St. George & the Farmers

Trim, glib, tireless Mrs. Katharine St. George would not be downed. Her opponent for the Republican Congressional nomination in New York's farmerish, four-county 29th District was earnest, colorless Lawyer Augustus Bennet. As a Good-Government candidate in 1944, quasi-Republican Bennet had unseated Republican Ham Fish. Mrs. St. George, who takes her Party straight, had a low opinion of him.

From the start of her campaign, chic Mrs. St. George awed her constituents. She drove 200 miles and met 75 people a day, dined Republican leaders, spoke every other night. Her platform vibrated with promises of jobs and homes for veterans, hope for farmers and love for labor's hard-won gains. "The ultimate goal," said she, "is to have every union member a capitalist."

The night she crossed words with her opponent in fashionable Tuxedo Park's Masonic Temple, Gus Bennet extolled the value of public debate, citing for example the Lincoln-Douglas series. Purred Mrs. St. George: "One good thing about women in politics is that they are not continually comparing themselves to the Great Emancipator."

After that night, Mrs. St. George stopped worrying. A first-string hostess of Tuxedo, a first cousin of Franklin Roosevelt, a member of the board of governors of the Women's National Republican Club, vice president of the St. George Coal Co. and an expert rider, she was politically irresistible. What's more, Ham Fish was 100% for her, and down in the bottom of its heart, the 29th District still liked Ham.

When the dangers of too much Fish support became noticeable around election time, Mrs. St. George declared: "Nobody can pin a Fish label on me. Ham Fish would support a wooden Indian against Bennet." Then she went on to carry all but one of her counties.

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