Most of the time, a New York City municipal election has all the suspense and flavor of lunch at the automatdeposit the votes and out pops another machine-tooled Democrat. But two-term Mayor Robert Ferdinand Wagner has jammed the mechanism by breaking openly with the Democratic bosses (TIME, June 30) and choosing his own running mates for a third-term attempt in November. Ever since, the city's political future has been as confusing as a subway map.
Hardly had Wagner picked his ticket when the bosses he had defied selected their own slate, dared him to enter a bloody September primary. The Tammany...