Commentator Straw Ballot Shows Overwhelming Victory For Democratic Candidates In Election (Vol. 4, Issue 3)
The see-sawing back and forth in yesterday's election showed that the New Yorkers were often in doubt as to the outcome of the political strife, but not so the Yeshiva men who never once had any qualms about the fact the Lehman would be re-elected.
When the Commentator, in line with modern journalistic trends, or fads, in election prognosis, lifted its straw ballots into the political air to ascertain how the Empire winds, gubernatorial and otherwise, were blowing, it discovered that the collegiate intelligentsia is as much moved by emotions in choosing its executives as is fickle Demos.
The exceedingly high vote [illegible] in favor of a politician who is backed by the party of the [illegible] individualist proves either that a great degree of the people of these United States choose their leaders not by a careful appraisal of political records but by a romantic picture they may have fashioned of a crusading avenger riding out against crime—or that America like most of our supposed. European democracies is becoming thoroughly frightened of progressive liberalism and is prepared to swing back to conservative rightism.
And, the almost unanimous poll that the Yeshiva men, even those of Republican bent, gave Lehman—Dewey did receive two votes and Thomas five—seems to indicate that logical motives alone do not direct the political actions even of the intellectually initiated.
To Yeshiva minds, Poletti, Wagner, and Mead were to duplicate Lehman’s plurality with a slight variance of an occasional vote while Bennett was to have a slight edge over O’Leary.
The closest race as far as Y.C. men were concerned was to be for comptroller where [illegible] and Langdon POst were [illegible] with Rothstein polling the greatest number of votes of any member of Landon’s party received from the Yeshiva, fifteen in all.
That Yeshivaites are definitely non-Republican is plainly shown by the scarcity of votes cast for the G.O.P. Only two Republican candidates received more than two votes, and one of them was of Jewish extraction.
Only in regard to affiliating themselves to the Democratic Party or the American Labor Party was there a significant difference of opinion. The majority aligned itself with the doctrine of Roosevelt, but a large minority insisted on the labor party.