Affront

New York Democrats were eating high on the hog. At Manhattan's Hotel Commodore, 1,300 diners paid $100 a plate for a meal of crab meat in avocado pear figaro, consomme de volaille madrilene, paupiette of Boston sole Marguery, filet mignon saute with mushroom colbert, salad chiffonade Argenteuil, bombe vanilla sur socle with black cherries jubilee. Cocktails and two kinds of wine were thrown in.

Same night, same city, New York County Republicans dined more austerely at the Waldorf-Astoria. For $50 a plate, 1,200 diners got stuffed tomato, sirloin of beef, nuts and coffee, and a speech by Governor Thomas E. Dewey.

The Democratic dinner, ostensibly in honor of New York's Mayor O'Dwyer, brought more than $100,000 profit into the state committee's bank account. But it left some serious political gas pains. In an effort to by-pass the imponderables of intraparty protocol, the state committee had selected a dais long enough only to seat the guest of honor, three Cabinet members, four state party committeemen, and sundry divines. Seated on the indiscriminate floor were such party stalwarts as Jim Farley, ex-Senator James Mead, the party's 1946 candidate for governor, ex-Governor Herbert Lehman, 1946 candidate for senator.

Farley and Mead took their seats in silence. But Herbert Lehman, when he heard that he was down with the precinct captains, hustled over to Democratic State Chairman Paul Fitzpatrick and informed him curtly that he considered himself affronted. Then, with Mrs. Lehman on his arm, he swept out. Chortled the Daily News next day: "Is it possible that the Democratic Party is split by even more dissensions, feuds, and hatreds than appear on the surface?"

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