"They Voted Against Us"

Democratic alibis piled up thicker than mites on a slab of old store cheese. The Bronx election was a special case, of course; but it was, nevertheless, a resounding Democratic defeat. The fact was that the Democrats had fallen on their faces when they had every reason, and every precedent, for staying on their feet. They had tripped, almost absentmindedly, over Henry Wallace's highly emotional appeal to the very poor, the huddled minorities, and the tightly knit Communists.

The Bronx's 24th Congressional District fronts on the filthy, fast-running East River. It is a disheartening area of crowded walk-up tenements, blackened, blind-walled factories and littered streets. Its population is about 55% Jewish, 18% Negro; Irish, Italians and Puerto Ricans make up almost all the rest.

Until last week, Bronx Democratic Boss Ed Flynn's machine had controlled the 24th District with professional ease. In 1946 Flynn sent his man to Congress with better than 15,000 votes over his nearest opponent, the American Labor Party candidate. Then Flynn's Congressman moved up to the New York Supreme Court bench and a special election was called to fill his seat.

Almost perfunctorily, Boss Flynn picked a middle-aged lawyer named Karl Propper, who looks a little like Movie Comic Hugh Herbert. Democratic chieftains, watching the A.L.P. splinter over the Wallace third-party candidacy, figured Propper as a shoo-in. Republicans merely went through the motions: they nominated an unknown building contractor and the G.O.P. boss left town for a Florida vacation.

The Sound Wagons Roll. But the Communist-dominated Wallace-A.L.P. forces behaved like hungry politicians. Their candidate was a young (37), good-looking and aggressive labor lawyer named Leo Isacson, who was born on Manhattan's lower East Side, served a term in the New York State Assembly, had never met Wallace until the campaign. The left-wingers sent their doorbell-ringers all over the district, harangued the voters in English, Yiddish and Spanish. Their literature snowed under the other parties' polite handbills. They hired more and louder sound trucks.

Over & over Isacson hammered home the contention that Harry Truman had ducked the Palestine issue; that his civil-rights stand was mostly talk. Isacson wanted price control resumed, rent control continued, the Taft-Hartley Act revoked and subway fares kept at a nickel. And, most pleasing to the Communists, he was dead set against the Marshall Plan.

Not until a short time before election did Boss Flynn appear to realize that Isacson was making dangerous inroads. He called on New York's ailing Mayor Bill O'Dwyer and Eleanor Roosevelt to prop up Propper. The best O'Dwyer could do was appeal to Wallace to come back to the Democratic Party. For his final rally, Isacson drew an overflow crowd of 8,500, who came to hear Wallace and such other notables of the far left as Singer Paul Robeson and Congressman Vito Marcantonio. At another rally the same night Prizefighter Champion Joe Louis, contributed $100 to the Wallace campaign.

Regimented Communists? The result not only flabbergasted New York's newspapers and professional politicians, but virtually sent Ed Flynn into limbo. Leo Isacson gathered up 22,697 votes to Propper's 12,578--in a district where A.L.P. registration is only about 16,000.

Republicans thought it was a sure sign that they would walk off with New York's 47 electoral votes in November. Boss Flynn blamed it all on the "regimented Communists." But an anonymous Democratic ward heeler put his finger on what really happened. Said he: "We got out the voters, but they voted against us."

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