RHODE ISLAND: Fighting Irish

Walter Edmund O’Hara is a dapper, quick-witted little Irishman of 40, who three years ago crowned a lifetime of varied business and sporting activity by building the $1,200,000 Narragansett racetrack near Pawtucket, R. I, developed it into one of the richest racing establishments in the U. S. Robert Emmet Quinn is a fiery little Irishman of 43, a rough and tumble politician who crowned his career last year by getting elected Governor of Rhode Island. That the Union’s smallest State is too small to hold two such little Irishmen was a fact which even the dullest Rhode Islander comprehended full well last week.

Last spring Sportsman O’Hara and Pawtucket’s Democratic but anti-Quinn Mayor Thomas P. McCoy moved boldly into Providence to launch the daily Star-Tribune. Last month the Star-Tribune got its first big story when Governor Quinn’s State Division of Horse Racing, charging numerous irregularities in the conduct of Narragansett Park’s approximately $4,000,000 yearly business, ordered the track to oust Major Stockholder O’Hara as managing director. The Star-Tribune reacted so violently to this news that Publisher O’Hara was arrested for libel on the complaint of Governor Quinn, whom the paper called a “— —* liar.” Out on bail, Walter O’Hara went straight back to his penthouse atop the Narragansett clubhouse, where he was shortly greeted by a racing division order suspending Narragansett’s license (TIME, Sept. 27 et ante). Since then he has been simultaneously fighting the division in the courts and in the Star-Tribune, going blithely ahead with plans for the track’s fall meeting, scheduled to run from last week through Armistice Day. The Star-Tribune enjoyed another big news break when the State Supreme Court set aside the racing division’s ruling, apparently left Narragansett free to open on schedule, but last week when Narragansett tried to do so, the Star-Tribune had a story even bigger.

One morning as trainers arrived to exercise 100 horses stabled at the track, they found the surrounding area under martial law, the entrance bristling with machine guns, stands and stalls patrolled by 300 Rhode Island militiamen. Governor Quinn explained that despite the Supreme Court ruling Narragansett was not going to open, since the management had failed to file a list of track officials with the racing division on the specified date. Puzzled horsemen found Walter O’Hara still in his penthouse office, which he had reached by a military pass, were informed that Narragansett was going to open, advised to keep their horses on hand. To amuse the troopers, Mr. O’Hara good-naturedly had political airs played over the track’s public address system. Loudly demanding evidence of “insurrection” to justify the martial law, the Star-Tribune sent reporters and photographers to the track in the effort to show there was none. The Star-Tribune shortly changed its cry to “freedom of the press” when its emissaries’ passes were withdrawn, one newshawk was escorted from the track by troopers with drawn bayonets.

In Providence Governor Quinn, smarting under accusations of “dictatorship” and under a Star-Tribune story charging that his uncle, Patrick Quinn, and two Democratic politicians last year had received $42,500 from the Narragansett Racing Association, took the air to charge that O’Hara was slinging mud. Not above slinging some himself, he proceeded to detail $72,000 in gifts presented by O’Hara to various Rhode Island politicians. Shrieked the Governor: “His announced philosophy is that every man has his price and’ if you can’t buy him, you can probably get something on him by digging into his past. If neither of these methods work, frame him.”

Any largesse that Trackman O’Hara might have distributed appeared to be a waste of money when Narragansett stayed shut. In four days most of the entries had been shipped to New Hampshire’s Rockingham Park, whose fall meeting had been extended to Armistice Day on condition that no other New England track was operating.

-Profanity deleted.