Philadelphia municipal election, 1951

Background

In the 1940s, Philadelphia was the last major city in the United States to have its political scene safely controlled by Republicans. Mayor Bernard Samuel and sheriff Austin Meehan controlled the Republican organization and were supported by many of the city's business interests. In 1947, city voters had elected Republicans to the mayor's office and to every seat on the city council. In the next few years, however, cracks in the Republican wall began to emerge as independent voters and reform-minded Republicans began to join with Democrats in opposing what they saw as shortcomings of the Republican machine. Some in the Democratic organization objected to making common cause with the reformers, but Democratic City Committee chairman James A. Finnegan saw it as a chance to revitalize his moribund party, saying "good government is good politics." In 1949, that coalition scored a victory in the election for "row offices" (minor citywide offices including treasurer, coroner, and controller) and the reformers used their new platforms to expose corruption in city government. Reformers proposed a new city charter in 1951, which passed overwhelmingly in an April referendum, setting up a showdown in November for election to the revised city government.

Mayor

Samuel did not run for re-election as mayor, leaving an open seat to be contested by the Republican nominee, Daniel A. Poling, and the Democrat, Joseph S. Clark, Jr. Clark was a lawyer and United States Army officer who had served in World War II. Raised in an upper-class Republican family, he switched his party affiliation to the Democrats in 1928. After several unsuccessful attempts at public office in Philadelphia, he served as a Deputy Attorney General of Pennsylvania. Clark was known as a reformer, having been elected city controller two years earlier in 1949 on a platform of cleaning up corruption in the city. In those two years, Clark probed various inefficiencies, graft, and theft in the Samuel administration and reported his findings to the voters. Many of those accused of crimes were convicted, and nine committed suicide. Clark continued his push for reform by urging adoption of the new city charter. He campaigned for mayor with the promise of a "clean sweep of City Hall". He won the support of organization Democrats in part by announcing his intention to run whether they back him or not. In the July primary election, he triumphed easily over former City Solicitor Joseph Sharfsin by an eight-to-one margin.

The Republican nominee, Poling was a Baptist preacher, who GOP leaders hoped would help deflect the corruption charges leveled against the machine. Poling had worked for various charitable organizations and managed the Christian Herald. His son, Clark V. Poling, was one of the Four Chaplains lost aboard the SS Dorchester in World War II, and Poling served as pastor at the chapel erected in their memory. Poling was the choice of the Republican organization, and was challenged in the primary by Walter P. Miller, a businessman who had the backing of independent Republicans; Poling won by a six-to-one margin.

As in 1947 and 1949, Clark focused his campaign on the corruption of the Republican organization, calling it "the most corrupt political machine in the United States." Poling admitted that corruption existed, but pledged to root it out himself, if elected. The general election was a landslide for Clark, as he won by more than 120,000 votes. With 58% of the vote, the Democrats had gained nearly 215,000 votes from the last election, in which they had been defeated. As the vote tally became apparent, he told reporters that it was a "great victory for the thinking people of Philadelphia and it ends a long hard fight."

District Attorney

In a system that predated the charter change, Philadelphia elects a district attorney independent of the mayor. Since 1957, district attornies are elected in the "off year" elections (i.e., the election two years after the mayor and city council are elected), but in 1951 they were still elected at the same time as the mayor.

As in the mayor's race, the contest for district attorney pitted a Democratic reformer, Richardson Dilworth, against a representative of the Republican machine, Michael A. Foley. Dilworth, like Clark, was a former Republican who had been advocating reform for several years. He had run for mayor unsuccessfully in 1947, with Clark as his campaign manager. In 1949, he was elected City Treasurer. Democratic party leaders had intended Dilworth to be their candidate for mayor again in 1951, but when Clark announced his candidacy, Dilworth agreed to run for district attorney instead. Foley, a local attorney, had organization backing in the primary but had no success against the Democratic wave in the general election. Dilworth was unopposed in the primary. In November, Dilworth won by almost as large a margin as his running mate, taking just shy of 58% of the vote. He told reporters that the victory had a "sobering effect," and that "the bigger the victory, the bigger the responsibility."

City Council

Under the new charter, Philadelphians elected a seventeen-member city council in 1951, with ten members representing districts of the city, and the remaining seven being elected at-large. Under the limited voting system for the at-large seats, each political party could nominate five candidates and voters could only vote for five, with the result being that the majority party could only take five of the seven seats, leaving two for the minority party. The Democrats' citywide triumph continued into the city council races, as they took nine of ten districts and five of seven at-large seats.

Constance Dallas, the first woman to win election to City Council, was elected in a close vote in the 8th district (covering Chestnut Hill, Germantown, and Roxborough) over incumbent councilman Robert S. Hamilton. In the 1st district, which took in South Philadelphia, attorney Thomas I. Guerin defeated Dominic J. Colubiale. In the 2nd, the Republicans' lone district-level victory came as electrical equipment salesman William M. Phillips bested Louis Vignola, a labor union official. In the 3rd district, made up of the southern half of West Philadelphia, incumbent Harry Norwitch defeated another incumbent from the old city council, George Maxman, who had held office since 1936. In the 4th, which covered the northern half of West Philadelphia, state representative Samuel Rose defeated incumbent James G. Clark.

In the city's 5th district in North Philadelphia, another incumbent, Eugene J. Sullivan, was defeated by Raymond Pace Alexander, a local attorney and African American civil rights leader. In the 6th district, covering Kensington and Frankford, plumbers' union official Michael J. Towey won over William J. Glowacz. In the 7th, James Hugh Joseph Tate defeated Joseph A. Ferko, a local Mummers string band leader. Insurance broker Charles M. Finley defeated incumbent councilman William A. Kelley in the 9th district, which covered Oak Lane, Olney, and Logan. In Northeast Philadelphia's 10th district, incumbent Clarence K. Crossan, who had held office since 1925, went down to defeat against real estate broker John F. Byrne, Sr.

In the at-large races, the all five Democrats were elected, including city party chairman James A. Finnegan, former registration commissioner Victor E. Moore, Charter Commission secretary Lewis M. Stevens, attorney (and future district attorney of Philadelphia) Victor H. Blanc, and magistrate Paul D'Ortona. The Republican slate ran more than 100,000 votes behind the Democrats, with incumbent councilman Louis Schwartz and state senator John W. Lord, Jr. narrowly edging out labor leader John B. Backhus, assistant district attorney Colbert C. McClain, and clergyman Irwin W. Underhill for the two minority party slots on the council. The Progressive Party, a left-wing party founded in 1948 around Henry A. Wallace's presidential bid, also ran two candidates who took less than one percent of the vote.

County commissioners

In the race for county commissioners, each party nominates two candidates and the top three are elected. The office was a county office, a holdover from the time before consolidation of the townships in Philadelphia County into one city. The remaining duties of a commissioner in Philadelphia were limited to the conduct of the city's elections. As in the other races, the Democrats triumphed, electing both Maurice S. Osser and Thomas P. McHenry. McHenry was an incumbent who had served as commissioner since 1945, while Osser was new to the office, having previously worked as a lawyer and as the leader of the 16th ward. The Republican spot on the county commission went to Walter I. Davidson, a sales executive.

Row offices and judges

The Democrats' success continued down the ballot. Meehan did not run for re-election, and the race for county sheriff pitted two incumbent city councilmen against each other for the job: Democrat William M. Lennox and Republican Cornelius S. Deegan, Jr. Lennox came out ahead, and would hold the job for the next twenty years. For clerk of courts, Joseph A. Scanlon was elected, and for recorder of deeds, Marshall L. Shepard. Most of the common pleas judges up for re-election were endorsed by both parties, but in the one contested race, Democrat John Morgan Davis defeated incumbent Republican Thomas Bluett. The Democrats also took eight of the fourteen magisterial district judge positions (a local court, the duties of which are now performed by the Philadelphia Municipal Court).

Referendum

A statewide referendum on the ballot that day continued the work begun by the new city charter in asking voters to consolidate the city and county governments in Philadelphia. In 1854, all of the municipalities in Philadelphia County had been consolidated into one city, but many county offices still existed, duplicating the efforts of city officials. The merger would also bring county offices under the civil service protections of the new city charter. Merging the city and county governments had been defeated in a 1937 referendum, but in 1951 the question was overwhelmingly approved. Two other ballot proposals authorized the city to borrow $17 million for municipal improvements and $14 million for the gas works; both passed by a five-to-one margin.

Aftermath

The 1951 election was the final blow to Philadelphia's once-dominant Republican machine. After winning some minor offices in 1953, the Republican organization declined again quickly. Since that time, the Democratic party has dominated the city's politics, with no other party electing a mayor or a majority of the city council in the intervening years. As the Republicans continued to decline, the main battle in city politics was within the Democratic Party, as reformers became marginalized by the Democratic organization. By 1965, with most reformers out of government, the ascendant political culture in the city returned to what the Philadelphia Bulletin called "the old, narrow partisan view, the aroma of inside deals, back-scratching, and City Hall favoritism...crass political bidding for favor at taxpayers' expense."