National Affairs: The Buffalo Brawl

For five of the most furious, fantastic days and nights in New York's political history, Democratic leaders in Buffalo fought, shoved, shouted and wept—and came perilously close to kicking away their campaign before it even got started. With Governor Averell Harriman an uncontested shoo-in for renomination, the brawl came on the nomination of a candidate for the U.S. Senate. The ultimate nominee: New York County's five-term District Attorney Frank Hogan, 56. The real winner in the party fracas: New York County's Tammany Hall Boss Carmine De Sapio, after a polished display of professional power politics. The clear loser : Averell Harriman, after a surprisingly amateurish performance.

Remarkably, in his attempt to dictate the senatorial nomination, Harriman was licked before he began—and almost everybody knew it but Ave. His inability to grasp the political facts of life kept the convention fight raging for days in hotel corridors, suites and lobbies. The log of one of the wildest of all New York political conventions:

The Preconvention Buildup. Tammany's De Sapio and his four fellow New York City borough bosses arrived in Buffalo with their minds made up. Their Senate candidate was soft, savvy D.A. Hogan, a Roman Catholic (for ticket-balancing purposes) and a pro's pro. Indeed, De Sapio had been making approving sounds about Hogan ever since March. Among his main reasons: Hogan is far from being one of the A.D.A.-type liberals who, De Sapio thinks, have long been getting more political plums than their vote production is worth. And, as opposed to a liberal darling, a Hogan on the next New York delegation to a national convention would make it easier for De Sapio to deal with Southerners for whatever he can get.

Averell Harriman felt just the opposite. Himself a dedicated liberal, Harriman also felt beholden to New York's Liberal Party for the 264,000 votes that it gave him in his 11,000 win in 1954. The Liberal Party's candidate, and Harriman's, was onetime (1950-53) Air Force Secretary Thomas K. Finletter, able lawyer and an articulate man on the platform, but untried at the polls.

The Convention-Eve Scramble. On convention eve, Averell Harriman declared a "free and open convention," added (with complete truth): "It is a fiction that I am going to dominate the convention." At the same time, realizing that De Sapio & Co. could not be persuaded to accept Finletter, Harriman switched his major effort to Thomas Murray, onetime Atomic Energy commissioner, and generally classified as a little less to the Democratic left than Tom Finletter.

Carmine De Sapio and the borough bosses already controlled about 600 votes, with only 572 needed to nominate their candidate. That being so, they would have none of Tom Murray. But De Sapio was willing to try to avoid an open, party-fracturing break with Harriman. Efforts to find a compromise candidate inevitably turned to New York City's Mayor Robert Wagner, popular in the city and upstate with both the liberal amateurs and the professionals.