U.S. At War: Big Jim Leeps Swinging

Big Jim Keeps Swinging

Big Jim Farley, once chairman of the New York State Athletic Commission, knows crowds love a fighter who stays in there swinging. Last week Jim Farley, waging a hot & heavy fight to make John J. Bennett the Democratic candidate for Governor of New York, never once stopped punching. Every day he aimed a new blow at Franklin Roosevelt’s candidate, tall, toothy Senator Jim Mead.

¶ First Farley charged that Senator Mead, a 100% backer of Franklin Roosevelt’s foreign policies on his Senate voting record, was in fact an isolationist. (He dug up a 1941 speech in which earnest Senator Mead said the U.S. must not become “the tool for guaranteeing any particular status quo.”)

¶ Next day he shouted that Senator Mead was not even a New Dealer—because Mead opposed Franklin Roosevelt’s St. Lawrence River power and seaway project. (Jim Mead, resident of Buffalo, had strung along with Buffalo businessmen on this one.)

¶ Finally, to confuse the opposition, he named able Lieut. Governor Charles Poletti (a protege of Governor Herbert H. Lehman) to write the Democratic State platform.

To all of this Jim Mead remained silent. Silent too was Farley’s John Bennett, the forgotten man of the campaign. The only audible sounds came from Farley—and from Franklin Roosevelt, who once more took a little time out from the war to comment at a crowded press conference: “If Jim Mead’s an isolationist, so am I.”

Jim Farley knew that he was through if he lost this battle. His break with the President was now final and complete; perhaps he had paid his last visit to the White House unless he could force his way back by sheer weight of political power.

But by week’s end, with the important convention but a few days off, Farley seemed in a less pugnacious mood. He called Franklin Roosevelt “the beacon of hope of civilization”; he indicated, in true party fashion, that he would support Jim Mead if Mead got the nomination. Observers wondered whether Jim Farley was getting ready to toss in the towel or was just seeming to relax before throwing a crushing punch.