NEW YORK: Against the Common Enemy

For years, Vito Marcantonio, flying the banner of the Redline American Labor Party, has been walking off with New York's 18th District, which includes the Puerto Rican colony in "Spanish Harlem" as well as some of Manhattan's richest apartment dwellers. Democrats and Republicans together commanded a majority that could have beaten Vito, but party bosses could never forget their own gritty rivalries. Last week they did. They got together on a 51-year-old Manhattan lawyer and onetime state senator—James G. Donovan, Democrat.

Thomas Curran, G.O.P. boss who helped engineer the deal, hastened to...