NEW YORK ELECTS MAYOR

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26265, 9 November 1950, Page 7

NEW YORK ELECTS MAYOR

Democrat Who Defied His Party (Rec. 10.30 p.m.) NEW YORK, Nov. 7. Italian-born Vincent Impelliterri, aged 50. an independent Democrat who defied his own party’s machine, won the election to-day, to become Mayor of New York. Mr Impellitteri has been acting Mayor since September 1, when Mr William O’Dwyer resigned.

A huge police graft scandal was just breaking into the news in September and Mr Impellitteri seized the public imagination by appointing the Federal District Attorney. Mr Thomas Murphy, as Police Commissioner. Mr Murphy was prosecutor of Alger Hiss in his trial for perjury. Mr Impellitteri ordered Mr Murphy to clean out corrupt police, and the vigour with which Mr Murphy complied made front pages in the New York newspapers for weeks. ‘ Mr Impellitteri sought the backing of Tammany Hall—the democratic Party headquarters in New York—in his election campaign, but was unsuccessful. He then announced that he would run as an independent Democrat without Tammany’s support. He set the tene of the campaign by claiming that Tammany had offered him a State Supreme Court judgeship if he would withdraw from the Mayoralty contest.

The Tammany leaders nominated Mr Justice Ferdinand Pccora. of the State Supreme Court, for the Mayoralty, and threw the weight of their machine into an effort to defeat Mr Impellitteri; but Mr Impellitteri captured public approval by his denunciations of party bosses and his promises to stamp out corruption in the city administration.' His campaign slogan was, “I can’t be bought, bossed or bribed.” Mr Impellitteri is the son of a cobbler. He served aboard a United States destroyer in the First World War and .later paid for his study of law by working as a hotel bellboy at night. He became an Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan in 1936. and was elected City Council President in 1946. NO‘BRITISH PROTEST TO PEIPING LONDON, November 6. A British Foreign Office spokesman to-day denied the report that Britain ha<i protested to the Chinese Communist Government against the detention of British nationals in Tibet. The spokesman had no official confirmation that the two Britons identified as Jeffrey Bull and Robert Ford had been captured by the Chinese.