Position: Stronger

Joseph Clark Baldwin, 44, is a shrewd New York politician who looks like a man-about-town--a very leisurely, prosperous sort of town. Looking at his slick, prematurely grey hair, his invariably dapper dress, or the dapper water colors he paints for relaxation, nobody would think he had ever been an alderman. Still less does he seem a hard-bitten politico with a good liberal record who has beaten Tammany in seven out of eight elections. Oldest of nine children, son of a wealthy New Yorker, he was in the Navy in World War I for six seasick months, transferred to the Army, fought in France, met the French girl he afterwards married, got back to Harvard (and Porcellian and Hasty Pudding) to graduate just before the family fortunes collapsed. He had a brief spell of newspaper work, and then Joseph Baldwin was in politics up to the neck that his enemies said was stiffer than it need be.

On the death last month of Representative Kenneth Simpson (of Manhattan's famed "silk-stocking" 17th), Republicans picked Joseph Baldwin to run in a special election. Democrats picked liberal Lawyer Dean Alfange. The left wing of the American Labor Party picked Communistic Eugene Connolly, who was handicapped by his following of the corkscrewy party line.

James Farley rushed in to speak for Alfange. President Roosevelt sent him a message of support. Wendell Willkie speaking in a measured voice that made listeners believe he was at last taking speaking lessons, stumped for Joe Baldwin. So did Tom Dewey and Fiorello LaGuardia. The election was a significant test of issues and men that reached far beyond Manhattan. For Republicans it was a test of Willkie's foreign policy, of his ability as a vote-getter for somebody else. For Democrats it was a test of whether or not voters would continue giving unqualified support to New Deal policies. For isolationists, it was a count of the number of strange bedfellows brought together despite violent domestic disagreements.

Last week the votes were in: Baldwin, 23,252; Alfange, 16,690; Connolly, 3,985. Next to Joseph Baldwin, the happiest man at this outcome was Wendell Willkie. He was doubly pleased because the trend he had foreseen for the Republican Party seemed confirmed. Joseph Baldwin had won by a bigger percentage than had popular Kenneth Simpson. Isolationists in the Republican Party, who had proclaimed that Willkie's program would bring disaster, had been confounded. Moreover, isolationist strength among Republicans was ebbing. Many a Republican Senator who had been reported ready to fight Willkie for his support for Lend-Lease voted for Lend-Lease in the end--and they were party men as influential as Oldtimer Charles McNary, or as promising as Ohio's new Senator Harold Burton. Wendell Willkie had done what enemies had said he could not do--buckle down to the hard drudgery of machine politics to help elect Republicans who stood for the things he believed in. From being on the edge of repudiation by the party two months ago, Wendell Willkie last week was in a stronger position than he had been in since the early days of the 1940 campaign.

But he still gave no indication of his future plans. His Manhattan office had by last week overflowed into eight rooms, employed a paid and volunteer staff of 15. Letters received since election day: 250,000; invitations to speak: 75 a day.

Last week after the Baldwin election Willkie traveled to Washington to hear the President speak at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner (see p. 15). Queried by reporters, he scribbled on the back of a menu: "The President enumerated well the aspirations of America. ... We all pray he meets the opportunity of becoming the greatest statesman of his generation, for he must be such if democracy is to be saved."

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