Wednesday, June 12, 1918
The Democratic National Committee wants Troy mayor Cornelius F. Burns to run for Congress this year against a vulnerable Republican incumbent, The Record reports. New York State Democratic chairman Edwin S. Harris confirms that National Democratic Congressional Committee chairman Scott Ferris met with Rensselaer County Democratic leader Joseph J. Murphy in New York City recently and urged him to encourage Burns to run in the Twenty-Eighth district. Burns was elected to his fourth twoyear term as mayor last November. Murphy has confirmed that the meeting took place but will not confirm that he refused to make the pitch to Burns. Currently represented by Rollin B. Sanford, the district includes part of Troy but is dominated by Albany County and leans Republican. Sanford may be in trouble, however, for a recent “unjustified attack on the Wilson administration and some features of the conduct of the war.” At the local level, voters in northern Albany County, across the river from Troy, have grown alienated from Sanford, whom they consider “primarily an Albany city man more anxious to serve the [ William] Barnes organization than the people.” Burns, who finishes his second term as president of the New York Conference of Mayors this week, is well known outside Rensselaer County for his advocacy for consumers and commuters. “Conditions in which he has been a considerable factor make him one of the best known men in the district,” Harris tells our reporter, “and it will require a popular and well supported candidate to overcome the normal Republican majority in Albany county.”
Burns has turned down invitations to run for Congress on two different occasions, our reporter recalls, but Harris says “Things are different now. Before the mayor had only local conditions to contend with.”
The main thing different now is that the U.S. is at war. “The federal authorities do not anticipate that any loyal Democrat will refuse to comply with their requests at such a critical time in the history of the nation and the party,” Harris says.
“Personally I think the mayor will see his way clear to coincide with the wishes of the congressional committee. He risks nothing in running, stands an excellent chance of being elected, and would be performing a service to which the Democratic party is entitled from any man whom it has honored as it has Troy’s executive.”
At least one local Democrat fails to share Harris’s optimism. An unidentified “prominent Democrat who invariably has access to the inner circles of the party” predicts that Burns “will not undertake a contest which gives such little hope of victory.”
-- Kevin Gilbert