On January 14, The New York Times carried an announcement by Jo Davidson, national chairman of ICCASP, that James Roosevelt had joined the professional staff as director of political organization. The article noted that the national headquarters were located in the Hotel Astor. Roosevelt's job was to mobilize members of all ICCASP branches to support progressive candidates at the Congressional elections in November. It was quite a coup landing the former president's eldest son, who was returning to civilian life after five years in the Marine Corps, making it appear as if the organization was the true standard bearer of the New Deal.
According to the article, the committee had helped organize support for the United Nations and Bretton Woods financial agreement to pay for international cooperation, the full employment bill, legislation for permanent Fair Employment, the Murray-Wagner-Dingess health bill, and full and free exchange of scientific and cultural information among the United Nations, particularly in regard to the the international development and peaceful use of atomic energy.
"I believe there is a need in our democracy for an organization willing to present and capable of presenting to the electorate in a dramatic manner the progressive viewpoint on domestic and world policies," Roosevelt said in the announcement. "There also is an urgent need for an organization to give active support to public officials and candidates who will consistently work for social and economic progress." He went on the state that the Committee did not intend to be a political party, but would function as a non-partisan organization.
Later that year Roosevelt was quoted as saying that he expected to see a political realignment with "progressive" Republicans like LaGuardia joining the Democrats and "reactionary" Democrats like the vehemently racist and corrupt Senator Bilbo and vociferous anti-Semitic and racist congressman John E. Rankin, both from the great state of Mississippi, switching to the Republicans. This led Rankin to state in March that Roosevelt had gone over to the Communists. Rankin claimed that Communism was a Jewish plot to take over the world. Both Bilbo and Rankin were strong supporters of the Ku Klux Klan and other traditional Southern "values." If you wanted to get a crowd of New York liberals singing the "Internationale" in 1946 you could just bring up the names Bilbo and Rankin. Aside from their White Supremacist views, both men actually were populists who supported much of the New Deal economic legislation. The dependency of the New Deal coalition on votes from Southern bigots and Big City machine politicians to pass its agenda was a problem when it came to dealing with social issues. After the Republicans took control of the Senate in the 1946 election, the Senate refused to seat the newly reelected Bilbo over corruption charges he was facing.
In March Roosevelt warned that the famous "Iron Curtain" speech that Churchill gave in Missouri was "harmful to the peace of the world." He urged Truman to send an "envoy of integrity"-- and that would be none other than naive party tool Henry Wallace--to Russia to obtain the complete facts about the Russia -Iran situation, which Roosevelt thought was not fully understood in the US, where some outside the "Progressive" movement dared to suggest that the continued occupation of northern Iran by the Soviet army was not indicative of Stalin's genuine commitment to world peace.
When Roosevelt withdrew from the ICCASP that summer his stated reason was his acceptance of the leadership of the Democratic Party state party organization in California. According to Olivia de Havilland it was because the organization had veered too far to the Far Left. Will Rogers Jr., the Democratic candidate for Senate in California in 1946 characterized the ICCASP as a Communist-led group. Roosevelt's mother had allied herself with the competing alliance of non-Communist liberals, the Union for Democratic Action.