When the 1952 Republican National Convention opened in Chicago, most political experts rated Robert Taft and Dwight Eisenhower as neck-and-neck in the delegate vote totals. Eisenhower's managers, led by New York Governor Thomas Dewey and Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., accused Taft of "stealing" delegate votes in Southern states such as Texas and Georgia. They claimed that Taft's leaders in these states had illegally refused to give delegate spots to Eisenhower supporters and put Taft delegates in their place. Lodge and Dewey proposed to evict the pro-Taft delegates in these states and replace them with pro-Eisenhower delegates; they called this proposal "Fair Play".