The Battlers

At first, it looked as if New Yorkers were in for a slightly tedious, thoroughly respectable campaign for governor this year. On their records Republican Candidate Irving Ives and Democratic Candidate Averell Harriman could be expected to explore the issues with scholarly precision and to conduct themselves with the utmost decorum. Things didn't work out like that; by last week the campaign was not very respectable.

From Irving Ives, after his wife's skirt was spattered by a ripe tomato in Watertown, came some of the harshest language yet heard in a harsh U.S. political season. Cried Ives: "I've been under worse fire than that. I can't be more eloquent in what I have to say about this opposition than what has just been done here on this platform. It was aimed at me, and it's all right, because it came by indirection from Tammany Hall, the outfit that's running this campaign on the Democratic side. And don't you think for one minute that as I progress in this campaign that I will hesitate to take off the gloves and take them on, because I can battle, too. I can get mad, too. And when I fight skunks, I fight skunks with the same kind of stink they have."

Four teen-age Watertown boys eventually confessed to the politically unsubsidized tomato-tossing, but by that time Averell Harriman had again enraged Ives. To avoid conflict with the Jewish holidays, New York's registration had been split into two periods. This device has been employed by Democratic state administrations in the past, but Harriman read into it a diabolical scheme this year to confuse the voters and keep registration down. Roared Irving Ives: "These Tammany-picked candidates, to hide their ignorance of state affairs, have fallen back on the last resource of sordid politics . . . This year they are so desperate and contemptible that they have sunk to the level of trying to stir up people to hate other people because we are respecting the holiest days of the religion of many of our people."

Was either candidate as angry as he sounded? Probably not. The spirit of professional wrestling seemed to have entered New York politics. Gentleman Ives and Gentleman Harriman were grimacing as if they feared Hatpin Mary would jab them if they relaxed.

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