In 1950, the Congress had one figure who stood out as a radical member of Congress in Vito Marcantonio. A former Republican who had been a protégé of progressive reformer Fiorello La Guardia, Marcantonio was a member of the American Labor Party and on domestic policy he was staunchly left-wing and on foreign policy he sided with what the CPUSA wanted. Although never a member of the party, he was regarded as a friend and fellow-traveler.

Despite his radicalism, Marcantonio was a considerable force in his day, and in 1942 he won the nominations of both the Republican and Democratic Parties as back then you could run for the nomination of multiple parties, a practice known as cross-filing. He had also sponsored bills in 1943 and 1945 to ban the poll tax for Federal elections and primaries and had helped many constituents with their individual problems as a member of Congress. Many constituents who were not radical were willing to overlook his radicalism given his constituent service. He also served as a measuring stick for radicalism that politicians used to campaign against other politicians, most notably used by Richard Nixon against Helen Gahagan Douglas in the 1950 Senate election. Marcantonio, by the way, didn’t mind the use of his record as a way to politically attack others. However, the New York State Legislature set up Marcantonio’s defeat with the passage of the Wilson-Pekula Act in 1947, barring people from running for nominations of parties of which they were not a member unless they had received permission from the party to do so. This law was without doubt directed at Marcantonio and it was commonly known as the “Anti-Marcantonio Law”. Thus, Marcantonio could no longer employ the strategy of cross-filing. The appeal of Marcantonio finally ran out in 1950, as the election year had a conservative bent and the Democrats, Republicans, and the Liberal Party agreed to back Tammany Hall aligned Democrat James George Donovan (1898-1987) to defeat Marcantonio. Marcantonio condemned Donovan as a “Sutton Place Dixiecrat”, blasted the “big money” behind him, and called Americans for Democratic Action, a left-wing but anti-communist organization, a “sinister group” (The New York Times). It was true that Donovan was to the right of your standard New York City Democrat, as his record would prove. Marcantonio could overcome a lot and had in the past, but he couldn’t overcome being the sole vote against the United States getting in the Korean War and the two major parties tag-teaming him. Donovan won the election by 15 points. In the aftermath of the election, Donovan said of Marcantonio, “He was full of 50-cent cures. He ran a tough political machine and a good show, but he didn’t give these people a thing” and went on to state, “I didn’t know him personally, but I detested what he stood for. He could not have held on without the full-time effort and money of the Communist Party apparatus” (McHarry).

Although a Democrat, Donovan was more independent from party-line than the standard New York City Democrat. He was, for instance, the only New York Democrat to support the Tidelands bill, which established the States as holding title over offshore oil deposits rather than the Federal government and he was the sole New York Democrat to support the creations of the Cox and Reece Committees to investigate tax-exempt institutions. He also was strongly in favor of anti-subversive legislation and opposed the Supreme Court curbing State power to combat subversion, and in 1956 proposed a bill clarifying that States have the power to prosecute treason and sedition after a Supreme Court ruling restricting them (The Record American). Donovan, however, voted for much of the standard Democratic line, including supporting public housing, price and rent control, and opposed the McCarran-Walter Immigration Act as did nearly all New York Democrats. In 1952, Donovan won reelection with 93% of the vote against American Labor Party candidate Vito Magli. He voted 68% of the time with the positions of the liberal Americans for Democratic Action and his DW-Nominate score was a -0.102, considerably short of the standard New York Democrat on liberalism.  However, by 1956, Marcantonio was dead and the Liberal Party as well as the Tammany Hall machine had tired of Donovan’s record. His purpose of having defeated a notorious radical and kept him out of office satisfied, Tammany Hall ensured his defeat for renomination. Instead, Donovan ran for reelection as a Republican, but he pulled only 42% of the vote against regular Democrat Alfred Santangelo. Donovan was subsequently made director of the Federal Housing Administration of New York and afterwards continued his work as an attorney in New York City until his retirement in 1965. Although not by party affiliation an independent, Donovan demonstrated an independence in his record and this in the long-term was not appreciated enough for him to win beyond three terms in Congress.

References

ADA Voting Records. Americans for Democratic Action.

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ADA Voting Records

Congress Back After A 10-day Easter Recess. (1956, April 9). The Record American (Mahanoy City, PA), p. 6.

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https://newspapers.com/image/940411788/

Donovan, James George. Voteview.

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https://voteview.com/person/2662/james-george-donovan

McHarry, C. (1950, November 9). Vito Gave People Nothing But a Good Show: Donovan. The New York Daily News, p. 993.

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https://www.newspapers.com/image/450738871/

Moscow, W. (June 21, 1950). Marcantonio to Run Again. The New York Times.

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