National Affairs: Boom-Boom in New York

The heat was turned up under the simmering political pots in New York and they began to boil. The machine-run nominating conventions were only a couple of weeks off. It was getting closer to the time when top politicos would have to pick their men, pass the word to the rank-&-file.

Tom Dewey, whose control of the state’s Republican machine is just about vise-tight, was off on a tour of county fairs and party clambakes. He was acting precisely like a governor about to be renominated, which he is sure to be. Democratic U.S. Senator Jim Mead, whose war profits investigating committee had just about run out of headlines, was keeping in training by making speeches. He was acting exactly like a man who is going to be nominated for governor, which he is almost sure to be; the Democrats are stuck with their war-fraud investigator whether they like it or not.

The man who really made the pots boil was not acting like a candidate at all. He was Fiorello LaGuardia and he was fuming over a foaming glass of beer in Czechoslovakia (see FOREIGN NEWS). But last week dumpy Butch LaGuardia, who has been wont to characterize New York City’s leading Democrats as “those political bums,” bobbed up in the middle of a meaty Democratic stew. No Democrat at all (he is a member of the American Labor Party), he was suddenly a darling of the Democratic bigwigs and a leading contender for their U.S. Senate nomination.

Jim Mead’s stooges quietly let it be known that they were all for good old Fiorello. Even Manhattan’s Tammany Hall leaders, who had been Fiorello’s whipping boys during his dozen ding-dong years as New York City’s Mayor, liked the idea. The C.I.O.-P.A.C. thought it was wonderful. There was strong talk that if the Democrats made Butch their candidate the A.L.P. would put him and Jim Mead at the top of their ticket, too. A boom was born.

Wanted: A Vote Getter. Until The Hat plunked into their ring, most Democrats had assumed that quiet, ailing former Governor Herbert H. Lehman, who was LaGuardia’s predecessor as head of UNRRA, would be their Senate candidate. Now many who liked Lehman looked at the hard facts of political life and reconsidered.

Democratic bigwigs well knew that their chance of winning in November depended on piling up an immense majority in New York City. Could a Mead-Lehman ticket do it? The realistic answers came out no. But it was too late to head off Jim Mead. Perhaps it was not too late to by-pass Herbert Lehman for Fiorello, New York City’s best vote getter of modern times.

But Butch LaGuardia probably could not be put over without a slam-bang fight. It was not likely that big Jim Farley and other conservatives would accept LaGuardia without some heavy shooting. Farley makes no bones about how much he dislikes New Dealish Jim Mead. In 1942 he had said Mead would “make a terrible Governor.”

To Meadmen who offered him the convention chairmanship for his support, Jim Farley gave a curt no. New York City’s Mayor William O’Dwyer said yes. So did Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt to an invitation to be the convention keynoter. If the LaGuardia boom held up, the convention at Albany on Sept. 3 would probably touch off some fancy fireworks.

Calling the General. New York’s Republicans had no such inner pains. They felt that Tom Dewey’s excellent record as Governor (income taxes cut by half, a $500,000,000 surplus, a rent-control act, an anti-discrimination law, etc.) made him even stronger than in 1942. Then he gave Jim Farley’s John J. Bennett a terrific trouncing (and took about 40% of the New York City vote). Jim Mead scared the GOPsters not one bit; and until last week it did not seem to matter much whom Tom Dewey picked to run for the Senate. The LaGuardia boom ripped apart their apathy. It would take a somebody to beat little Butch.

Last week New York City Republicans got a boom going for a somebody: Major General William J. Donovan. Manhattan Lawyer Donovan (onetime Assistant U.S. Attorney General) had unusual assets for vote appeal: a nickname (“Wild Bill,” from his football days at Columbia University) ; fame as a World War I hero (the Congressional Medal of Honor) and distinction in World War II as head of the cloak-and-dagger Office of Strategic Services.

Vigorous Bill Donovan was beaten by Herbert Lehman for Governor in the 1932 Roosevelt landslide. But Bill Donovan was a smart campaigner. He could be either rough or dignified, depending on his opponent. He was also as well known as any New York Republican except Tom Dewey himself.

Whoever got the nominations, New York was sure to have first-class political fireworks before November.