¹ One of the authors of this article, Moynihan, served as an assistant to Governor Harriman throughout his administration. We wish to express our thanks to Professor Frank Munger of Syracuse University and to Mr. Judson James of the University of Illinois for their comments on an earlier draft.

² On changes in the Democratic party in New York with special reference to the rise of the “reformers,” see Wilson, James Q., The Amateur Democrat: Club Politics in Three Cities (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1962)Google Scholar. It should be noted that Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., might have had the nomination for lieutenant governor in 1954 but he refused because that would have made him Harriman's running mate, and therefore automatically the recipient of exactly the same vote as Harriman (under New York law, the voter votes for governor and lieutenant governor as a team). This would have made it impossible for him to prove what he thought was his own strength at the polls. As it turned out, of course, he became the only statewide Democratic candidate to lose, defeated for attorney-general by Jacob Javits.

³ On the functions of patronage, see Wilson, James Q., “The Economy of Patronage,” Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 69 (August, 1961), pp. 369–380CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sorauf, Frank J., “Patronage and Party,” Midwest Journal of Political Science, Vol. 3 (May, 1959), pp. 115–126CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and McCoy, David W., “Patronage in Suburbia,” Ph.D. thesis in Political Science, University of Chicago (1963)Google Scholar.

⁴ On changes in the electorate related to differences in political ethos, see Banfield, Edward C. and Wilson, James Q., City Politics (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1963)Google Scholar.

⁵ The choice of New York State for a case study can be justified on substantive grounds: it is an important state and the Democratic party there was undergoing rapid and fundamental changes. Needless to say, however, the choice was dictated by the fact that the authors happened to have access to almost all the relevant records—a comparatively rare circumstance in the study of party politics—and also to the prior and probably equally rare fact of the existence of such records. The patronage staff of the Harriman administration was characterized by a high level of education and intellectual energy. These qualities, combined with a measure of self-awareness that often accompanies them, led to the establishment in the first days of the administration of detailed and sophisticated records of the patronage process.

⁶ The issue of Communism—a matter essentially of fitness—was of special concern to the patronage officials of the Harriman administration. As liberal Democrats in the McCarthy era, allied with a resurgent Tammany, they could expect to be, and were, harassed by the opposition on both counts. A standard requirement for any important appointment in the administration was a “Confidential Long Form Personnel Investigation” by the Bureau of Criminal Investigation of the New York State Police which would produce a full personal history of the applicant, and would normally turn up any hidden blemish on a record. At this time the subversive file of the State Police contained 500,000 names, and information in startling detail turned up on an astonishing number of prospective appointees. Most of this was at best tangential, some was absurd. (It was noted of a suburban housewife, for example, that her father had consistently voted for the American Labor Party, and of a Harriman cabinet officer that “files list a ***** ***** as mentioned in the Curriculum of the New School of Social Research.”) The State Police however, made no effort to evaluate their data. It was simply turned over to the administration for the information of knowledgeable political executives. It does not appear that any serious involvement in subversive activities ever came to light, at least with regard to appointees of any status.

⁷ See New York Times, December 2 and 3, 1962.

⁸ This table, like all others in this article, has been computed from the records maintained by the patronage office under Governor Harriman. We wish to express our appreciation to Milton D. Stewart and Laura H. Davis for their invaluable help. The records are now part of the Harriman Papers Collection of the Syracuse University Library.

⁹ This is similar to the findings of Sorauf who interviewed highway workers in rural Pennsylvania after a change of administration. See Sorauf, Frank J., “State Patronage in a Rural County,” this Review, Vol. 50 (December, 1956), pp. 1046–1056Google Scholar.

¹⁰ It should be noted that the “political pressures” and requests for “special favors” with which the administration had to deal often came, not from politicians, but from career civil servants via politicians. Many a state prison warden in the frozen north became a Democrat on January 1, 1955, and promptly looked up “his” Democratic county chairman to ask a favor. Unaccustomed as many of the chairmen were to being looked up about anything, they generally tried their best to behave the way politicians are expected to behave and pass the request along as their own.

¹¹ On this compare Lockard, Duane, New England State Politics (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1959)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ch. xi.

¹² A vivid example of clear ethnic demands for recognition by Negroes came during the Rockefeller administration. An NAACP leader in New York charged that there were only twelve Negroes among the 671 policy-level officials in the state government. Further, “Negroes … spend twice as much [as whites] per capita in purchasing alcohol. Yet no Governor from the inception of the State Liquor Authority thirty years ago has found it politically expedient to name a Negro as a full commissioner of the board.” (Quoted in New York Herald Tribune, June, 26 1963.) Although 60 per cent of the boxers in Madison Square Garden are Negroes and Puerto Ricans, the governor “has never found it important enough to appoint a black man as a full commissioner.” (Quoted in New York Times, June 26, 1963.)

¹³ On the Irish in New York politics, see Moynihan, , “The Irish,” in Glazer, Nathan and Moynihan, Daniel P., Beyond the Melting Pot (Cambridge, M.I.T. Press, 1963)Google Scholar.

¹⁴ On the problem of assembling power, particularly in city governments, see Banfield and Wilson, op. cit.

¹⁵ Of Harriman's original seven principal staff aides, five were Protestant, two Jewish. None was Catholic and only one was a regular party man.

¹⁶ Of Harriman's original fourteen department heads, seven were Catholic, five Jewish, and only two Protestants, including one holdover from the previous Republican administration. Five of the Catholics, three of the Jews, and one of the Protestants—nine out of the fourteen total—were also party regulars.