the absence of a vice president and pending the election of a president pro tempore. With the office of vice president vacant and the former president pro tempore's Senate term expired, Biffle presided during two days of procedural maneuvering over the seating of a senator. As soon as it resolved that matter, the Senate elected its president pro tempore and Biffle relinquished his office.

As professional pollsters branded Truman the underdog in the 1948 presidential campaign, the president welcomed signs of support from the "common people." Disguised in the soiled overalls and straw hat of a chicken buyer, Biffle set out in a old pickup truck to sample opinion throughout the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys. Returning from his six-week journey, he advised Truman that he had a "fighting chance."

The 1948 elections confirmed Biffle's optimism by returning Truman to the White House, a Democratic majority to the Senate, and Biffle to the Office of Secretary. Four years later, in January 1953, a Republican sweep brought Leslie Biffle's forty-four-year congressional career to a close. Among the many who wished him well were three hundred members of the Washington press corps who gathered at the National Press Club to honor his service. He worked as a consultant until his death in 1966.

Columnist Doris Fleeson attributed Biffle's success to the fact that his "esteem for Senators is so intense [that] he is always forgetting himself and doing favors for Republican Senators too." The New York Times cited his ability "to whisper without moving his lips, enabling him to transmit confidential information to Senators without fear of being overheard by anyone else."

SOURCE: https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/SOS_Leslie_Biffle.htm
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Profile in Life Magazine, June 10, 1946
https://books.google.com/books?id=xkkEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA65&ots=Xez7xmYWeG&dq=leslie%20biffle&pg=PA65#v=onepage&q=leslie%20biffle&f=false
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Leslie married Mary Glade STRICKLING 1921. Mary (daughter of John A. STRICKLING and Mary E. STEWART) was born May 1897. [Group Sheet]