Tiger Skin

"Fine Republican weather," announced New York County's Republican Chairman Kenneth Simpson to a group of reporters at a Manhattan polling place at 5 o'clock one morning last week. Taking another sniff, he added: "Victory is in the air."

"Ideal Democratic weather," pronounced Tammany Hall's ruddy old Leader Christopher D. Sullivan at another polling place an hour-and-a-quarter later. "Touch of frost and a slight overcast."

What made these auguries even more empty than usual last week was the plain fact that neither had a bona fide candidate for Mayor of New York. No one knew better than Chairman Simpson that his election alliance with independent little Republican-Progressive-New Dealer Fiorello H. LaGuardia and his Fusion Party was strictly an affair of convenience. No happier was Tammany, which, having provoked a revolt among Democrats outside Manhattan by running fumbling anti-New Deal Senator Royal S. Copeland in both the Republican and Democratic primaries, had almost as little stake in clean-cut but colorless Democratic Candidate Jeremiah T. Mahoney as it had in Fusionist LaGuardia.

Landscape-- Returning to his upper Fifth Avenue home after an energetic survey of polling places, Mayor LaGuardia felt a tug at his coattails, turned to shake hands with an 8-year-old admirer who cried: "It's a landscape. LaGuardia by $500,000!"

Within three hours after the polls had closed that evening, every New Yorker knew that a LaGuardia landslide, fully as sweeping as expected, had perhaps permanently changed the political landscape of the biggest city in the U. S. Candidate Mahoney's congratulatory telegram was sent from his headquarters at 9:15. Shortly thereafter telegrams went to the rest of the Fusion ticket, District Attorney-Elect Thomas E. Dewey, Comptroller-Elect Joseph D. McGoldrick, and Newbold Morris, elected president of the New City Council whose members were chosen by proportional representation to replace the old Tammany-controlled Board of Aldermen. All could have been dispatched much earlier. At 10:30 rooters demonstrating outside the Mayor's house were informed that the Mayor, his wife, his daughter Jean and son Eric had already gone to bed. A little later theatre crowds were able to hear and cheer the final unofficial figures: LaGuardia, 1,344,016; Mahoney, 889,591. It was the first time Tammany had ever had to bow to Reform twice running. It was the Fusion candidate's first absolute majority.

When the Mayor jubilantly arrived at City Hall to find his office floor covered with a tiger skin presented by big game-hunting Deputy Police Commissioner Harold Fowler, the landslide had begun to seem even more impressive. Fusion was in control not only of the Mayor's chair and the District Attorney's office, where Tammany underlings promptly began clearing out their desks in anticipation of the sharp-eyed Dewey occupation on January 1, but of practically every important city job. Its first majority in the crucial Board of Estimate was an astounding 15-to-1.

The lone Democratic survival there was Bronx Borough President James J. Lyons, who owed his re-election principally to a three-cornered fight resulting from the decision of Bronx Republican Leader John J. Knewitz to put up a candidate of his own. Aware that Republican Knewitz' salary as Commissioner of Records had been upped from $6,000 to $9,000 by Tammany's expiring majority on the Board of Estimate, Fiorello LaGuardia smelled a deal, stormed characteristically "Knewitz is a political pimp," pressed an investigation. Bluff Borough President Lyons got a further whiff of a new and more candid political era when on the steps of City Hall he ran smack into white-haired, Tammany-hating Samuel Seabury, who started New York's good government ball rolling in 1930 with his two-year investigations of municipal corruption. "Well, Judge," cracked Mr. Lyons, "aren't you going to congratulate me?" Snapped old Judge Seabury: "Why should I? I voted for your opponent and I look upon your election as a calamity."

Fusion-- Although Fusion as a practical political phenomenon obviously contains a broad stripe of the New Deal and has done more than any other force to humiliate the anti-New Deal satraps of Tammany, the New Deal has never officially managed to get on the same side of the political fence. In 1933 James A. Farley's determination to run anti-Tammany Democrat Joseph V. McKee produced the three-cornered race which first enabled LaGuardia and Fusion to squeeze into City Hall. This year when Jeremiah Mahoney stepped into McKee's shoes, Tammany and Dr. Copeland withdrew, left Fusion and the New Deal fighting each other in a two-sided race.

Boss Farley valiantly fought at Candidate Mahoney's side to the end but realistic Franklin Roosevelt let it be known that three days before the election he had telephoned his good wishes to Candidate LaGuardia. Two days after election the President, apparently determined to clear the fence in one leap, took the unusual step of traveling from Hyde Park to his Manhattan town house expressly to "meet" the victorious Mayor. Fiorello LaGuardia entered the grey stone house on east 65th street at 2:40 p. m. Fifteen minutes later and by no coincidence up pulled the limousine of James A. Farley.

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