Patronage in New York State, 1955–1959

When Averell Harriman became Governor of New York on January 1, 1955, the Democrats assumed power in Albany for the first time in twelve years. With Harriman came his newly appointed Secretary of State, Carmine G. De Sapio, leader of Tammany Hall, Democratic National Committeeman, and widely described as the architect of the Democratic resurgence. Harriman, however, had only barely won the election, and such unity as the party had achieved during the campaign was evanescent at best. The Democratic Party was very much alive, but its energies were woefully centripetal. The cleavages ranged from the most primitive thrusts of tribal warfare between Italians and Irish to the most elegant ideological concerns of middle- and upper-class liberal Protestants and Jews. The election had deepened some conflicts, raised others, and settled none. The ancient Irish hegemony was giving way before pressure from Italians within the regular party organization and reform liberals as yet outside it. The very ticket on which Harriman ran was symptomatic of the times—for the first time in decades it had no Irish Catholic running for a major executive office and, at the same time, a magic name in New York politics—Roosevelt—had been relegated to a subordinate place on the list after a bitter, clamorous effort by young liberals (who later were to be the backbone of a major reform assault on Tammany) to win the gubernatorial nomination for the son of the former President.