New York's Liberal Party

...As for myself, a trade-unionist, I felt it important to have a Liberal party to speak for the progressive trade-unionist...

...The Liberal party helped elect and re-elect Herbert H. Lehman to the U.S...

...Though we lost both contests, history later proved how right we had been...

...In all these contests, the Liberal party had a clear and consistent policy: to get the Democratic and Republican parties to name acceptable candidates, liberal and clean...

...Our great success has been to forge a party of quality, which we have used to isolate and virtually eliminate the Communist-front ALP from the political scene, and, at the same time, to educate the American liberal and progressive trade-unionist on major issues of national and international policy...

...Is the New York voter content with a party of quality alone, or does he insist that his party be a party of quantity as well...

...The big question for the future is whether there is enough political, moral and financial strength in New York to support a party of quality without an early promise of quantity...

...In addition to the normal years, there was a special election for a Congressman on the West Side that turned into a contest between the independent voter and the power of Frank Costello over Tammany Hall...

...They were glad we were there demanding the nomination of liberal candidates, putting them on our line, using our political bargaining power to raise the whole level of politics in our city...

...There was another special election in 1951 for President of the City Council, following the Kefauver Committee investigations in New York...

...NEW YORK'S LIBERAL PARTY AFTER TEN YEARS By David Dubinsky Independent group has raised level of state politics, driven Communists out of balance-of-power role Eighteen years ago, liberal forces in New York City formed the American Labor Party to meet two urgent needs of the day...

...It turned out that we were involved in six major battles against machine control in these years...

...We have some 100,000 enrolled in our party...

...The second thing we must note to balance the record is the party's inability thus far to elect anyone to a major City office on our own ticket —with the exception of Halley's election as President of the City Council (which was, to a certain extent, more a personal triumph for the candidate following the Kefauver hearings than it was a party victory...

...and we were left holding the bill...

...The Liberal party was to be the home for those liberals who looked upon outspoken anti-Communism as one of their basic principles...

...But, as Alex Rose has put it: "After most of these campaigns, we found ourselves in debt but the candidates did not find themselves indebted...

...In pursuit of our strategy of placing the Communists in political quarantine, we were repeatedly frustrated by the deals that prominent Republicans and Democrats alike were making with the American Labor Party...

...We have done all this with forces that have been historically and traditionally associated with us...

...We moved toward these goals with such apparent success that, by the early Forties, the Communists decided to seize our party as a front for their own purposes...

...It was also running counter to the established practices of the major political parties in this city and state...

...When we founded the Liberal party ten years ago, we were determined to build it as a center for genuine liberals and one which could be clearly distinguished from Communist-front organizations...

...We found ourselves using our growing prestige and our growing vote to force both the Republican and Democratic parties to put their best foot forward...

...At that time, some urged us to make common cause with the comrades...

...The peculiar history of New York City in the last decade has given the Liberal party a special role...

...Between a quarter of a million and half a million citizens have voted our ticket at elections in the last few years...

...They mistook a temporary wartime alliance for Communist surrender of their imperialistic goals...

...the Communists were using progressive trade unions to threaten and blackmail candidates for office...

...Are they prepared to take steps to unite the liberals to the Liberal party, not as transients but as permanent residents...

...The liberals were glad that we were there to fill Madison Square Garden for Truman when the Democrats would not risk the job, to produce the greatest open-air mass meeting for Adlai Stevenson in all America...

...There was a special election for Mayor in 1950, when William O'Dwyer decided, one year after his election, that the Mexican climate was better for his health...

...they kissed us on the forehead...

...But it was not easy to break the monopoly the Communists were trying to establish as spokesmen for the labor and liberal movement, especially in New York...

...In the answer to this question lies the party's future...

...Many, perhaps most, of these trade unions are today divorced from the ALP—having broken away in 1940...

...For our part, we insisted that the Communists served foreign masters and that they were the worst enemies of liberalism...

...Where the major parties failed to name acceptable candidates, we named our own...

...It was 1944, the time of our wartime alliance with the Soviet Union...

...There was, first of all...

...Our move was not only unpopular in the general liberal and labor community...

...The answer lies with the liberal community: its leadership and its rank-and-file...

...They were elected...

...This policy brought some new faces to the New York voter: Jacob K. Javits, Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr., Rudolph Halley and even Robert Wagner Jr., who was nominated as Borough President at our insistence...

...that took place in 1949...

...We knew even then, however, that if there were no Liberal party, if the ALP could speak for all liberals and all labor, the power and influence of the Communists to make deals with irresponsible and hungry Democratic and Republican politicians would continue to grow...

...Indeed, there was strong sentiment that third parties of liberals could be started in several areas with the hope of later linking their programs on the national level...

...Through the ALP...

...As we look at the sum total of the last ten years, we must note our successes, and we must pose a question...

...But we have not attracted great new forces to our party...

...It was the Liberal party that had to teach both the Democratic and Republican parties of this city and state that there was no principle and few votes in coalitions with the ALP...

...The Liberal party has maintained a steady pressure for municipal reform, has compelled the major parties to put forward better candidates, has given new and more liberal elements their first start in the politics of our city...

...Ordinarily, in the period from 1944 to 1954, there would have been three municipal elections: 1945, 1949 and 1953...

...they waved us farewell...

...The Liberal party in 1944 had pointed the way for those who broke from Communist political domination in the years to come...

...Nevertheless, we felt that the American Labor Party, fallen into Communist hands, had to be isolated and ultimately destroyed...

...Second, there was the need for a party that would provide a permanent vehicle for independent political action...

...Senate...

...This also goes for the liberal voter...

...As a result of this policy, we were able to join one year with the Republicans to back Newbold Morris against O'Dwyer, and another year with the Democrats to back Judge Ferdinand Pecora against Vincent Impellitteri...

...the need for a party for those who would not vote for Roosevelt on the Democratic line...

...The liberals cheered us as we rolled up our debt, but they did not feel indebted to support the party with its organizational and financial problems...