Mr. Politics of the Times

To most Washington newsmen, the New York Times's Bureau Chief Arthur Krock is the "Mr. Politics" of the U.S. press. But not to Krock himself; he has his own Mr. Politics. Every election night in the Times city room, Krock, 66 and a veteran of a mere 25 years on the Times, turns for guidance to a real oldtimer. "When will you call it, Jim?" asks Krock in his election night ritual. Only when 76-year-old James A. (for Andrew) Hagerty calls it does Krock write his story naming the election winner. "I've always followed him completely," says Krock, "and he's never wrong. He has an instinct [that makes him] the top political reporter."

Reporter Hagerty's eminence is matched by that of his son James C. (for Campbell) Hagerty, 43, press secretary for President-elect Eisenhower. But no newsman who knows James Sr. fears that he will get "preferential treatment on political stories from his son. During the Republican Convention, when Young Jim was Ike's campaign press manager, Old Jim never once pumped him. "I saw Jimmy every day but I never use Jimmy," said Reporter Hagerty. "I got it all from Herb Brownell. After all, I've known him for years, just as I did Roosevelt's men." Young Jim puts it another way: "What the hell. I can't tell him anything. He knows everything anyway from other sources."

"What, What?" Old Jim Hagerty's political sources are such that he can pick up the phone and call almost any politician in the country and get an answer. But even at 76 he is no telephone reporter; he likes to look his sources in the eye, still makes regular rounds of Tammany wigwams, political meetings, smoke-filled rooms. When he goes to press conferences he never tries to pressure a man or grind an ideological angle. He asks questions until he is sure he has the facts, ending each question with a sharp, peremptory "What, What?" At his desk, close by the Times city desk, Hagerty writes quickly and cleanly, seldom needs to edit his copy.

Hagerty was born in Plattsburg, N.Y., started reporting politics at the age of 24 on the Plattsburg Press. He became an expert on state affairs, and the New York Herald hired him away in 1910 and put him on politics. He went to the Times four years later, covered the 1920 conventions, and has never missed a convention since. During the 1932 Democratic Convention, the rival New York Herald Tribune sent a scorching wire to its convention bureau: "The Times has beaten us again on everything. Can't you do something?" The Trib bureau manager did the best thing he could: he assigned a reporter to do nothing but cover Jim Hagerty.

Court of Appeals. Hagerty not only beat the opposition at conventions, but became famed for other beats. He was the first reporter to learn of Jimmy Walker's resignation as mayor of New York. His election predictions have been uncannily accurate. In 1928 he said Hoover would carry New York by 100,000 votes, and Hoover did it by 103,481. The same year, he predicted that Roosevelt would win over Alfred Ottinger for governor of New York by "nothing," and F.D.R. squeezed in. In 1946 he called the majority by which Ives beat Lehman in the N.Y. senate race; in 1948 he predicted the vote by which Dewey lost the state. This year he guessed that Ike would carry the nation.

Though Reporter Hagerty is well beyond the age when Timesmen can retire (65), he has no intention of retiring and the Times has no intention of suggesting it. Says the official monthly Times house organ: "He is our own private court of appeals on all questions from newspaper ethics to identification of obscure passages from Gilbert and Sullivan."

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