Unhappy Republicans

New York, 1895

What Majority Leader O'Connor said in the open Senate the other day as to his indifference to reform mayors, committees of seventy, and the like, he is said to have repeated in more specific terms to the correspondent of a New York paper. That is, he said, in effect, that New York City bills, in order to get his vote, would have to suit O'Connor, and not Strong. This is generally considered as direct notice from Boss Platt that whatever from now on the anti-Platt mayors of New York, Brooklyn and Albany get, will be by his sufferance — and it is generally believed that they will get mighty little. A Republican official remarked that the reform mayors might not get all the legislation they want, but added, significantly, that he guessed they'd get all they need. It is commonly gossiped about the capitol that the New York police justices' bill, at all events, will be juggled with by the Platt people and eventually killed. Signs multiply that the Republican factional war will from now on have its seat of action in the legislature at Albany. Platt has a large majority of the Republican legislators under his standard, but his opponents have enough strength to put up a very pretty fight against him when once they get their sand up. It looks as if that time had come. Fight is in the air.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, March 22, 1895, p. 4.