Life for the G.O.P.

The conservative voting trend, evident in earlier primaries this year, showed up last week in New York City too. There Republicans had an embarrassing situation to set right, and did it.

In 1944, Vito Marcantonio, the most vocal Communist-line member of Congress, and left-wing Congressman Adam Clayton Powell (husband of boogie-woogie Pianist Hazel Scott) had won not only the Democratic and American Labor Party primaries, but the Republican as well.

Last week the voters crossed them off the G.O.P. ballot, in a sweep which was a resounding rebuke to the A.L.P. and the C.I.O.'s P.A.C. They also retired Republican Representative Joseph Clark Baldwin, who had often voted with the New Deal and played a more sedate game of footy with the vociferous P.A.C. In Joe Baldwin's place they nominated State Senator Frederic R. Coudert Jr., a staunch conservative who had Governor Thomas E. Dewey's backing. In two other key New York City primaries, P.A.C.-backed candidates were also snowed under. Republicans were feeling good.

With the primary out of the way, the battle for New York's G.O.P. Senatorial nomination got hot & heavy. Until last week, the race was fairly quiet, the most noise came from supporters of Major General William ("Wild Bill") Donovan, World War I soldier, lawyer and wartime head of the Office of Strategic Services (TIME, Aug. 16). Then, suddenly, Bill Donovan got a hard slap from the state A.F.L., which dragged up an old case from the time when Donovan was U.S. District Attorney and used it to denounce Donovan as antilabor. What Donovan had done--in 1922--was to prosecute Buffalo labor leaders who had dynamited a passenger train. At the A.F.L.'s blast out of history he protested loud & long, but some damage had been done to his candidacy.

Two days later a more damaging blow came from Albany, was promptly reported by New York political writers: the Republican State Executive Committee had given the nod for the nomination to Lieut. General Hugh A. Drum. Longtime (44 years) professional soldier, Hugh Drum was head of the U.S. First Army until he retired in 1943, is now commander of New York's State Guard, had accompanied Tom Dewey on his 1944 campaign trip. The word from Albany seemed, in effect, to sew the nomination up for General Drum (who is Al Smith's successor as head of the Empire State Building). But it only set Bill Donovan's supporters to working harder. Next week's G.O.P. state convention would still have a lively ring.

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