Bennett & Bennet

For the first time in 14 months, Franklin Roosevelt and his onetime best friend had a heart-to-heart talk last week. James Aloysius Farley dropped in for lunch. But it was hardly a sentimental reunion. Cooking at the White House were some very practical New York State politics. Observers were ready to predict, when Farley came out, that the next Governor of New York was all but elected. The choice: John James Bennett Jr., the State's Attorney General, an unknown to the U.S. at large.

Franklin Roosevelt was reported to have had other ideas in the beginning. But ever since Governor Lehman said flatly that he could not possibly be drafted to run for a fifth term, Bennett has been the choice of Jim Farley and of a strong bloc of Democratic State leaders. Said Farley to newsmen after his White House lunch: "I am satisfied that there will be no difficulty. . . ." The inference: Mr. Roosevelt had given in.

Two Ts. The President himself started Bennett in politics twelve years ago when, as Governor, he picked him from political nowhere to be the Democratic nominee for Attorney General. Blue-eyed, smooth-faced, 36-year-old John Bennett had returned from World War I to study law, to work for a J. P. Morgan partner. He had been admitted to the bar only three years before his nomination.

One of his first jobs was to clean up skinny, bullet-pocked Legs Diamond's gang. His record since has been both unspectacular and unmarred by scandal. As a public official he is colorless, likable, efficient. He has earned the loyalties of friends; smart and ambitious (for six years he has yearned to be Governor), he has visited every city and hamlet in the State during his five campaigns, probably knows more voters than anyone but his gregarious mentor, Jim Farley himself.

The most likely Republican nominee against Bennett is Thomas E. Dewey. Last week Dewey was having troubles. His backing was lukewarm, thus far. Some wiseacres thought Bennett's election was a sure thing if New York's hybrid American Labor Party would support him. And Democratic bosses were pretty sure that A.L.P. support would follow the President.

One T. Incidental subject of the White House tete-`a-tete was Hamilton Fish, the perennial Republican Congressman from Squire Roosevelt's own Congressional district. Fish hopes to extend his 22-year job in Washington by getting elected again.

Some of his own Republican colleagues, remembering Fish's isolationism and prewar pro-Axis leanings, think that 22 years are long enough. Their best hope appeared to be Augustus W. Bennet.

Young (44) Gus Bennet is a successful Newburgh lawyer who is earnestly ready to sacrifice his income and comfortable private existence in order to retire Ham Fish from Congress.

Bennet is a political unknown even in the district, though his father served eight years in Congress. But he has a sound political background. He is president of the Newburgh Y.M.C.A., a churchman, a onetime president of the local Chamber of Commerce, a Son of the American Revolution. Last week he got Dewey's backing. He also has the backing of many independent Republicans. What he did not have and would not get was the support of the ancient, cast-iron Republican machine which dominates the district. The district GOPoliticos, backing Fish again, were set to crush any upstart at the primaries. The only chance for Bennet was to get Democrats in the district to support him as a coalition candidate in November. That kind of a coalition was up to Franklin Roosevelt.

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