One Man Track

As a fast field of horses led by Red Aril was pounding around the Narragansett Track at Pawtucket, R. I. in the last race one day last week, the track's managing director, dapper Walter E. O'Hara, sat nervously champing a cigar in his luxurious penthouse atop the clubhouse. By Mr. O'Hara's side sat his two lawyers and outside the door stood some 20 of Pawtucket's police, stout liegemen of Walter O'Hara's friend and political ally, Pawtucket's Democratic Mayor Thomas P. McCoy. Beyond them stood a delegation of State police, sent by Rhode Island's Democratic Governor Robert E. Quinn to arrest Walter O'Hara on charges of criminal libel and blasphemy For two hours the rival police squadrons glared at each other in stubborn deadlock. Then Mr. O'Hara calmly walked out, dismissed his guard, received the warrant, and walked into another court episode in what by last week had become the bitterest sporting and political war in hard-boiled "Little Rhody's" history.

The brother of Boston Traveler's popular Columnist Neal O'Hara, Walter O'Hara is a quick-witted Irishman, onetime Rhode Island mill operator, who suddenly appeared on the State political scene when the Legislature legalized pari-mutuel horserace gambling in 1934. Promoter O'Hara quickly organized Narragansett Racing Association with the help of friends, bought 130 acres from an oldtime Woonsocket saloonkeeper for $150,000, built a track in seven weeks and began running profitable races before the paint was dry on the grandstand. Taking 62% of all bets made, besides gate receipts and concessions, Narragansett piled up a clear profit of $507,000 for 1935, which made it financially the best track in the U. S. (TIME, Aug. 3, 1936).

But meantime Promoter O'Hara was getting in deeper with Mayor McCoy and Pawtucket's anti-Quinn Democratic faction. In his weekly Pawtucket Star, O'Hara backed Mayor McCoy against Quinn, then Lieutenant Governor, for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. After changing the Star into a daily last spring, the pair moved into Providence, stronghold of the Republican Metcalf Brothers' Journal and Bulletin, by merging the Star with the feeble old News-Tribune. The resulting Star-Tribune proceeded to pepper the Metcalfs and the Quinn political machine on their own grounds.

At this point the State Division of Horse Racing, headed by a former State Senator named Francis J. Kiernan, began hectoring Narragansett. Last month a suitable incident was provided when State Racing Steward James Doorley attempted to enforce a minor Division ruling concerning the posting of winning horses on the track's electric board. Hot-tempered Owner O'Haca not only defied the order but gave Doorley a bawling out. Thereupon the Racing Division, charging that Steward Doorley had been "intimidated," amazingly ordered the Narragansett Association, in which Mr. O'Hara is a majority stockholder, to oust Mr. O'Hara from his $75,000 job as managing director. Mr. O'Hara roused Superior Court Justice Charles H. Walsh at 4 a. m. to issue a restraining order against the ouster, which Presiding Justice Jeremiah E. O'Connell promptly vacated. Last week the Racing Division ordered the Narragansett Racing Association to a hearing on six charges whose sum was that the Association had not only obstructed the Division but was morally corrupt. Mr. O'Hara answered these charges point-by-point in the Star-Tribune, sparing no profanity when he came to describe the Governor and his allies.

It was at this point that Governor Quinn, declaring that he would rid Rhode Island of a "vicious influence." swore out the dramatically-served warrant for Mr. O'Hara's arrest. Released on $5,000 bail supplied by Mayor McCoy, he was immediately rearrested on another warrant sworn out by Adman William E. Beehan whom he had called in the Star-Tribune a briber, released on similar bail from the same source. Next day he was back at his office for the running of the $25,000 Narragansett Special, which he had threatened to open to the public free, with no betting allowed, if his license had been revoked. At week's end the supreme court quashed the original ouster order, left Horseman O'Hara to face a Racing Division hearing this week. Mourned Manhattan's racing Morning Telegraph: "Narragansett is a one man race track. When O'Hara goes, Narragansett goes. And when Narragansett goes, it's the beginning of the end for racing in New England."

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