Stern for O'Hara?

The smallest U. S. State is not anything like big enough for Walter Edmund O'Hara and Governor Robert Quinn. Both men are Democrats and Irish, but for a year or more these bitter factional opponents have battled each other--Governor Quinn through his allied Providence Bulletin and Journal, Mr. O'Hara through his own Providence Star-Tribune.

Last September the Governor's Racing Commission cited irregularities at Mr. O'Hara's Narragansett Park race track, ordered Mr. O'Hara removed from control. Mr. O'Hara countered with an amazing denunciation in the Star-Tribune of the Governor and all his works. The Governor swore out a criminal libel warrant against Mr. O'Hara, and later when Mr. O'Hara refused to surrender the management of the track, sent 300 militiamen to close Narragansett Park. In rapid succession Mr. O'Hara was indicted by a Federal grand jury for excessive political contributions, was warned by the Internal Revenue Bureau that he and his wife owed the Government $33,000 in income taxes.

With his chief source of income, the race track, padlocked, with big local advertisers now shunning the Star-Tribune as though it were a leper colony, Mr. O'Hara was now thoroughly pacified. He wrote a bitter valedictory in the last edition of the Star-Tribune before he put it in temporary receivership, charging that Governor Quinn and the Bulletin and Journal "joined in the conviction that an aggressive, progressive and exposing newspaper would be unhealthy for the prevailing system in Rhode Island." As final ignominy, Democratic Judge Jeremiah O'Connell stopped the Star-Tribune press, suppressed Mr. O'Hara's farewell.

Brash, racy Walter O'Hara sat quietly by in a Providence court last week while Judge O'Connell smoothed the way for cash sale of the Star-Tribune. Among prospective purchasers New York Post and Philadelphia Record Publisher J. David Stern had the inside track in this week's bidding because he and Son David III had already offered orally to satisfy a $122,000 mortgage, pay $20,000 preferred claims, give general creditors 20-c- on the dollar. Well Mr. Stern knew the property he sought, for he was general manager of its ancestor, the News, 25 years ago, but he withdrew his oral offer last week after discovering the Sterns might have on their hands a batch of the libel suits pending against the paper, the result of Mr. O'Hara's bitter political feud. The court will protect this week's successful bidder from past libel claims.

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