THE BATTLE FOR NEW YORK
Villard, Oswald G.
The Battle For New York By OSWALD G. VILLARD NEW YORK'S unhappy mayoralty contest has swung into its last stage with little hope for a favorable outcome for the metropolis, despite the fact that...
...No one has brought out any fundamental issues beyond the all-important fact that Tammany Hall is now, as it always has been, the enemy of the city and of the people it has so often deluded...
...This does not, however, detract from the fact that if Mr...
...Morris could head the poll if the independent voters, and those who really desire' good government had aroused themselves and their friends to the gravity of the emergency—they might even now accomplish it...
...It would be idle to deny that the end of the war has left us in New York with increased anti-Semitism to combat...
...But he insists that the Judge "has been a social reformer and a very active, creative and devoted one...
...William O'Dwyer...
...But the fact remains that before he began his career on the Bench he had a very curious array of friends and of clients who were distinctly not the type of men with whom a high grade lawyer associates or serves, and that he is a proved ally of Tammany...
...Yet this religious diversity of Judge Goldstein, Gen...
...This makes it all the more incomprehensible to me that Secretary Wallace and Mrs...
...Roosevelt reminds me of the heroine in Bernard Shaw's Captain Brassbound, who explained her friendship for^the pirate captain by saying: "He has such a nice face...
...IT is a significant fact that the three outstanding candidates for the mayoralty are a Jew, a Catholic and a Protestant...
...The registration days are over and show a loss of 261,158 voters in comparison with the last mayoralty election figures in 1941, which makes it all the harder to figure out the reason for the Mayor's confident assertion that Mr...
...There is no such figure to be found today among our seven and one-half million people, just as there are no great moral leaders upon the national horizon...
...ahead of us...
...INDEED, Morris has added insult to injury, after denouncing the candidacy of Judge Jonah J. Goldstein, the Republican-Fusion-Liberal nominee, by saying that the Judge is so completely out of the running that he will not waste any more time in discussing him now that he has made his inaugural speech...
...Similarly Eleanor has stressed the General's attractiveness...
...We New Yorkers have sought during my long life to keep the national Administration out of our local affairs...
...O'Dwyer, he has made no outstanding speeches, said not one illuminating word, nor launched what may be- called an aggressive, fighting campaign...
...O'Dwyer, and Newbold Morris is a distinctly unhappy omen...
...Eleanor has been saying nice things in her column about O'Dwyer for a long time, and there is no doubt that if her husband had lived he would have picked and supported the General—Franklin's early brilliant, uncompromising opposition to Tammany vanished the minute he entered the field of national politics...
...Of course Mr...
...Morris boasts that he has no clubhouse, no political organization, no "machine bosses running my campaign in the back rooms of political clubhouses," that he has only one great asset, namely, that he and the men running withhim "have the confidence of the people of this city in the kind of government they have had for the last 12 years...
...there is no doubt about that, and if he is chosen, as the chances are that he will be overwhelmingly, he is capable of giving New York City a high grade government if his masters permit it...
...AS for Gen...
...Childs admits that the Judge has not been a political reformer and of course he does not comment on Judge Goldstein's increased contribution to the Tammany war chest when he hoped to be chosen by the Tammany sachems...
...Thereupon Mr...
...Nor does Secretary Wallace's butting into the political campaign on behalf of the national Administration...
...Dewey is largely responsible for his nomination—which the Governor's secretary declares to be false...
...Morris is a fine type of public official, he does not rank as a man of great force or a leader capable of stirring the masses...
...AS I have stressed before in writing on this subject for The Progressive, it is all part of the terrible dearth of leadership...
...Morris put it, it was all "a sordid picture of maneuvering and greed and conflicting ambition, and the demands of a ruthless set of politicians" until August when he determined to run independently after having refused to run for reelection for his present office on the Republican ticket...
...One single man of conscience with tongue aflame could have wakened this city out of its lethargy and made impossible a candidacy like Gen...
...But the sad fact is that it is the dullest and most discouraging campaign that New York has seen in many years, that there is no crusading spirit anywhere, that there are wide rifts among the reformers and independents, and a general indifference which foretells the victory of the Tammany candidate, Gen...
...The longer I live the more I despise these compromising "liberals" who are always ready to strike hands with the enemy if they can thereby gain politically...
...Morris charged that Goldstein had been the leading Tammany candidate and had doubled his annual contribution to Tammany Hall before Mayor LaGuardia announced that he would not run again...
...Whether it is the price of the war that we are paying or not, we are facing a serious reversion to bad government in New York...
...The Battle For New York By OSWALD G. VILLARD NEW YORK'S unhappy mayoralty contest has swung into its last stage with little hope for a favorable outcome for the metropolis, despite the fact that the New York Times has thrown the weight of its great influence on the side of New-bold Morris, Mayor La Guardia's No Deal candidate, and the Mayor himself is calling upon the people to save the city by electing the President of the City Council, who has served the city admirably in that office since 1938...
...Of course there are plenty of Italian candidates for the minor offices for the Italian vote is of vital importance to any candidate...
...But Morris and the Mayor have been very late indeed in launching his campaign, and though Mr...
...But it cannot be said that the Borough of Brooklyn, for which he was District Attorney, profited much by his term of service as its prosecuting officer, although he did send some outstanding criminals to jail...
...In that speech Mr...
...Eleanor Roosevelt, those great "liberals" and reformers, have backed O'Dwyer...
...He comes legitimately by his great personal constituency and its political recognition in the good government ticket is proper and wise...
...Mr...
...It gave Mayor LaGuardia a great deal of his strength in his numerous battles for election to Congress and to the City Hall, and it is one of the important assets of Congressman Marcantonio, whose power in city affairs steadily increases...
...and 34th St...
...The measure of the mess the city is in is to be found in the fact that some of the -outstanding leaders of the forces which put Mayor La Guardia into office and gave us the best chief executive we have ever had, despite his obvious faults, have remained absolutely silent...
...Yet O'Dwyer has ability...
...He blundered badly when he accepted Communist support and then, on finding that that produced a most unfavorable reaction, sought to disavow his own words...
...If he denies this, we are ready to tell him the exact street address in Manhattan between 14th St...
...It is unfortunately true that many voters will be influenced as they cast their ballots more by the religion of the various aspirants than by any thought of which man will serve New York best...
...Goldstein turned to the Republicans and the charge is openly made that Gov...
...however great that is it does not decrease the shame of a Rooseveltian appeal for the Tammany candidate...
...Morris is certain to win...
...He, no more than Judge Goldstein, would be picked by any representative group of New York citizens as the man best fitted to be the head of the city in the stormy years that lie...
...Its chairman, Richard S. Childs, defends this position on the ground that Mr., Morris is much too much of a silk stocking candidate and that he is "in touch with only a trivial fraction of the constituency, for the office of mayor is more than an executive job, it is inescapably a great representative office...
...There are occasional attacks upon synagogues in some outlying sections of the city, and probably more frequent fisticuffs than appear in the press, just as there is increased strife at times between Negroes and whites in Harlem...
...will be at an end...
...He talked, however, as one with inside information when he declared that O'Dwyer did not wish to run for mayor, and that he had "begged political leaders on the night of primary day, and for several days after, to give him a supreme court nomination in Brooklyn so that he would not have to run for mayor...
...It is to be noted' that he is also the author of a book, The Family in Court, which is said to measure "his compassion and penetration as an experienced judge...
...It just reveals once more how large a role the many groups that constitute our foremost city play in its politics...
...As Mr...
...After that Tammany insisted upon nominating O'Dwyer, recently returned from service in Italy as a brigadier-general, not at the fighting front, but in connection with the military government of Italy...
...Morris could be elected, he would make an excellent mayor and would be willing to profit by the best kind of advice...
...There can be no question this time that these two have done anything but serve the cause of good government for New York City...
...Social workers know and value his effective leadership for better handling of adolescent offenders, and his diligence in welfare association work as a director of his boyhood haunt, the University Settlement, trustee of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies, and as organizer and first volunteer secretary of the Jewish Big Brothers...
...Though the General has shown some independence since being nominated in forcing from his ticket a couple of men for whom even he would not stand, the simple truth is that if he is elected it will be received by the city as a clearcut Tammany victory and the long era of reform administrations, notably the 12 years in office of Mayor LaGuardia...
...IN view of its devotion to Mayor LaGuardia it is quite surprising to find the Citizens Union enthusiastically supporting Judge Goldstein...
...When Mr...
...Judge Goldstein, on the other hand, "has come up with the east side and knows his people on a vast seale...
...Indeed, Mrs...
...where his fear of defeat prompted him to try to squirm out...
...That, I am afraid, is the usual political campaign bunk...
...Morris also said of O'Dwyer that "the bosses who dominate him are skilled hands at plundering our city," he was also on the firmest ground...
...That .does not mean that we are in the midst of a religious struggle...
...Judge Goldstein has pressed home that issue, stressing the fact that the brave General "accepts the support of the Communists, plays ball with them and goes to bed with them...
...Samuel Seabury, for example, who headed the La-Guardia forces regularly in his mayoralty campaigns, has taken no stand and neither has Charles C. Bur-lingham, the Nestor of the New York Bar...
...O'Dwyer's, to say nothing of Judge Goldstein...
...Unfortunately the campaign is likely more and more to degenerate into a name-calling contest until Election Day...
Vol. 9 • October 1945 • No. 43
