Monday, May. 20, 1940
Boss
Last week, as New Jersey prepared for its primary, Democratic Boss Frank Hague wore the innocent expression of a gambler with a sure thing. Mr. Hague has come so close to running both parties that he has nearly reduced New Jersey to a one-party State.
Secret of Boss Hague's success is as simple and austere as arithmetic. He holds tight control of Hudson County, where he is boss and mayor of Jersey City. New Jersey, outside of Hudson County, normally votes Republican; but year in, year out, populous, Democratic Hudson County holds the balance of power in New Jersey, and Boss Hague has Hudson County tucked in his neat derby hat.
Since 1919, he has elected five Governors. The last one was the incumbent, A. Harry Moore. Moore's Republican rival in 1937, Clergyman Lester H. Clee, carried 15 of Jersey's 21 counties. But when Hudson's poll was reported, Hague's Moore was found to have won by 45,266 votes. In vain did Pastor Clee charge that the Hudson vote was fraudulent. Ballot boxes were straightway locked up, Hague-controlled election officials and judges refused to let anybody get near them, and Pastor Clee went back to his church. Many an unproved charge has been made of Hudson County: of its floaters, of more registrations than there are eligible voters, of dead men still voting the straight Hague ticket. Boss Hague piously and indignantly denies everything, and Hudson continues to turn out the necessary whopping vote.
The Governor's power of appointment has given Hague control of key positions up & down the State, but the Legislature is traditionally Republican. Last winter, the bloc of anti-Hague Republicans who call themselves the Clean Government League squeezed through the Assembly a bill to make voting machines mandatory in Hudson County. Hague took this bill as a personal affront--which it was. The bill was blocked in the Senate, which has 16 Republican members, five Democrats.
New Jersey Republicans are either Hague-Republicans and leading a fat, full life, or anti-Hague, and living lean. Politicians are generally averse to lean living.
Next week, when they go to the polls, voters will find no contest on the Democratic ticket. Unopposed for Governor is Secretary of the Navy Charles Edison.
Unopposed for the U. S. Senate is James H. R. ("Hello, Mr. Chips") Cromwell.
On the Republican ticket, State Senator Robert Hendrickson, with the lukewarm backing of a Clean Government bloc, is running for Governor against bouncing, bumptious ex-Governor Harold Hoffman, one of the minor phenomena of Jersey politics. Reviled, threatened with impeachment, pronounced politically dead after his meddling with the Hauptmann case, bullocky Mr. Hoffman is friskier than ever. He counters the charge that he is a Hague Republican with the retort: "I like Hague as much as Haig & Haig. I take both of them when I want them but neither is my master." Most discouraging of all to Pastor Clee and the Clean Government League is that the cry of "Hagueism" has been raised so often that Jersey voters are getting tired of it. Tired is the way Frank Hague likes to see them.
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