Out of Harness

Boss of Long Island's rock-ribbed Republican Nassau County (pop. 672,765), is J. Russel Sprague, old friend and crafty political lieutenant of New York's Governor Thomas E. Dewey. Last week Sprague, under fire for his ownership of $500.000 worth of stock (which cost him, in effect, $24,000) in the scandal-ridden Yonkers Raceway, resigned as New York's Republican national committeeman.

Sprague managed Dewey's unsuccessful bid for the presidential nomination in 1940. During the 18 years he has bossed Nassau County. Sprague has deftly built up big Republican pluralities in his mushrooming suburban duchy.

When investigations of New York's brisk harness-racing industry developed evidence of payroll extortion and management payoffs to labor bosses and gambling racketeers, Sprague's name often popped up. He had owned a big slice of the Nassau Trotting Association, which operated Roosevelt Raceway. In 1946 he sold the stock for a tidy profit. Later, he bought 4,000 shares of stock (then worth $20 a share) in Westchester County's Yonkers Raceway, paying for them on the installment plan, mostly out of their own dividends.

In his letter of resignation to State Chairman Dean Taylor, Lawyer Sprague said he would stay on as Nassau County boss, but explained, "It would be foolish and unrealistic of me to ignore the fact that there has been criticism of me ... In all these years, I have never had any part in the management or direction of any race track . . . Nevertheless. I am conscious that I do not have the power to lay this record before every voter throughout . . . the land so that uninformed criticism might have no adverse effect on the fortunes of the party and the nation."

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