Stephen Wise’s relationship with President Franklin Roosevelt was rocky at first. Wise did not vote for Roosevelt in 1932, preferring socialist candidate Norman Thomas. Yet Roosevelt, who once lamented that there was no “Jewish pope” to coordinate Jewish advocacy, recognized that Wise was an important—possibly the most important—American Jewish leader. Wise, in turn, was proud of his relationship with Roosevelt, whom he called “Chief.” Still, Wise was unable to persuade the Roosevelt administration to openly support unrestricted Jewish immigration to Palestine (which was controlled by Great Britain under a League of Nations mandate), or to push for a change in US immigration laws to allow more European Jews to flee to the United States from the dangers of Nazism.