National Affairs: Bone For Gnawing

Determined partisans can always be counted on to read national significance into the most insignificant of local elections. Because New York is the home State of Franklin D. Roosevelt and his political generalissimo. James A. Farley, its election of Assemblymen last week provided such partisans with a bare bone for gnawing. The President’s part was to sit at Hyde Park and serve in silence as a rabbit’s foot to bring luck to Democratic candidates. The part of the Postmaster General was to serve, in anything but silence, as the donkey’s head. As chairman of both State and National Democratic Committees, he was confident that Democrats would elect a majority of the Assembly which, in turn, would be an omen of Democratic victory everywhere in 1936.

What hopeful Boss Farley forgot was that neither when Roosevelt was elected Governor in 1930 nor when he was elected President in 1932 did the Democrats win the New York Assembly. Save for last year’s New Deal landslide, the Democrats had not won the Assembly in 22 years, because New York is so gerrymandered that they need more than plain majorities to prevail against Republicans. Day after last week’s election which sent 82 Republicans, 68 Democrats to the Assembly, the Postmaster General remembered his history. His alibi: in spite of defeat, 500,000 more Democratic than Republican votes had been cast.