Off-Year Votes

Citizens of many a State and city went to the polls last week to record in off-year elections their respective sovereign wills. Most significant results:

New Jersey. A vigilance committee of 250 Democratic lawyers went to bawdy Camden to see that their party got full justice at the polls. Among 30 vigilantes who were arrested and cuffed were James A. and John E. Tumulty, nephews of President Wilson's private secretary. There were disorders in Jersey City, Weehawken, Atlantic City, Hoboken, Paterson. A harried judge of Common Pleas Court called it "a Mexican election." Outcome was a whopping victory for Arthur Harry Moore, 52, Democratic nominee for Governor. He was the third man in the State's long history to be twice elected Governor. He ran up the biggest majority for the governorship ever recorded there. Amassing 740,605 votes, he carried all but four of 21 counties. His Republican opponent, bald, chunky David Baird Jr.. onetime Senator (by appointment), polled 501,226 votes, despite the fact that Ambassador Walter Evans Edge came home from France to flap his elbows on the stump for the party nominee, plead for a "Hoover victory." For the first time since 1913, when Thomas Woodrow Wilson became President, the Assembly went Democratic. With tears in his eyes, Governor-elect Moore responded to the cheers of several thousand Jersey City friends who set off fireworks. Beside themselves with enthusiasm, the mob then rushed Governor-elect Moore, broke in the derby hat of "Boss" Frank Hague, ruler of Jersey's Democracy. Heavy-jowled Boss Hague looked pleased.

Kentucky. Circuit Judge Ruby Lafoon of Madisonville, old-line politician, whipped his Republican rival, Mayor William B. Harrison of Louisville, for the Governorship. Candidate Lafoon polled a 71,523 majority. At Bowling Green, election furor precipitated a shooting: a G. 0. P. worker named W. K. Dent sent five slugs in the general direction of one-time Lieutenant GovernorHenry H. Denhardt, Democrat. One bullet pierced Mr. Denhardt's lung. Worker Dent said a friend of Denhardt's had taken a shot at him the day before, that he was saved only by a pack of election cards in his pocket.

Mississippi automatically replaced suspicious, pecan-growing Democratic Governor Theodore Gilmore Bilbo with Democratic Martin Sennett ("Sure Mike") Conner, a Seminary businessman and one-time speaker of the State's House of Representatives (TIME, Sept. 7).

New York citizens, in spite of a year-long muckraking inquiry into the city government, which is Tammany Hall, swept the Hall into complete municipal control once more. The Democratic State organization had hoped to elect a majority to the Assembly and thereby emasculate the Legislature's investigation of New York City officialdom, but when the vote was counted the Assembly was still Republican by a working majority of 5. The investigation will continue.

So thoroughly did New York City voice its confidence in Tammany, however, that for the first time in Tammany history there was but one Republican returned to the Board of Aldermen -- Joseph Clark Baldwin III, young, earnest and rich. Usually there are at least four or five G. 0. P. aldermen. Sending Mr. Baldwin alone to the Board was tantamount to sending him to political Coventry. He is the board's minority leader and auto matically a member of 13 committees. But he can introduce no measures, having no one to second them. If he rises to a point of order he will be snowed under by 64 Tammany votes. If he tries to speak anyway he can be held out of order and suspended from the chamber.

Philadelphia is as stanchly Republican as New York is Democratic. On the crest of the largest plurality (330,999) ever cast in the city's mayoralty elections, Joseph Hampton Moore rolled into the City Hall. No Philadelphia Mayor may be a candidate to succeed himself. There is no law against his trying for the office subsequently, but for 50 years no ex-Mayor had won a second term. Mayor Moore had served in 1920-23, had previ ously been a Congressman for 13 years.

Detroit re-elected its red-haired Mayor Frank Murphy. Last year idealistic Mayor Murphy almost bankrupted the city with his dole system of unemployment relief, got in bad odor with almost everybody in town except the poor people who helped him last week. Frank Couzens, 29-year-old son of rich and rugged Senator James Couzens, headed the councilmanic ticket, was elected, automatically became president of the city council.

Cleveland voted out its city manager ship plan after eight turbulent years. Candidates for the reinstated office of mayor included City Manager Daniel E. Morgan and ousted City Manager William Rowland Hopkins.

Reading, Pa., for the first time since the War, fused its Republicans and Democrats, discarded by a decisive margin its four-year-old Socialist regime headed by Mayor John Henry Stump.

In Madison. N. J., Mrs. Marcellus Hartley Dodge, wife of the board chairman of Remington Arms Co., let it be understood that if Democratic Frank Cook were elected mayor she would give Madison a new municipal building. Candidate Cook was elected.

Dearborn, Mich, re-elected Mayor Clyde M. Ford (nephew).

Aged 76, "General" Jacob Sechler Coxey, who led an army of unemployed on Washington 37 years ago, was elected Republican mayor of Massillon, Ohio. Many times a candidate, this was the General's first political victory.

The three largest Connecticut cities-- Hartford, New Haven, Bridgeport-- elected Democratic mayors.

Worcester, Mass, and Manchester, N. H., homes of rock-ribbed Republicanism, elected Democratic mayors.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.