Philadelphia Municipal Election, 1957

Philadelphia's municipal election of November 5, 1957, involved the election of the district attorney, city controller, and the remainder of a term for one city council seat, as well as several row offices and judgeships. Democrats were successful citywide, continuing a run of victories racked up after the passage of a new city charter in 1951 despite growing divisions between factions of the party. Victor H. Blanc, the incumbent district attorney, led the Democratic ticket to victory. They held the city council seat and took two citywide offices that Republicans had won in 1953. In the judges' elections, most were endorsed by both parties but in the one race that pitted a Democratic candidate against a Republican, the Democrats were successful in seating their candidate, former Congressman Earl Chudoff.

Background

After the Democrats' electoral victories in 1951 and 1955, they hoped to further solidify their hold on city offices by ousting the few Republicans left in power. At the same time, however, they were faced with growing divisions within their own party. Democrats had won in 1951 by combining with reform-minded Republicans and independents. By 1954, however, some Democrats led by Council President James Hugh Joseph Tate tried to weaken the civil service reforms of the new charter by allowing city employees to become involved in electioneering once more. They fell just short of the two-thirds vote in Council to put their amendments on the ballot, but in 1956, Tate's faction again proposed charter amendments aimed at weakening civil service protections and this time found the required vote to put it on to the ballot for popular approval. The referendum failed in a vote that April.

The rift widened by 1957 as U.S. Senator (and former Democratic mayor of Philadelphia) Joseph S. Clark, Jr. joined his successor, Richardson Dilworth, in refusing to back the Democratic ticket, citing mismanagement and political cronyism. Republicans, led by City Committee Chairman Wilbur H. Hamilton, used the occasion to woo reform-minded voters by claiming their ticket was free of machine control, and that they "owe nothing to the political bosses." Meanwhile, voter interest in the off-year election was low despite extensive radio and print advertising by both parties.

District Attorney

In an arrangement that predates the 1951 City Charter, Philadelphia elects a District Attorney independent of the mayor's office. Dilworth had been elected to the office in 1951 but resigned in 1955 to run for mayor. Victor H. Blanc, a city councilman and former assistant district attorney, was elected to fill the unexpired term. Blanc was a veteran of both World Wars who, during his time on the council, led an investigation into corruption in construction at Philadelphia International Airport. In 1957, he ran for a full four-year term, but his connection with machine politics led Clark and Dilworth to withhold their endorsement of him. The Republican nominee was Emil F. Goldhaber, a local lawyer who had worked in the state attorney general's office and in private practice. He was unopposed in the primary. The split in the Democratic leadership made the district attorney's race the liveliest of the campaign, according to ''The Philadelphia Inquirer'' writer Joseph H. Miller.

Blanc overcame the intra-party dissension to defeat Goldhaber, although his vote total was reduced to 56%, down from the 60% of the vote he received two years earlier. Blanc thanked the voters "who showed great faith" in him, and Goldhaber conceded by 10:30 p.m. on election night. Blanc would hold the position of district attorney until 1960, when he was appointed to the Court of Common Pleas. Goldhaber returned to private practice and was also later appointed to the bench, serving as a bankruptcy judge from 1966 to 1986.

City Controller

Under the 1951 City Charter, Philadelphia elects a City Controller to sit at the head of an independent auditing department. The Controller approves all payments made out of the city treasury and audits the executive departments. As an independently elected official, the Controller is not responsible to the mayor or the city council. The office was created as one of the good-government reforms intended to reduce the corruption that had previously plagued city government and led to the reform coalition of 1951.

Republican Foster A. Dunlap had won the office in 1953, making it one of the few his party controlled in the city. The party renominated him without opposition. Democrat Alexander Hemphill was the organization-backed candidate, and he defeated political outsider George Glick without difficulty. Hemphill, who had worked with reformers in the campaigns that ultimately defeated the Republican organization in 1951, was a lawyer with a long history of involvement in Democratic politics. Unlike in the district attorney's race, the Democrats were united on the choice for city controller and Clark and Dilworth both publicly endorsed Hemphill. The result was a solid victory for the Democrats as Hemphill was elected by a thirteen-point margin.

Other row offices

The Republicans had also maintained their hold on the patronage-rich office of Register of Wills in 1953, electing attorney and former football star Robert C. Duffy, by a slim margin over the Democratic nominee, former Congressman Francis R. Smith. Duffy did not run for re-election, and the Republican nomination was contested between factions of the Republican party organization, a "regular" faction, led by Hamilton, former Sheriff Austin Meehan, and Board of Revision of Taxes President William F. Meade; and an insurgent faction led by ward leaders dissatisfied with the hierarchy's control over nominations. The establishment faction carried the day, winning the nomination for their man, Joseph P. Gorham. Democrats were more united on their choice, selecting Deputy State Insurance Commissioner Bernard J. Kelley in an uncontested primary.

Kelley was victorious, reversing the Republicans' gains of four years earlier and winning by a fifteen-point margin. The story was similar in the special election for the clerk of the court of quarter sessions (a court whose jurisdiction is now exercised by the court of common pleas). In the race to replace Democrat Joseph A. Scanlon, who died earlier in the year, Democratic state representative Louis Amarando defeated Republican Herbert R. Cain, Jr., by a 58% to 42% margin. As Miller wrote the next day, the "victory also demonstrated the supremacy of the emocraticparty in Philadelphia from an organizational standpoint".

City Council special election

Voters in the 1st district also voted for city council in 1957 in a special election called after the death of Councilman Thomas I. Guerin the year before. Democratic ward leaders in the district, which covered most of South Philadelphia

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