ELECTIONS: Blips

As U.S. citizens went to the polls last week to vote in local elections, prognosticators sat with eyes focused on their political radar screens. They were watching eagerly for telltale blips which would in dicate a national trend.

One of the few clear blips came from Indiana. There, Republicans made “Tru-manism” an issue in municipal elections. Senator William E. Jenner cried that a vote for a Democratic mayor is a vote for the Truman Administration, for “Communists high in the State Department . . . crime and corruption in the Internal Revenue Bureau . . . creeping decay in every department of our national life.” Result: Republicans won 73 of 103 Indiana cities, a gain of 25. In Indianapolis, Phillip L. Bayt, probably the best mayor in the city’s history, was turned out by a Republican. Dozens of voters told Bayt they thought he was a fine mayor, but they wouldn’t support “Trumanism.”

In New York City, Rudolph Halley, former Kefauver committee counsel, proved again that the once fearsome Tammany tiger is just a tired, sick old cat. Registration was low and the voting turnout was worse, conditions under which any vigorous political machine should be able to count on victory. But not Tammany; it went down before a television hero. During the Kefauver hearings, Halley had become as familiar to millions of televiewers as Hopalong Cassidy. As the Liberal-City Fusion-Independent candidate for council president, he was elected handily, and now his eyes seem intent on the mayor’s chair in 1954.

In Boston, ex-Convict James Michael Curley, former mayor, Congressman and governor, made a halfhearted effort to come back to another term as mayor. Respected Mayor John B. Hynes buried Curley under the biggest plurality in the history of Boston mayoralty elections. Candidates of the New Boston Committee, a nonpartisan reform organization, won five of nine seats on the city council, four of five on the school committee.

In Philadelphia, thousands of Republican voters helped elect the first Demo cratic mayor in 67 years. In a kind of deathbed repentance, the once-invincible Republican machine had nominated the Rev. Daniel Poling, a famed Baptist clergyman, for the mayoralty. He was decisively beaten by Joseph S. Clark Jr. Richardson Dilworth, spearhead of the Democratic uprising, who was defeated for mayor four years ago after a vigorous campaign, was elected district attorney.

What it all seemed to add up to was that big-city political machines were still on the downgrade—and the warm wind of change was in the air.