NEW YORK: Long Night in Manhattan

At 10:16 p.m., a little more than three hours after the polls had closed, U.S. Senator Irving Ives stepped before 200 Republicans in the ballroom of Manhattan’s Roosevelt Hotel. Wearing a somber smile, Ives conceded that Democrat Averell Harriman had defeated him in the race for the most important governorship in the U.S. Projection of returns already counted showed that the Democratic candidate would win by more than 200,000 votes. Ives said that he had just wired his opponent: “It was a great fight; congratulations and best wishes.” Two blocks away, at the Biltmore, Harriman’s excited supporters pushed him, inadvertently, into the ladies’ room.

Shortly after midnight, TViewers got a shock about New York State when Illinois Republican Candidate Joe Meek, refusing to concede his opponent’s election, said that some candidates conceded too quickly and cited Ives as an example. CBS took another look at the New York figures and found that Harriman’s lead was down to 23,000—and was still dwindling as suburban and upstate returns came in. When the unofficial count was complete, 24 hours after the polls closed, Harriman was the winner by 9,657 votes, in a total vote of more than 5,000,000. It was the closest margin in a race for governor of New York in this century.

Hardly anyone accepted the count as final. At the order of Republican Governor Thomas E. Dewey, an around-the-clock police guard was placed over voting machines. This week, with lawyers employed by Republican and Democratic organizations carefully watching the process, the New York vote was recanvassed.

What’s in a Name? For Averell Harriman, 63, victory would mean the attainment of a long-sought goal. The son of E. H. Harriman, Wall Street financier and railroad (Union Pacific) magnate, Averell had chosen public service as the field in which he would make his own mark. In 20 years he had held 15 major appointive jobs* in the Roosevelt and Truman Administrations, but he had nev er been elected to any office. He is a doctrinaire New Dealer, but has a name, background and manner as unproletarian as Franklin Roosevelt.

All except one of the Democrats’ statewide candidates squeaked into office with Harriman. The exception: Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr.,† whose magic name had been expected to push him ahead of Harriman. The man who beat Junior: Republican Jacob Koppel Javits, 50, a hard-working New York Congressman who is far more New Dealish than many Democrats. (He voted against the Taft-Hartley law, for continuing federal rent control,) Statewide, he ran 176,000 ahead of Junior, 36,000 ahead of Harriman. His total vote — 2,590,631 — made him 1954’s biggest vote-getter in the U.S.

Javits won by holding Roosevelt’s margin 4% below Harriman’s in Democratic New York City. Junior was cut all over the city in districts with a wide variety of voters. Some of the severest cuts in his majority came in the heavily Jewish Fifth Assembly District of Manhattan, the heart of his own congressional bailiwick, where Junior ran 5,000 votes behind Harriman, and Javits ran 5,000 ahead of Ives In Manhattan’s Fifteenth Assembly District, another heavily Jewish area, which is the heart of Javits’ congressional district, Roosevelt ran 8,800 votes behind Harriman, and Javits ran 8,700 ahead of Ives.

The Ups & Downs. Averell Harriman promptly denied that he will be a candidate for President in 1956 (“I am for Adlai Stevenson”), but ne surely will be an important factor. The man who picked Harriman for the nomination, Tammany Hall Boss Carmine DeSapio, will become a far more important Democrat, in New York and in the nation. As for Junior, his career has been set back a decade or more.

* Including four with the NRA, in which he rose to be chief administrative officer in the early days of the New Deal; a series of assignments with the Office of Production Management in 1940-41; lend-lease expediter in London in 1941-43; Ambassador to Russia in 1943-46; Ambassador to Great Britain in 1946; Secretary of Commerce in 1946-48; roving ambassador for ECA in Europe in 1948-50; special assistant to the President in 1950-51; Director for Mutual Security in 1951-53.

† While Junior was losing, his older brother Jimmy, unfazed by his wife’s adultery charges, was elected to Congress by a 3-2 margin in his Los Angeles district.