Winnetka's Ickes

Harold LeClair Ickes lived in Winnetka, a leafy lake-side suburb of Chicago, for 17 years before Franklin Roosevelt made a national character of him as Secretary of the Interior. If Professor Charles E. Merriam of the University of Chicago were less absentminded, he might have advised his friend Mr. Ickes months ago to change his residence to Chicago, in time for a court to certify him as eligible to run for Mayor of Chicago. In that event, a lot of work might have been saved the Draft-Ickes-for-Mayor Committee headed by Professor Merriam's colleague, Professor Paul Douglas (TIME, Dec. 12).

Said Mr. Ickes last week: "After consultation with many, including the President, I am convinced that I can do more to help continue the New Deal by staying in harness where I am than by going into this contest in Chicago." Two days later Honest Harold Ickes visited Chicago, expressed his regrets to his would-be drafters ("I know you wouldn't want to kill me"), broke ground with a silver drill for the Chicago PWA-financed subway, ran out to Winnetka to inaugurate a grade-crossing project.

Mr. Ickes, a onetime Bull Mooser, was to have run, of course, as a New Deal Democrat. His back-out left the field to Mayor Edward J. Kelly and ambitious State's Attorney Tom Courtney. Mayor Kelly visited Washington to see what his chances were for Jim Farley's support.

Onto the stage of Chicago's Medinah Temple, bag-jowled, loud-mouthed William Hale Thompson, thrice Mayor of Chicago and ready to try once more at 69, last week threw his ten-gallon campaign sombrero while friends yowled:

Happy times are here again!

Big Bill will be our Mayor again!

To oppose Mr. Thompson for the Republican nomination, respectable citizens drafted Dwight H. Green, former U. S. District Attorney who put Gangster "Scarface Al" Capone behind bars in 1932.

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