By the third largest margin in New Jersey's history, the Republicans took over the governorship from Democrat Charles Edisonwho didn't seem to mind. Wealthy, 69-year-old Walter Evans Edge (Hoover's Ambassador to France, ally of the senior Henry Cabot Lodge in the Senate fight against the League of Nations) piled a plurality of 128,000 votes over Newark's Mayor Vincent J. Murphy, supported by Jersey City's Frank Hague, the Communists, A.F. of L., C.I.O., and Frank Sinatra.†
Governor Edison campaigned mainly for revision of the New Jersey constitution, a hoary anachronism which gave Boss Hague plenty of room to spread his tentacles through the...