National Affairs: Sheriffs

The ghost of the late John Dillinger haunted two contests in last fortnight’s elections. At Lima, Ohio, Democratic Acting Sheriff Don Sarber was running to keep the job of his late father, Sheriff Jess Sarber who was killed when Desperado Dillinger’s friends released him from the Lima jail in October 1933. A Republican got Don Sarber’s father’s job.

At Crown Point, Ind., from whose jail Desperado Dillinger walked out last March with the help of a wooden pistol, Democrat Carroll Holley was running to succeed as sheriff his aunt Lillian Holley who had been unable to keep her most famed prisoner (TIME, March 12). He won.

Scrappy Thomas J. (“Tommy”) Gibbons, whom Jack Dempsey trounced in a heavyweight championship bout at Shelby, Mont, in 1923, managed to cling to the public payroll. Onetime City Clerk Gibbons of St. Paul ran as an independent for Ramsey County, Minn, sheriff, got the job.

Tourists, but not native Hawaiians, are impressed by the name of Duke Kahanamoku. The onetime (1912, 1920) Olympic swimming champion, surfboard rider, swimming instructor and Waikiki Beach figure was simply christened “Duke,” is no member of the islands’ decayed nobility. But as a result of last fortnight’s election, Duke Kahanamoku became peace officer of an area far larger than any dukedom. Democratic votes put the brown-skinned native in as Sheriff of Honolulu County, “world’s largest,” extending from Oahu Island 1,300 mi. northwest to Midway Island. Vehemently anti-New Deal because of resentment over the Territory’s sugar quota under the Jones-Costigan bill (TIME, June 25), Hawaii voted into office but few other Democrats.