File:Edward Joseph Flynn (1891-1953) in the Daily News of New York City, New York on 24 January 1943.jpg

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L'Affaire Flynn. The Sunday News gets pretty widely around the United States and Canada as well as the New York metropolitan area. So we thought that we would use this space today to explain the case of Edward J. Flynn, primarily for the benefit of the non-New York trade. The New York trade conceivably has already had a bellyful of l'affaire Flynn. What makes the case of national importance is the fact that it is tied up in an intimate sort of way with Mr. Roosevelt's race for a fourth term as President. Mr. Roosevelt has hot denied to this writing that he is already in that race. Edward Joseph Flynn, born in New York City in 1892, attended Fordham University Law School, and acquired his first public office in 1918, when he was elected to the lower house of the New York Legislature. He served as Sheriff of Bronx County, 1921-25; was Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt's New York Secretary of State ;.and in 1933 became regional director of public works for New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. He always was and still is a nice, jovial politician personally; always got along with his political pals in his home borough of the Bronx; was For Roosevelt Before Chicago (1932) ; and in due time reaped a shining reward for all this party and Roosevelt regularity. This reward was the chairmanship of the National Democratic Committee, which came to Mr. Flynn in 1940, after James A. Farley had broken with the Big Boss. The Big Boss largely renominated himself for the third term, by shrewd work carried on for a couple of years before the 1940 convention. But the national chairman . cooperated heartily toward getting Politics and the Boss reelected, thereby putting the Paving Blocks Boss " his Political debt. A few months ago, it came out that some New York City workmen had paved a courtyard on Mr. Flynn's Lake Mahopac, N.Y., estate, with about 8,000 Belgian paving blocks belonging to the city. When the story broke, Mr. Flynn claimed he had paid for the paving job and the blocks, and a couple of grand juries in his own home Bronx cleared him of any wrongdoing. The smell had not quite died away when Mr. Roosevelt announced that he had nominated "dear Eddie" to be Minister to Australia, and also the President's personal representative to the whole Southwest Pacific, "with the rank of Ambassador." The loud noises which have been coming out of Washington of late have proceeded mainly from the Senate's investigation of Flynn's fitness. It may be that in sending him abroad the President is trying to save Mr. Flynn from the clutches of Thomas E. Dewey, new Governor of New York; or that Mr. Flynn desires social rehabilitation through a shiny The Fourth top-hat-and-tails ambassadorship. Term Fight But that's not the real question a issue in this case. The real questions at issue are tied up with the President's race for a fourth term nomination. To go to Australia, Flynn might have to resign as Democratic national committeeman from New York. In that event, James A. Farley, now a fierce political enemy of Mr. Roosevelt's, would dictate the choice of Mr. Flynn's successor as committeeman. This would put the President one step farther away from control of the New York delegation at the 1944 Democratic Presidential convention. If he can't go to that convention with the delegation from his own home state largely or entirely pledged to him, his chances of renomination will be injured though by no means killed off. The fight in the Senate, too, has bearing on the fourth term race. It is a question whether enough members of the Democratic, majority have the courage to vote with the Republicans to reject Flynn ; or whether enough Democratic Senators are still afraid of the Big Boss' prestige in their home states to give Flynn a majority O. K. If Flynn wins, not only will that give MacArthur a new sidekick in Australia, but it will show that the Big Boss can still scare a lot of Senators into line, and therefore retains much of his 1940 convention strength at this time. If Flynn loses, it means that a lot of Democratic politicians took last November 3's election returns to mean a nationwide rebuff to the President, on the home front at least. That is the way things go in politics. And that is how it comes about that a hitherto obscure Bronx politician is an important part of the jigsaw puzzle picture which, when put together, will show whether the New Dealers or the anti-New Dealers are to control the 1944 Democratic national convention.

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