MISSOURI: New Faces, Old Stuff

The Pendergast machine of Kansas City, which gave Harry Truman his start in politics, all but fell apart last week, just as its most famous offspring reached his greatest glory. When fat old Tom Pendergast died in 1945, after a short stretch in Leavenworth for income-tax evasion, his nephew and image, Jim Pendergast, took over the creaky remnants of the machine. But Jim just didn’t have the touch.

Smooth, slick-haired and hardworking, Charley Binaggio, 39, moved into control of Kansas City’s North Side, a riverfront area of dumpy houses and taverns which had spawned Pendergastery. He quickly expanded into other wards. The Kansas City Star attacked Binaggio as a product of old North Side hoodlumism; the St. Louis Post-Dispatch linked him with the Capone race-wire syndicate. But with last week’s election, Charley Binaggio became the Democratic boss-apparent of Kansas City. Charley characterized the victory as “a complete answer to the baseless and malicious charges made about me by the press.” To Kansas City it sounded like old times.