Tom Dewey's Choice

Late one afternoon last week Republican bigwigs began arriving on the veranda of the Governor's antiquated Albany mansion to discuss an important question with Tom Dewey: Who should be the Republican nominee for the Senate seat of famed New Dealer Robert Wagner? But Tom Dewey had an answer ready. By the Governor's usual bedtime the conferences were over and the opposition candidates resigned to the inevitable. Next day, before lunch, the Governor's candidate was nominated.

The man the Governor chose was Thomas Jerome Curran, a quiet, earnest, spectacled 45-year-old attorney, with the political merit of being an Irish Catholic Republican.

Son of a County Kerry immigrant, Tom Curran was born in Manhattan's old Tenth Ward, the overwhelmingly Democratic district which produced Al Smith. Teddy Roosevelt was his boyhood hero. He put himself through Fordham's law school after army service in World War I and then worked his way steadily upward in New York Republican politics to the job of secretary of state and the inner circle of young men around the fast rising Tom Dewey.

Curran's political virtues were obvious: his appeal for the normally Democratic Catholic voting group, notably lacking on the State Republican ticket, his Manhattan strength, and his record in the Republican Party. But many a thoughtful Republican wondered whether Curran's best would be enough. Senator Wagner is 67 years old, but he has shaken off the persisting ill health which has checkered his recent years in the Senate with absenteeism. And Bob Wagner is still well-armored by his reputation as the author of early New Deal labor legislation. He has a steady independent following, and the longtime fervent blessing of New York's organized labor.

Commented the arch-Republican Herald Tribune: "The Republicans have named an able young political leader whose vigor and integrity stand beyond questioning. But knowledge of his convictions upon vital questions is extremely limited. A study of his spoken record reveals that he is against Communism and against the Roosevelt administration. What he is for still remains to be disclosed."

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