NEW YORK: Over the Bridge

Inspired by what happened when Governor Herbert Lehman gave young Thomas Edmund Dewey a free hand to clean up New York County (Manhattan) as special prosecutor three years ago. pugnacious little Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia this year got a Dewey of his own for New York City’s five far-flung boroughs. Created under the new city charter was a $10,000 job, the Mayor’s Commissioner of Investigation. Picked for it was a plump young Brooklyn lawyer, William B. Herlands, 32 to Lawyer Dewey’s 36 and equally diligent, who had worked with Tom Dewey in the U.S. Attorney’s office and later worked for him as a municipal racket buster. Judging Manhattan well taken care of when Tom Dewey was elected county district attorney, Mayor LaGuardia ordered Brooklynite Herlands over Brooklyn Bridge into his own borough, the city’s most populous (2,792,000), long reputed shady politically. Last week Commissioner Herlands produced some Dewey-like results.

Kings County (Brooklyn) has for district attorney no racket buster but a dapper, grey-haired Democratic politician, William Francis Xavier Geoghan (Ghee-gan). When Commissioner Heriands began probing into District Attorney Geoghan’s protracted investigation of Brooklyn’s fur racket, he grew mightily suspicious, started an investigation of his own. Last fortnight the two investigations clashed over an habitual jailbird named Isidore Juffe. Mr. Juffe told the Herlands office that he had ”paid plenty” to keep out of jail in Brooklyn. District Attorney Geoghan said he had been at liberty as a stool pigeon, promptly clapped him back behind bars. This was the signal for Commissioner Herlands to bring his fight into the open, which he did by blanketing Brooklyn with 1,402 subpoenas for financial records and bank accounts, to expose the workings of the Geoghan office since 1933.

This posed a pretty problem for campaigning Democratic Governor Lehman. With Racket Buster Dewey, his Republican opponent, grinning down from an anticorruption platform, Mr. Lehman had to step fast. He also had to step delicately, because although he had twice before superseded troublesome Democrat Geoghan with special prosecutors, he refused to remove him from office at the request of a special grand jury two years ago. Last week, after hearing both Mr. Geoghan and Mr. Herlands present their cases, Governor Lehman announced that Mr. Geoghan would be superseded again, delayed naming a special prosecutor to investigate Mr. Geoghan and other Brooklyn law-enforcement agencies.

“An act of courage,” applauded Mayor LaGuardia, and other New Yorkers agreed. For besides being a good Democrat, William Francis Xavier Geoghan is a good Roman Catholic, a fact important to Governor Lehman last week. Mr. Lehman was persuaded to run this year only on condition that his legal Man Friday, 35-year-old former Supreme Court Justice Charles Poletti, share his responsibilities as Lieutenant Governor. This move angered Roman Catholics and conservatives because it entailed the dropping of Catholic Lieut. Governor M. William Bray in favor of American Laborite Poletti, who is neither. To appease Catholics, the Lehman forces pointed to renominated Attorney General John J. Bennett Jr., Senatorial Candidate James Mead. To appease conservatives, Candidates Lehman and Poletti last week indignantly repudiated the proffered support of New York’s Communist Party.