Job No. 2

The Governorship of New York is commonly considered second in importance only to the Presidency of the U. S. New York is the most populous State (12,588,000), most wealthy ($40,708,000,000), most costly to run ($310,777,000). It holds the economic heart of the nation. Its citizens pay one-third of the total Federal income tax. Three of its 44 Governors--Van Buren, Cleveland, Roosevelt--have proceeded to the nation's No. 1 job. Four others--Seymour, Tilden, Hughes, Smith--ran for the Presidency.

Last week Job No. 2 had New York's political pot hubble-bubbling with newsy excitement. Election Day was only ten weeks off. In primaries Sept. 20 Republicans and Democrats will pick delegates to their respective State conventions at which nominations will be made. Inspired by the possibility of a serious split between Governor Roosevelt and Tammany Hall which might cost the Democratic nominee the State and perhaps the Presidency, a profusion of Republican candidates blossomed in the gubernatorial garden. The State had been in Democratic hands for nearly ten years but now there seemed to be a good chance for an overturn. Active and passive contenders for the G. 0. P. nomination included:

Frederick Trubee Davison, Assistant Secretary of War for Aeronautics.

William Joseph Donovan, onetime Assistant to the Attorney General of the U. S.

Daniel Joseph Kenefick, onetime Justice of the State Supreme Court.

Rolland Marvin, Mayor of Syracuse.

Joseph R. McGinnies, Speaker of the State Assembly.

George R. Fearon, President pro tern of the State Senate.

Nathan L. Miller, onetime (1921-23) Governor.

In the last century Theodore Roosevelt established what has become for Republicans a traditional approach to gubernatorial nomination: service in the State Legislature followed by a tour of duty at Washington, preferably in the sub-Cabinet. T. R., after three years in the Legislature, served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy before moving up into Job No. 2.*

The only trouble with this formula in New York is that in the past decade it has failed to win elections for Republican nominees. Carefully following in his father's oversized footsteps, Theodore Roosevelt Jr. served two years at Albany before going to Washington as Assistant Secretary of the Navy./- In 1924 when he ran for Governor, Alfred Emanuel Smith defeated him unmercifully. Ogden Livingston Mills spent two years in the State Senate, six in the House of Representatives, but Smith trounced him too, in 1926. Albert Ottinger was a State Senator before President Harding put him in his sub-Cabinet as Assistant Attorney General. He was beaten in 1928 for the Governorship by Franklin Roosevelt.

The first candidate to enter this year's Republican field was William Joseph ("Wild Bill") Donovan of Buffalo. As Wartime commander of the 165th Infantry ("Fighting 69th"), he made a great reputation for personal heroism, returned from France with his mud-splashed tunic heavy with medals. As U. S. District Attorney at Buffalo, he was drastic enough to lose some friends locally but to be called to Washington to assist the Attorney General. For three years with Mabel Walker Willebrandt, he practically ran the Department of Justice over the hulking shoulder of easy-going John Garibaldi Sargent. He climbed on the Hoover bandwagon early, rode it hard and helpfully through the campaign, expected as his reward the Attorney Generalship. When that post went to another. Colonel Donovan's friends bitterly declared that President Hoover had turned him down because he was a Wet Catholic. Between Colonel Donovan and the President there is still a breach.

Discovering a "public demand" for his services at Albany. Colonel Donovan last month threw himself ardently into a personal campaign for the gubernatorial nomination. His chief handicap is that he lacks the backing of the local Buffalo organization. In Manhattan he was given a dinner last week by the New York Young Republican Club at which he declared: "The American people must give themselves another Boston Tea Party and this time throw the pork barrels overboard." He flayed Governor Roosevelt's Columbus speech as "so much flypaper spread out in the hope of ensnaring the vote of the discontented and the discouraged." He flew to Syracuse where he addressed a crowd of G. O. Partisans on economy, whooped it up for President Hoover in his best 1928 style. Then he hustled back to Brooklyn where the State convention of the American Legion was being held. His speech there stirred old friends to lusty cheers. Busy & bustling, Colonel Donovan was getting plenty of publicity but no open pledges from local bosses.

The Buffalo G. O. P. machine is behind grey-haired, dignified Judge Kenefick who up to last week had not formally avowed his candidacy. Conservative in mind and manner, this candidate, like Colonel Donovan, was once "just a poor Irish lad." Western New York has not forgotten that appealing phase of his career and now sees in Judge Kenefick an able, prosperous lawyer who has given generously of his time and money for Buffalo's advancement.

Mayor Marvin of Syracuse is an ambitious young politician who made a name for himself by his methods of municipal relief and economy. Speaker McGinnies and Senator Fearon are old party wheelhorses, hard-boiled and practical, angling for the nomination behind the scenes without public declarations of purpose. Onetime Governor Miller, now general counsel for U. S. Steel, was brought forth as a powerful figure to hold the situation open until the bosses could make up their minds what to do.

Colonel Donovan's principal opponent for the nomination formally appeared last week when Assistant Secretary Davison became an active candidate with the enthusiastic support of his home county. Early last month Mr. Davison, off on an inspection trip of Army Air fields, wired Nassau County leaders that "if there is a real demand for my candidacy I will go along but not otherwise." Last week the Republican County Committee met at Mineola, L. I., exhibited the "real demand," officially endorsed the Davison candidacy. The Assistant Secretary of War, waiting in an adjoining room, then appeared before the Committee, accepted the endorsement, promised to support any other candidate the convention might name. Davison-for-Governor headquarters were opened, a campaign manager appointed. Candidate Davison began to issue public statements that New York would certainly go Republican in the November election. He, too, appeared before the New York Legion convention, stoutly defended President Hoover's expulsion of the Bonus Expeditionary Force from Washington. When Candidate Davison charged that many members of" the B. E. F. were "tramps and hoodlums." legionaries booed and hissed, cried, "throw him out!" "Shut up and sit down!"

Assistant Secretary Davison's candidacy was a logical step in a public career patterned after the T. R. formula. Born to wealth and social position 36 years ago, he has devoted his life not to mere job-holding but to civic usefulness after the British tradition wherein aristocracy contributes young manpower to the government. His father was Henry Pomeroy Davison, No. 1 Morgan Partner at the time of his death in 1922. The Davison family estates at Glen Cove, L. I. are of feudal perfection and isolation. Young Trubee was sent to Groton where he became senior prefect. He married Dorothy, daughter of Dr. Endicott Peabody, Groton's headmaster. He entered Yale with the War-famed Class of 1918. The summer after his freshman year he went to France, drove an ambulance for three months, returned to New Haven. The Lafayette Escadrille had so deeply impressed him that during the summer of 1916 he induced his mother and father to help him organize a volunteer aviation unit, based at the Davison estate. From among his college mates he enlisted, among others, "Bob" Lovett, son of Union Pacific's chairman; "Art" Gates, now head of New York Trust Co.; John Vorys of Ohio; Erl Gould of New York. A hydroplane was bought and the Yale Aviation Unit came into being. After the U. S. went to War, these rich young volunteers found themselves in training in Florida as the Navy's Coast Patrol Unit No. 1.

But Trubee Davison was never to see active service abroad. In July 1917 his plane crashed in Huntington Harbor and he was extricated from the wreckage more dead than alive. His back was broken. Specialists predicted he would never walk again. But he did, and now he plays tennis. He returned to Yale, was graduated in 1919. The Navy awarded him its cross for "exceptionally meritorious service."

The elder Davison, who served as head of the Red Cross during the War, had novel ideas about a public career for his son. He believed that he should go into politics, starting at the bottom and working up, giving generously of himself for the public good, but not depending on his job for a livelihood. His father's will left $4,500,000 as an endowment for Trubee's public career.

Dutifully Trubee Davison studied law at Columbia, allied himself as a lowly worker with the local Republican machine. He attended the 1920 national convention to watch the big wheels turn. He became secretary to Charles Dewey Hilles, New York's National Committeeman. When Theodore Roosevelt Jr. quit the Assembly in 1921 to go to Washington, Trubee Davison got himself elected to the vacancy. His colleagues found him easy, democratic, willing to work. He was made chairman of the committee on taxation. He kept his bailiwick--the fashionable North Shore of Long Island--friendly and peaceful. Its biggest annual political event still is the Republican clambake on the Davison estate.

In 1926, when President Coolidge was empowered by Congress to appoint an Assistant Secretary of War for Aviation as a result of the investigation into the air services conducted by Morgan Partner Dwight Whitney Morrow, the summoning of Trubee Davison from the New York legislature was almost a matter of course.

The new Assistant Secretary threw himself into his work at Washington. He chummed around with the flying officers, piloted his own plane hither & yon, brought the Army air service up to top-notch efficiency under the five-year plane-building program. When Trubee Davison's college friend and fellow flyer, David Sinton Ingalls, arrived in Washington as President Hoover's Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Aeronautics, there was the spectacle of two able, active young friends competing for Congressional appropriations.

This year "Dave" Ingalls, at President Hoover's request, went out for and won the nomination for Governor of Ohio ( TIME, May 23). Last week there was much speculation as to where President Hoover stands on the New York Republican nomination for Governor. Officially the President's attitude was one of intense neutrality. Colonel Donovan had been his friend and active supporter. Assistant Secretary Davison was a member of Mr. Hoover's official family. Either nomination would have all the power of Republican Washington behind it.

Whoever is nominated by the Republicans will almost certainly be up against Democrat Herbert Henry Lehman, the State's present Lieutenant-Governor. Governor Roosevelt has made Colonel Lehman his political heir, will try to force his nomination at the Democratic State convention. Force may be necessary because of the hostile attitude of Tammany Hall, not toward Colonel Lehman personally but toward his sponsor. To head off the Lehman candidacy and embarrass Governor Roosevelt, Tammany bosses have threatened to put James John ("Jimmy") Walker into the contest, if he is removed as New York's Mayor. An outside Democratic candidate is Albany's tall, gangling Mayor John Boyd Thacher II.

Candidate Lehman has the tacit support of Alfred Emanuel Smith. Wall Street has a kindly feeling toward him because his family controls the old banking firm of Lehman Bros. Republicans admit that he would be the hardest Democrat to beat for Job No. 2.

See-Saw

In their run-off primary for Governor last week, a million Texas Democrats divided almost evenly between rich, rotund Ross Shaw Sterling, incumbent, and lean, homely Miriam Amanda (''Ma'') Ferguson, onetime Governor. As the ballot count slowly progressed Governor Sterling and Mrs. Ferguson seesawed back & forth with sometimes only a few hundred votes separating them. When Governor Sterling's lead moved above 3,000. Jim Ferguson, whose impeachment and removal as Governor put his wife into politics and office, began to demand a recount for her.

*Franklin Delano Roosevelt, his fifth cousin, followed the same routine to the Governorship.

/-Last week it was announced that Governor General Roosevelt would return from the Philippines in mid-September to join the Hoover campaign, help dispel the notion that the Democratic presidential nominee belongs to T.R.'s breed.

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