NEW YORK: What’s Going On Here?

If a visitor from France, used to the crazy-quilt politics of a dozen different parties, had dropped into the New York City political scene last week, he might have felt perfectly at home. An important mayoralty campaign was getting under way with seven candidates in the field and ten bewildered and bewildering parties on the ballot.

The Republican candidate, Judge Jonah J. Goldstein, had been a Democrat until the day before his nomination. Now, with the added blessings of the Liberal and Fusion Parties, grey-haired Judge Goldstein was belaboring Democrats right & left. Nightly he cried that “Tammany’s tin-box boys” were fixing to loot the city. Mild-mannered Judge Goldstein had once been secretary to arch-Democrat Al Smith. He now had the backing of another Governor: Tom Dewey.

The candidate of the No Deal Party was patrician Newbold Morris, president of the City Council and protege of Mayor LaGuardia (who is a member of the American Labor Party). No Deal Candidate Morris said that he was actually a Willkie Republican. He is also a Yaleman, socialite and good-government career man, who told the voters that his rivals had reached eminence through sordid political deals. Yet his opponents accused him of making a deal with LaGuardia—perhaps for such a sordid purpose as taking votes from Judge Goldstein.

Understandable Man. The third major candidate was someone that any visitor could understand: a triple-dyed, up-from-the-ranks Democrat, and no question about it. He was stocky, scrappy William O’Dwyer, ex-Brooklyn District Attorney, ex-Brigadier General, who once studied for the priesthood, became a bartender, hod carrier, cop and magistrate.

But there were complications here too. Along came Commerce Secretary Henry Wallace, who votes in Iowa, to give unhesitating support to Bill O’Dwyer, a product of the Brooklyn machine. And wasn’t Henry Wallace the man who was knocked out of the Vice Presidency by just such machines?

What the French visitor might have found hard to understand was that these complexities of local politics were super imposed on what is fundamentally a two-party system. He would hear reports: Judge Goldstein had been put up to draw the Jewish vote away from the Democrats. . . . Bill O’Dwyer would lose Catholic votes because of his A.L.P. tie-up. . . . Actually the election was just a test of Tom Dewey’s ability to get re-elected in 1946. . . . Or it was just a test of Harry Truman’s strength in New York.

Good Men. Then, paging through the New York Daily News the visitor would read: “All three are good men, honest and capable. No matter which one is elected. New York City will be assured of a good mayor.” Knowing his French politics, the visitor would soon understand that the News was principally interested in the fact that Butch LaGuardia, patently the best mayor New York has had in decades —but “too vigorous,” would soon be gone.