Lehman Steps Down

Able, stable Herbert Lehman, who has been Governor of New York for the last ten years, has served the last six years unwillingly.* He ran in 1936 to help carry the State for his great & good friend Franklin Roosevelt, ran in 1938 mainly to head off up-&-coming Republican Tom Dewey when the Democrats were all out of high-caliber candidates.

Last week Albany newsmen gathered in the Governor's office, got a 37-word mimeographed announcement of his political retirement. On or before the end of his term in December, he will go to Washington to take one last public job in the war effort (possibly in the Quartermaster Corps). Then 64-year-old Herbert Lehman, who has well earned a rest, will go back once & for all to his 70-acre Westchester estate.

Lehman's withdrawal left in the Democratic saddle onetime Postmaster General James A. Farley, who has most of New York's Irish county leaders at his stirrup. Now anti-Third-Termer Farley had a good chance to name his own candidate at the Democratic primary convention in September. Right now Farley's candidate is Attorney General John J. Bennett Jr., an honest, painstaking administrator who makes neither mistakes nor vote-catching headlines.

Some figured that colorless John Bennett was merely filling in for the first lap, would toss the baton to Farley himself at convention time. Washington New Dealers--who want no part of Farley or a Farley lieutenant--made sweet cooing sounds to statesmanlike Owen D. Young, former General Electric board chairman, who might be persuaded to run if the nomination came on a dignified platter.

For the G.O.P. nomination, Tom Dewey already had enough delegates lined up. But over the party, like a huge, good-tempered but strict schoolmaster, hovered tousled Wendell Willkie. No Republican candidate could well carry on without Willkie's help, and Willkie was plainly against Tom Dewey, who has a wavering record on foreign-affairs issues, and has not yet declared himself flatly on post-war U.S. policy.

* In 1937 New York law was changed to make the Governorship a four-year term.

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