There hasn’t been a brokered convention — the kind unhappy Republicans, independents and media elites are dreaming about this year — since the Republicans had their last one in 1948 and the Democrats in 1952.The candidates nominated then, Tom Dewey and Adlai Stevenson, lost the presidency — twice, as it turned out. A brokered convention hasn’t produced a winner since Franklin Roosevelt 80 years ago.A convention becomes brokered if no candidate can be nominated on the first ballot. Thereafter, deals are made and broken and ballots are conducted until someone emerges as the nominee. Sometimes, that someone is a surprise.Brokered conventions were all the rage until primaries came along and spoiled the fun. Although they placed the nominating process in the hands of the party bosses, brokered conventions produced many excellent candidates, along with some real duds.In the latter category, we have the 1920 Republican Convention in which the party bosses assembled in that fabled smoke-filled room in Chicago’s Blackstone Hotel and picked Sen. Warren G. Harding as the most malleable of the candidates in a field of not terribly impressive contenders. We know how that worked out. Four years later, the Democrats had their own farce at Madison Square Garden in New York where the party was bitterly divided by Prohibition, with the Wets championing New York Gov. Al Smith and the Drys favoring William Gibbs McAdoo, son-in-law of the late Woodrow Wilson. The convention was also influenced by the revived Ku Klux Klan, which vehemently opposed the Catholic Smith. It took 15 days and 104 ballots before a compromise candidate, lawyer and diplomat John W. Davis, won the by then worthless nomination.Discussing that convention years later, John Kennedy joked that a Massachusetts delegate said they’d either have to find a candidate or a cheaper hotel if the convention lasted much longer.The demise of the brokered convention in the early 1950s coincided not only with the rise of state primaries but also the coming of television. The 1948 conventions in Philadelphia were the first to be televised, reaching 13 states and not many more TV sets on the East Coast. The 1952 conventions were the first to be seen nationwide.These conventions offered their parties a good selection of worthy candidates, far different from the Republican dilemma this year.In 1948, the Republican front runner was the eventual winner Dewey, who arrived in Philadelphia short of delegates but with a formidable group of challengers, Sens. Robert Taft and Arthur Vandenberg, Govs. Earl Warren and Harold Stassen and a dark horse, Gen. Douglas MacArthur. After Dewey led on the first two ballots, his opponents called for a recess to organize a stop Dewey movement but they failed, and Dewey emerged as the nominee and the prohibitive favorite to win the 1948 election. We know how that worked out, too.Four years later, Sen. Estes Kefauver, who had defeated President Truman in the New Hampshire Primary and prompted his retirement, went to the convention with a dozen wins in 15 primaries. But the Democratic establishment saw him as weak and wasn’t enamored with two other challengers, Averell Harriman and segregationist Richard Russell, either.Stevenson, the governor of Illinois, had refused to seek the nomination but did agree to deliver the keynote address and his witty and stirring speech turned a lot of delegate heads. Truman intervened, convinced Harriman to withdraw and Stevenson to run. He was nominated on the third ballot and lost to war hero Dwight Eisenhower twice.Since then, we have come close to brokered conventions from time to time. The assassination of Robert Kennedy the night he won the California Primary in 1968 eliminated what surely would have been a convention showdown between him and Hubert Humphrey, President Lyndon Johnson’s choice. Sitting presidents haven’t been immune from challenges at conventions either. Ronald Reagan came close to unseating the unelected President Gerald Ford in 1976, and Ted Kennedy tried and failed to do the same to Jimmy Carter in 1980.What was most striking in researching these last brokered conventions was how the Republican Party has changed since the days of Dewey and Eisenhower. While today’s final four of Romney, Santorum, Gingrich and Paul squabble over earmarks and contraceptives, the 1948 Republican Party platform was recommending federal aid to the states for slum clearance and low cost housing, an anti-lynching law and the abolition of the poll tax, international arms control and — get this — “extended Social Security benefits.” A few years later, the party moved south and lost its soul.Simsbury resident Dick Ahles is a retired journalist. Email him at dahles@hotmail.com.
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Greg Fricke and James Boehmer, co-owners of Peggy Mercury in Kent, recently launched their first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts.”
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Fricke and Boehmer are not there to stock their shelves with the same products customers find at standard makeup retailers. They’re there to help customers find what works for them. That usually means asking customers about themselves and learning about their beauty habits, skin, style and the way they like to present themselves. Fricke and Boehmer believe it’s their job to help customers bring out the qualities that suit them and determine what works best for their look.
So much of the Peggy Mercury world is about emboldening people to become more creative, and possibly bolder, versions of themselves. Some of this comes through the store’s creative collaborations with artists, designers and stylists.
It’s part of an ethos that encourages them and their friends to use the shop as a kind of laboratory, trying out new creative experiments without knowing how they might turn out. Whether in fashion, painting, fiber arts or photography, the projects almost always turn out marvelously.
A line of sterling silver charms they sell started as a small project by their friend Nolan Percival. In the beginning, the pieces were for close friends and loved ones. But Boehmer and Fricke encouraged Percival to get a little more serious about the project and create a whole line for the store. Today, it’s one of their top-selling collections.
Classic styles, bold colors, and creative concerts make up the “Imaginary Concerts” line at Peggy Mercury.Provided
“Imaginary Concerts” has the duo taking their own advice.
The project started as a way for Boehmer to connect with his mother, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Taking old concert shirts from his own collection, Boehmer and his mother began cutting out the graphics with the idea that they would make a quilt together. Unfortunately, she died before they could complete the project in 2025. The pieces, which were ready for production, were put on the back burner as Boehmer and Fricke dealt with their loss and the whirlwind of projects that never seemed to cease at Peggy Mercury.
But the harsh winter of 2026 presented an opportunity to take some time and focus on themselves. Part of that meant revisiting and redefining the concert T-shirt project. This time, instead of looking to the warmth and comfort of a quilt, they turned to another passion — fashion.
Taking a page from their own book, they wanted to create something that felt comfortable to them. They took two disparate loves — one rooted in simple preppy style, with clean lines and classic silhouettes, and the other in the nitty gritty worlds of punk rock and pop — and blended them together to create something entirely new. Pulling from the staples of vintage Brooks Brothers and Charvet collections, they applied the graphic elements with bold stitching reminiscent of punk jackets of the ‘70s and ‘80s, but with a much more sophisticated air.
But the remixing isn’t just the pairing of prep and punk. The pieces are not canon. They take liberties with the realities of concert tours, combining one band’s dates with another band’s logos, mixing them all up until the reality is lost and imagination is the only truth.
Shirts from Peggy Mercury’s first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts,” hang on display.Provided
Adding to the mix is an element of perpetual creativity. Art can be messy, both figuratively and literally, and many of Fricke and Boehmer’s artist friends carry evidence of their work on them at all times. As a nod to these tireless creatives, the duo added haphazard splashes of bright color, giving the line an even more distinctive feel.
For them, “Imaginary Concerts” passes the “Peggy Test.” The mythical Peggy Mercury is a fictional figurehead for the company, a character who thrives on creativity and change. The name, much like the clothing line, is a mixture of interests: Mercury is a planet, a deity and an elusive, transformative element, while Peggy is the wonderfully stylish and boundary-pushing Peggy Guggenheim.
Everything Fricke and Boehmer put in their store has to pass this test: Would Peggy Mercury approve? For their first collection, the answer is a resounding yes.
Peggy Mercury is at 9 Maple St., Unit 2, Kent.
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