Up Again, Down Again

Last month Manhattan's Tammany Hall was down in the dumps. Its official mayoralty candidate, Royal Samuel Copeland, the personal & private selection of Tammany Chieftain James J. Dooling, was by no means acceptable to many an old-line Tammany leader. Worse still, Tammany had been let down by the leaders of New York City's four other boroughs, who had selected an opposition candidate in the person of Grover Aloysius Whalen, thus diminishing Tammany's otherwise fair chance of recovering the City Hall held for the last four years by Fusion Mayor LaGuardia (TIME, Aug. 2). Then Leader Dooling died and Tammany Hall perked up. In hope and harmony, expecting that a new Tammany chief would succeed in finding a compromise candidate to replace the two who threatened to split the Democratic vote, Tammany unanimously elected Representative Christopher D. Sullivan, 21 years a Tammany Congressman, to succeed Leader Dooling.

Last week Tammany Hall was down in the dumps again. First off, Christy Sullivan, instead of doing what he was expected to do, announced that Senator Copeland was still his nominee to ride Tammany's Tiger. Then Grover Whalen withdrew, not in the interests of unity, but to make way for a stronger opposition candidate.

"I confess I am not the best available man," wrote resigning Mr. Whalen with exemplary modesty. ". . . Judge Mahoney is far better equipped." That new Candidate Jeremiah Titus Mahoney was better equipped, many a politician was inclined to agree. Onetime athlete (in 1897 he won New York City's all-round athletic championship), onetime law partner of New York's politically powerful Senator Robert F. Wagner (still his close friend), onetime State Supreme Court Justice (he resigned in 1928 to return to private practice), honest Jeremiah Mahoney, now 62, big-framed and firm-jawed, has made few enemies among New York politicians, has the confusing advantage of being himself a potent member of Tammany Hall and leader of its silk-stockinged 15th District. Outside politics, Judge Mahoney is currently best known as president of the Amateur Athletic Union, to which he was re-elected last year after he had urged that the U. S. send no athletes to the Olympic Games in Berlin (TIME, Nov. 4, 1935 et seq.). For that stand Mr. Mahoney, if nominated, could count on receiving a large Jewish vote, possibly offsetting a similar vote that fiery little Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia expects to receive for his anti-Hitlerism. And Mr. Mahoney could look for support from no less a personage than Franklin Roosevelt. Although President Roosevelt would probably like to see Administration enemies in Tammany thrown out forever, a formal denial was issued this week that he would take any hand in the mayoralty fight.

Meanwhile, impeccably dressed Grover Whalen returned to his comfortable duties as head of New York's 1939 World's Fair. Candidate Mahoney declared: "I am no man's man." Candidate Copeland sniffed: ''These shufflings do not concern me." Candidate LaGuardia, already Fusion's and American Labor Party's choice and still waiting for a friendly nod from the Republicans, said nothing.

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