The Buffalo Brawl

For five of the most furious, fantastic days and nights in New York's political history, Democratic leaders in Buffalo fought, shoved, shouted and wept--and came perilously close to kicking away their campaign before it even got started. With Governor Averell Harriman an uncontested shoo-in for renomination, the brawl came on the nomination of a candidate for the U.S. Senate. The ultimate nominee: New York County's five-term District Attorney Frank Hogan, 56. The real winner in the party fracas: New York County's Tammany Hall Boss Carmine De Sapio, after a polished display of professional power politics. The clear loser : Averell Harriman, after a surprisingly amateurish performance.

Remarkably, in his attempt to dictate the senatorial nomination, Harriman was licked before he began--and almost everybody knew it but Ave. His inability to grasp the political facts of life kept the convention fight raging for days in hotel corridors, suites and lobbies. The log of one of the wildest of all New York political conventions:

The Preconvention Buildup. Tammany's De Sapio and his four fellow New York City borough bosses arrived in Buffalo with their minds made up. Their Senate candidate was soft, savvy D.A. Hogan, a Roman Catholic (for ticket-balancing purposes) and a pro's pro. Indeed, De Sapio had been making approving sounds about Hogan ever since March. Among his main reasons: Hogan is far from being one of the A.D.A.-type liberals who, De Sapio thinks, have long been getting more political plums than their vote production is worth. And, as opposed to a liberal darling, a Hogan on the next New York delegation to a national convention would make it easier for De Sapio to deal with Southerners for whatever he can get.

Averell Harriman felt just the opposite. Himself a dedicated liberal, Harriman also felt beholden to New York's Liberal Party for the 264,000 votes that it gave him in his 11,000 win in 1954. The Liberal Party's candidate, and Harriman's, was onetime (1950-53) Air Force Secretary Thomas K. Finletter, able lawyer and an articulate man on the platform, but untried at the polls.

The Convention-Eve Scramble. On convention eve, Averell Harriman declared a "free and open convention," added (with complete truth): "It is a fiction that I am going to dominate the convention." At the same time, realizing that De Sapio & Co. could not be persuaded to accept Finletter, Harriman switched his major effort to Thomas Murray, onetime Atomic Energy commissioner, and generally classified as a little less to the Democratic left than Tom Finletter.

Carmine De Sapio and the borough bosses already controlled about 600 votes, with only 572 needed to nominate their candidate. That being so, they would have none of Tom Murray. But De Sapio was willing to try to avoid an open, party-fracturing break with Harriman. Efforts to find a compromise candidate inevitably turned to New York City's Mayor Robert Wagner, popular in the city and upstate with both the liberal amateurs and the professionals.

Bob Wagner's lifetime ambition has been to follow his famed father, Robert Wagner Sr., to the U.S. Senate. But Wagner had a very real problem: running for re-election last year (and skillfully backed by De Sapio), he gave his unqualified word to serve out his four-year term as mayor, and only last month he renewed that pledge. Therefore, when Democratic leaders went to him on convention eve, urging him to take the Senate nomination, he could not bring himself to say either yes or no. He asked for more time to consider.

The First-Day Farce. On the first day of the convention, Wagner held new talks with the leaders in Harriman's blue-walled Statler Hilton suite. Again he stalled. Then he, his wife and sons took off for the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, there to commune with nature. At lunch his son Bobby, 14, gave a boy's view of a promise. "Dad," said young Bobby, "if you give in and leave city hall, I will lose all respect for you."

That night, after the formalities of nominating Harriman for Governor, the Democrats met with Wagner in Harriman's room. Wagner had still not made up his mind. By this time, nerves were at the snapping point, and Carmine De Sapio had had about enough. At 3 a.m., he gave Wagner until breakfast the next morning to decide. Cried Wagner later, still angry over the deadline demand: "They don't give me ultimata!" Still later, when he heard that De Sapio had publicly written him out of the race, Wagner exploded: "I don't think De Sapio is in a position to declare anybody out." Then, as an angry addendum, Wagner barked: "I mean that!"

The Second-Day Cinch. On the convention's closing day, Wagner finally decided not to run. That left the Democrats right where they had started: with De Sapio & Co. for Hogan, and with Harriman, now supported by Wagner, for either Finletter or Murray (already withdrawn from consideration was Old Pol James A. Farley). In Harriman's room the scorching fight continued. From those at the meeting came wide-eyed reports that Wagner had brandished his patronage club over De Sapio, shouting: "Remember, I shall continue to be mayor for three and a half more years."

That night, while dispirited delegates waited on the convention floor for a decision from the leaders, sandwiches, whisky and ice went by the cartful into Harriman's suite. Finally, De Sapio and his followers walked out in anger. Then, willing to give it one more try, De Sapio sent Frank Hogan up a back stairway to see Harriman. Hogan failed in his eleventh-hour attempt to sway Harriman--and at 10 p.m., five hours after the convention's scheduled meeting time, the word came that the Senate fight would "go to the floor."

If Averell Harriman did not know that he was licked in his bootless fight, De Sapio had news for him. Just to make certain nothing went wrong, he had, in addition to his New York City bloc, rounded up 71 Hogan votes from Erie County (Buffalo) by promising to deliver the nomination for attorney general to Erie County Chairman Peter Crotty. That completely cinched Hogan's nomination. Harriman sulkily announced that he would not attend the convention that night--and then proceeded to show up.

In a back room of Buffalo's Memorial Auditorium, Averell Harriman dabbed at damp eyes as the roll was called. Result: Hogan 773, Murray 304, Finletter 66.

"Well," said Averell Harriman, even as De Sapio jammed Erie's Crotty down his throat, "we've got a ticket."

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