Extraordinary Mayor

Last week the New Jersey Assembly appropriated $35,000 for an investigation of the mayor of Wildwood, a hardened little resort town and fishing port between Atlantic City and Cape May. At the same time Wildwood's Independent Taxpayers' League announced they would circulate a petition demanding the Mayor's resignation. Such news might pain an ordinary U. S. mayor, but not Wildwood's 41-year-old Doris Warren Bradway. She is used to trouble.

Since Republican Doris Bradway became New Jersey's first woman mayor in 1933, her official acts have been investigated no less than ten times by grand juries, legislative and judicial bodies. But try as they might, Mayor Bradway's investigators have been unable to impair her standing with Wildwood's electorate. Last May, still under indictment for assorted official misdeeds ranging from, illegal disbursement of municipal funds to taking gasoline from the city's supply for her own use, she got herself elected by a landslide for four more years.

Most diverting of all her stunts was her weight-reducing campaign. Called "The Big Girl" because of her 251 Ib. when she took office, she decided to reduce after she made trips to her municipal bathing beach and her own life guards laughed when she waddled out in a bathing suit, size 52. For more than a year all Wildwood watched her gamely shake off pound after pound. When she lost 102 lb.and two of her chins, there was municipal rejoicing. Mayor Bradway further endeared herself to sporting Wildwoodmen at a wrestling match in the Municipal Auditorium. The audience became displeased with Wrestler Joe Savoldi for the tactics he was using to subdue his opponent, one Stanley Sokolis, and heartily approved when Mayor Bradway grabbed a plank, climbed into the ring and brought it down on Wrestler Savoldi's skull.

New Jersey Democrats would like to break up Mayor Bradway's Republican machine and get Cape May County back into the Democratic column. Last winter Democratic Senators protested the seating of Cape May County's Senator-elect William C. Hunt on the grounds that votes had been fraudulently switched to him by Wildwood Republicans. So tense was this situation that U. S. Senator-elect William Henry Smathers remained for three months in his old seat in the State Senate, divided 11 to 10 between the parties, to help balance Senator-suspect Hunt. During the investigation, Mayor Bradway's husband, a roofing contractor, was arrested for and exonerated of vote-stealing. But Senator Hunt was unseated, thus leaving William H. Smathers free to go to Washington.

What the Assembly Investigating Committee of five Democrats (Republican Assemblymen refused to serve on the committee) now hopes to pin on Mayor Bradway has to do with payrolls, vouchers, and regular expenses of city departments since 1932. The Committee thinks that Mayor Bradway permitted many of these vouchers to be improperly issued. Said she last week: "I'm not going to resign unless they get as many signers as voted for me last May. ... I want to do what's best for the greatest little city in the world."

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