National Affairs: The Governors

The polls had been closed only two hours when Tom Dewey's lieutenants broadcast their victory claim from the ballroom of Manhattan's Hotel Roosevelt. Not much later, their exuberance was fortified by fact—New Yorkers had decisively rehired Thomas Edmund Dewey for a third term as governor.

The famous Hanley letter had apparently not hurt Tom Dewey much. He trimmed Fair Dealing Congressman Walter A. Lynch by more than 500,000 votes.

As in New York, Republicans picked up most of the big marbles in the nation's 32 gubernatorial elections, upset at least six Democratic incumbents. <J In California, personable, accomplished Republican Earl Warren fractured the...