New York, as any visitor can see, is the showplace of change, the city that always sports the latest and shiniest in automobiles, literary movements and ballpoint pens, where perfectly good buildings are torn down every year to make way for newer and better ones. Only its politics have stopped moving. Politically, New York is a kind of petrified forest, where reform candidates roam in solidly institutionalized groups, and the stumps of once-great political growths clutter the landscape.
Last week the forest was a busy place, as party leaders and professed independents got their men ready for the 1953 mayoralty elections. By week's end, six candidates had signed up to run for the $40,000-a-year-job — generally regarded as the second-roughest executive post in the U.S.-The issues which divided the candidates, and the factions supporting them, were often just barely visible in the forest's dim light.
Wrecking the Party. The most obvious aspirant was Mayor Vincent R. Impellitteri. Democrat Impellitteri, 53, is a likable, cigar-smoking politician who has been in his profession so long that even his casual conversations manage to sound like scraps from political speeches. In the 1950 elections, he bucked his own party machine and won, running as an independent on a ticket titled Experience Party. By now, with three years of distributing City Hall patronage behind him, he has considerable Democratic Party support.
"Impy" is running on his record ("Not just fair; it has been excellent"), and there have been worse ones. All sides agree that he is honest, and that he has appointed some capable administrators to city departments. But he has shown little or no understanding of the city's wretched financial position which is steadily growing worse, and he has made only weak efforts to solve specific problems like New York's huge transit deficit (TIME, Apr. 20), which last week resulted in a 15¢ fare for all the city's subway turnstiles.
Against Impy are the remains of Manhattan's once-powerful Tammany machine, now run by Leader Carmine De Sapio, 44, and the venerable Bronx organization of Boss Edward J. Flynn, an old confidant of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Last week, in a traditional smoke-filled Manhattan hotel room, the opposing Democratic party bosses had it out. Queens Leader James A. Roe, Brooklyn's Kenneth Sutherland and Staten Island's Jeremiah A. Sullivan insisted on nominating Impellitteri. De Sapio and Congressman Charles A. Buckley, representing Flynn, refused to go along with them, then carried the fight into a hotel corridor, where reporters overheard the end. Yelled Leader Buckley, "You are wrecking the Democratic Party!" Snapped Leader Roe, "You might as well go out on 42nd Street. We're going to stop you sabotaging the party."
Two days later, Flynn and De Sapio put up their own candidate, Manhattan Borough President Robert F. Wagner, 43, an amiable party worker whose father, the late Senator, was one of the city's greatest vote getters.