Arriba Maverick

Maury Maverick, colorful, pugnacious, bullheaded, hardworking, and as ardent a New Dealer as Harold Ickes, last week ran second best in the Democratic election for the mayoralty of San Antonio.

He was stunned. But not for long. Maverick had run on his record--the housing project, the reorganization of the police and fire departments, his friendship for San Antonio's 94,000 Mexican-Americans.

That record looked good for a reform mayor, looked particularly good compared with that of his opponent, tall and grey-haired, dignified and distant, Charles Quin. San Antonio's mayor for six and a half years before Maverick defeated him in 1939. Maverickos had no trouble making his administrations look like epics of graft, incompetency, black reaction.

But while Maverickos were standing on the record, ex-Mayor Quin was buttonholing Mexicans in the Mexican district, Negroes in the Negro quarters. He had the support of Harvard-educated Negro Boss Valmo Bellinger. Quin's men made the most of San Antonio's worst riot, when Maverick insisted on permitting a Communist rally at San Antonio's auditorium, until townspeople and legionnaires broke it up in spite of the entire police and fire departments. Maverickos were sure the rally, although not forgotten, had been forgiven.

It had not been. When the votes were counted Quin, very pleased, had 17,437, Maverick got 16,142. Some 2,000 votes for four minor candidates made a runoff necessary. Ex-Mayor Quin got more than Maverick of both the Negro and the Mexican vote. San Antonio's businessmen were for Maverick, but Maverick's New Dealism kept them from being ardent.

Shocked into action, Maverickos last week went to work again. With shouts of Arriba Maury Maverick! they rallied San Antonio's Mexicans for the runoff next week. And Maverick, fighting for his political life, appealed to his middle-class white supporters with attacks on Quin's Negro supporters, tore into Bellinger as "that black baboon" who would be more powerful than San Antonio's whites if Quin won.

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