Fair Deal Town

The plain fact was that big, bluff William O'Dwyer had been a pretty good mayor, all things considered. Last week in an election that brought out 93% of New York City's registered voters, he was sent back to the City Hall.

It wasn't even close. Despite the opposition of most of the city's newspapers and two rival candidates, O'Dwyer piled up 1,264,600 votes--308,000 more than his nearest opponent, Republican Reformer Newbold Morris. Only two Republicans were elected to city offices. Triumphant Irish-born Bill O'Dwyer had his own explanation: "It means that New York City is a New Deal and a Fair Deal town. It means that, while the people of this city are not organized, labor is organized, and the people have confidence in any one in whom organized labor has confidence."

The election was a crushing defeat for the Communists and their political stooge, the American Labor Party. The A.L.P. elected nobody. Congressman Vito Marcantonio, A.L.P. candidate for mayor who had boasted that he would win with more than 800,000 votes, got only 356,000, carrying only two districts in the East Harlem and Puerto Rican sections of the city.

But the Communists' worst humiliation came in West Harlem, where hulking Ben Davis, one of the convicted Communist leaders, was defending his seat on the city council. It was the only elective office in the U.S. held by a Communist, and the party poured its resources into the fight. Comrades sent sound trucks crisscrossing the district, harangued street-corner meetings nightly, and Candidate Davis shouted himself out of voice.

His conqueror was 47-year-old Earl Brown, a brand-new man in politics who worked his way through Harvard, taught college economics, is currently a staff reporter for LIFE. Democrat Brown, who was also backed by the Republican and Liberal Parties, breezed in by a three-to-one majority, 63,000 to 21,000. Said Brown: "It shows that the Negroes want no part of Communism."

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