Pennsylvania gubernatorial election, 1950

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Pennsylvania gubernatorial election, 1950
Flag of Pennsylvania.svg
  1946 November 7, 1950 (1950-11-07) 1954  

  Richardson Dilworth.jpg
Nominee John Fine Richardson Dilworth
Party Republican Democratic
Running mate Lloyd Wood Michael Musmanno
Popular vote1,796,1191,710,355
Percentage50.7%48.3%

Pennsylvania Gubernatorial Election Results by County, 1950.svg
County results

Governor before election

Jim Duff
Republican

Elected Governor

John S. Fine
Republican

The Pennsylvania gubernatorial election of 1950 was held on November 7. For the twenty-second time in twenty-five elections, the Republican candidate was victorious, but by a much smaller than usual marign. Superior Court Judge John S. Fine defeated Democrat Richardson Dilworth, the City Controller of Philadelphia.

Republican Party (United States) Major political party in the United States

The Republican Party, also referred to as the GOP, is one of the two major political parties in the United States; the other is its historic rival, the Democratic Party.

Superior Court of Pennsylvania

The Superior Court of Pennsylvania is one of two Pennsylvania intermediate appellate courts, the other being the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania. Appeal to the Superior Court is generally of right from final decisions of the Court of Common Pleas. Although different panels of three judges may sit to hear appeals, there is only one Superior Court. The court is based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and sits to hear cases in Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia.

John S. Fine American politician

John Sydney Fine was an American lawyer, judge, and politician. A Republican, he served as the 35th Governor of Pennsylvania from 1951 to 1955.

Contents

Major Party Candidates

Democratic

Richardson Dilworth American mayor

Richardson K. Dilworth was an American Democratic Party politician who served as the 117th Mayor of Philadelphia from 1956 to 1962. He twice ran as the Democratic nominee for Governor of Pennsylvania, in 1950 and in 1962.

Philadelphia Largest city in Pennsylvania, United States

Philadelphia, known colloquially as Philly, is the largest city in the U.S. state and Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the sixth-most populous U.S. city, with a 2018 census-estimated population of 1,584,138. Since 1854, the city has been coterminous with Philadelphia County, the most populous county in Pennsylvania and the urban core of the eighth-largest U.S. metropolitan statistical area, with over 6 million residents as of 2017. Philadelphia is also the economic and cultural anchor of the greater Delaware Valley, located along the lower Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers, within the Northeast megalopolis. The Delaware Valley's population of 7.2 million ranks it as the eighth-largest combined statistical area in the United States.

Michael Musmanno American judge

Michael Angelo Musmanno was an American jurist, politician, and naval officer. Coming from an immigrant family, he started to work as a coal loader at the age of 14. After serving in the United States Army in World War I, he obtained a law degree from Georgetown University. For nearly two decades from the early 1930s, he served as a judge in courts of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. Entering the United States Navy during World War II, he served in the military justice system. After the war in 1946 he served as military governor of an occupied district in Italy. Beginning in 1947, he served as a presiding judge for the Einsatzgruppen Trial in US military court at Nuremberg.

Republican

Luzerne County, Pennsylvania County in Pennsylvania ----

Luzerne County is a county in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 906 square miles (2,350 km2), of which 890 square miles (2,300 km2) is land and 16 square miles (41 km2) is water. It is Northeastern Pennsylvania's second-largest county by total area. As of the 2010 census, the population was 320,918, making it the most populous county in the northeastern part of the state. The county seat and largest city is Wilkes-Barre. Other populous communities include Hazleton, Kingston, Nanticoke, and Pittston. Luzerne County is included in the Scranton–Wilkes-Barre–Hazleton Metropolitan Statistical Area, which has a total population of 555,426.

Lloyd H. Wood was an American Republican politician from Pennsylvania who served as the 20th Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania from 1951 to 1955. He served in the Pennsylvania State Senate for the 12th district from 1947 to 1951 and in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives for the Montgomery County district from 1939 to 1946.

Montgomery County, Pennsylvania County in the United States

Montgomery County, locally also referred to as Montco, is the third-most populous county in the U.S. state of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the 71st most populous in the United States. As of 2017, the census-estimated population of the county was 826,075, representing a 3.3% increase from the 799,884 residents enumerated in the 2010 census. Montgomery County is located adjacent to and northwest of Philadelphia. The county seat is Norristown. Montgomery County is geographically diverse, ranging from farms and open land in the extreme north of the county to densely populated suburban neighborhoods in the southern and central portions of the county.

Campaign

Despite the popularity of outgoing governor (and 1950 U.S. Senate candidate) Jim Duff and the low approval ratings of President Harry Truman, Democrats came into the election with a cautiously optimistic outlook. In Dilworth, they had selected a charismatic candidate with a strong reputation as a reformer after serving as a key figure in the Democratic overthrow of Philadelphia's corrupt Republican political machine. Furthermore, although Republicans held registration advantages throughout the state, many voters were ambivalent toward their policies due to a 1949–50 recession that impacted crucial heavy industries. [1]

James H. Duff American politician

James Henderson "Jim" Duff was an American lawyer and politician. A member of the Republican Party, he served as United States Senator from Pennsylvania from 1951 to 1957. Previously he had served as the 34th Governor of Pennsylvania from 1947 to 1951.

Political machine

A political machine is a political group in which an authoritative boss or small group commands the support of a corps of supporters and businesses, who receive rewards for their efforts. The machine's power is based on the ability of the boss or group to get out the vote for their candidates on election day.

In contrast to the energetic Dilworth, the Republican nominee Fine was somewhat uncomfortable in the public eye, after having spent his career as a backroom power player and party boss. Fine had once been a close associate of progressive Governor Gifford Pinchot and had spent the previous twenty years as Northeastern Pennsylvania 's key political figure. Fine represented the consistency of the long-dominant state political machine and, although he was somewhat more conservative than the outgoing governor, was chosen as Duff's hand-picked successor to hold steady a Republican ship that was on cruise control. [2]

The election was marked by a variety of brutal personal attacks. First, Fine was forced to wage a contentious primary battle. Jay Cooke, a wealthy Philadelphia banker, mobilized the arch-conservative business wing of the party, while Charles Williams, a Lycoming County Common Pleas Judge, led a small but vocal group of anti-machine Republicans. Although Fine won by twenty points over Cooke, the party had difficulty healing their wounds in the general election. In the fall, Fine and Dilworth further toned up the rhetoric. The Philadelphia Democrat portrayed his opponent as a crony who oversaw a Tammany Hall-style patronage system and asserted that Fine's agenda would "roll back the Twentieth Century." Fine fired back by painting Dilworth as a candidate who would be soft on communism and allow subversives to penetrate state government; he even went so far as to compare state Democrats to a "psychiatric problem."

On Election Day, Fine carried the gubernatorial ticket by about two points, despite Governor Duff's large win in the Senate race. Although Fine ran well in heavily Republican Central Pennsylvania and limited Dilworth's advantage in the Democratic stronghold of metropolitan Pittsburgh, he lost by a slim margin his home base in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area. Furthermore, Dilworth gained 42% of the vote in Philadelphia's four suburban counties, despite only 17% of area residents holding Democratic voter registration.

Results

Pennsylvania gubernatorial election, 1950 [3] [4]
PartyCandidateRunning mateVotesPercentage
Republican John Fine Lloyd Wood 1,796,11950.7%
Democratic Richardson Dilworth Michael Musmanno 1,710,35548.3%
Prohibition Richard Blews12,282.3%
G.I.'s Against CommunismReggie Naugle7,715.2%
ProgressiveTom Fitzpatrick6,097.1%
SocialistRobert Wilson5,005.1%
IndependentGeorge Taylor1,645<.1%
Totals3,540,029100.00%

Notes

  1. The Pennsylvania Manual, p. 728.
  2. The Pennsylvania Manual, p. 727.

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References