The Battle for City Hall

Scores of mayoralty elections in the U.S. last week generated all the excitement and drama of oldfashioned, blare-and-bunting campaigns that always bring out the best and worst in local officeholders. Among the battles for City Hall that gave the voters their ballot's worth:

Boston. Upsetting all the predictions, Democrat John F. Collins, 40, wheelchair-ridden (polio) Suffolk County Register of Probate soundly (24,000-vote majority) whipped Democrat John E. Powers, 49, Massachusetts' Senate president, in a nonpartisan election. Though both candidates preached the same sermon--revitalize Boston's sagging economy--Underdog Collins made his gains by continuous attacks on Powers' massive political support ("Power politics"), which included the backing of Richard Cardinal Gushing and Senator John Kennedy. In the final week Collins capitalized on a published photo of a police-raided gambling house that was plastered with a Powers campaign poster. Said Collins to TV viewers four days before election: "Except for you, I am alone."

Bridgeport, Conn. Incumbent Democratic Mayor Samuel J. Tedesco, 44, who two years ago overturned (by 161 votes) Socialist Jasper McLevy's foot-dragging, 24-year rule, beat back the old (81) Socialist again, this time by 15,500 votes.

Cleveland. Italian-born Democrat Anthony J. Celebrezze, 49, campaigned on his good three-term record, turned back Republican Multimillionaire (chemicals) Tom Ireland, 63, by 78,000 votes. Mustached, swarthy, fiercely aggressive, Lawyer Celebrezze came up the hard way (railroad gangs, prizefighting), had to beat both Republican and Democratic candidates when he first ran for mayor in 1953, kept taxes down, pushed urban redevelopment, increased services. Opponent Ireland, a sometime author who was educated at Princeton, Boston and Harvard universities, was once a municipal judge, wears a derby pulled over his ears and high-laced shoes. He put on an old-style campaign and dramatized his complaints about the city bus system by buying his own bus and picking up passengers, once dug up weeds on a local bridge. His defeat was a sure thing.

Columbus. Cocky, voluble Democrat Maynard E. ("Jack") Sensenbrenner, 57, campaigned for his fourth term in the typical give-'em-hell, revivalistic style that he calls "spizzerinctum." Typical spizzerinctum: "When you come to the end of the road, what you and I want to hear is the Great Scoutmaster reaching down the hand of comradeship and saying 'Come on up higher. You did a swell job down there on earth . . .' " By the time all the spizzerincta were spizzed out, Mayor Sensenbrenner was out of office. Winner, to everybody's surprise but his own, was lackluster Wallace Ralston Westlake, 52, independent Republican city council president. Westlake made a colorless "nice guy" campaign for better city leadership, was helped immeasurably by voter irritation over sloppy Sensenbrenner administration and corruption in the police department. He won by 5,000 votes.

Philadelphia. Yaleman Richardson Dilworth, 61, World War I combat marine who helped run Republican corruption out of Philadelphia back in 1947 and started prodding a dying city back to life, won his second Democratic term by knocking off the most tireless Republican hopeful of the day: Harold Stassen. Dilworth, who had only to rest on his achievements (and the backing of all three Philadelphia newspapers), did not have to take out after Stassen; Harold, 52, did it all by himself. A disappointed presidential and gubernatorial contender in Pennsylvania, the onetime Minnesota boy-wonder Governor could not find a legitimate issue, came up with an inflammatory proposal to turn back immigrants from the South, i.e., bar Negro immigration to the city, and tossed out wild charges of corruption which he failed to prove; in fact, he was scarcely able to convince anybody that he is a Philadelphian (he keeps an apartment in the city, a home at Valley Forge). Result: Stassen became one of the most soundly defeated Republican candidates in Philadelphia history--433,298 to 227,742. Said Childe Harold: Philadelphians had not voted against him, but merely shown "their unwillingness at this time to accept my program." Cried he: "I'll never give up my participation in political affairs."

Salt Lake City. Left for dead last November when he ran third in the three-man race for the U.S. Senate, Dinosaurian Sometime Republican J. (for Joseph) Bracken Lee, 60, twice Utah's Governor and six times Salt Lake City's mayor, roared back to political life by blasting corruption, unions, the U.N., federal taxes and foreign aid, defeated Democratic State Senator Bruce Jenkins, 32. To Jenkins' warnings that Salt Lake City would shrivel under the leadership of a man behind the times, the voters sized up Maverick Lee's established reputation for honesty and economy, ignored labor's support of Jenkins, gave Lee a plurality of 6,000 votes. Lee's comeback impressed even anti-Lee Republicans enough to welcome him back into the fold, thus paved the way for "Brack" to look ahead once again either to the Governor's chair or 1962's Senate race.

San Francisco. With no hardship at all, Republican Incumbent George Christopher, 52, walloped Democratic Tax Assessor Russell Wolden, 49, by more than 50,000 votes. Greek-born George Christopher, who showed his abilities during his first term and enhanced his position when he rang in a warm San Francisco welcome for Nikita Khrushchev (cabled Khrushchev: "Had I been a citizen of your beautiful city, I would undoubtedly have voted for you"), had the city in his pocket virtually from the beginning, even though registration is overwhelmingly Democratic. In his wild-swinging campaign, Opponent Wolden accused Christopher's administration of permitting San Francisco to become national headquarters of "organized sex deviates." The charge, which cosmopolitan San Francisco considered bad manners, queered Wolden with most of his fellow Democrats and all the city's newspapers. Christopher's big bipartisan victory set him up as one of California's few surviving victorious Republicans and a man with a future.

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