POLITICAL NOTES: New York’s Choice

The once-proud Democratic organization of New York has been in a long decline. Malnutrition is not the trouble: it has had plenty of federal and local patronage. What’s lacking is leadership muscle, especially since Bronx Boss Ed Flynn has been bedridden.

Last week Democrats held their state convention at Manhattan’s Commodore Hotel, to choose a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senator. They needed a man of stature to beat popular, liberal Republican Irving Ives (just renominated by the G.O.P.), and to keep Ike Eisenhower from carrying the state in November. They tried to draft Averell Harriman, whose presidential campaign had struck a few sparks. Harriman, with his eyes apparently on other goals, refused. Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. might have had the nomination, but Congressman Roosevelt is saying himself for the 1954 campaign for governor. The bosses pondered over Robert Wagner Jr., borough president of Manhattan, who had little to recommend him but the name of his crusading, pro-labor father. Carmine De Sapio, a colorless small-timer who runs what’s left of Tammany Hall, was for Wagner, which meant that New York Mayor Vincent Impellitteri was automatically against him. In doubt and confusion, the Democrats chose John Cashmore, 57, the borough president of Brooklyn.

Cashmore, a Brooklyn-born Episcopalian, peddled newspapers as a boy to stretch the finances of his widowed mother, later studied law at night, and got into politics by running for the state assembly. (“You keep thinking you’ve met him before,” said one reporter, “and you have—in every political machine in the U.S., and every hour on the hour in Washington.”) He graduated to alderman, then borough president, has never been beaten in 17 elections—all confined to Brooklyn.

Cashmere’s nomination immediately ran into trouble, i.e., that peculiar New York political institution, the Liberal Party. Core of the Liberal Party is Dave Dubinsky’s International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union; around it cluster intellectuals like Adolf Berle and Reinhold Niebuhr. The Liberal Party fights Tammany, but on national and statewide issues usually lines up with the Democrats. When it seemed clear that Cashmore would be nominated, the Liberals balked. They nominated a stopgap candidate, Columbia University’s Dr. George S. Counts. Party leaders admitted that they might shift to another candidate before election. What made the Liberals maddest was the calm Democratic prediction that the Liberals would come around to Cashmore—as well they might.

But even if he should get Liberal endorsement, Cashmore looked to be as easy an opponent as Irving Ives could hope for.