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James Michael Curley, battling, colorful politician of old, and Mayor John B. Hynes, City Hall career man, will contend for the Boston mayorship in November as a result of primary elimination elections yesterday.
Late tabulations had Hynes in first place with 98,194 votes; Curley, second with 70,754; and, trailing far behind, Joseph F. Timilty and Thomas J. O'Brien, with 14,188 and 1,337 votes respectively.
Under Boston's new plan A system, the primary is aimed to cut down the number of candidates in the regular November elections. Boston voters, numbering less than the predicted 200,000, voted for one candidate. The two in third and fourth places--Timilty and O'Brien--were eliminated from running in the November contest.
The Harvard Liberal Union was the only college group that took part in the day's campaigning. H.L.U. members worked on sound trucks and at the polls.
Timilty, Curley's campaign manager in the 1949 election and a former police commissioner under Curley, was put into the race, according to political observers, to split. Hynes' vote in certain sections of the city. O'Brien, a progressive party candidate, has run with marked unsuccess for political positions in the past.
Hynes upset Curley in the 1949 elections by a vote of 124,308 to 115,514. A former city clerk under Curley, Hynes cut deeply into Curley's once-powerful wards.
Curley campaigners were counting heavily on making an impressive showing in this preliminary test to bring about the former mayor's political comeback. Now 77 years old, Curley claims this is his last election batle.
Comparison of present and past elec-statistics seem to indicate that Curley has lost much of his drawing power. This time, his once-mighty machine did not pile up huge votes for him--even in his home districts. To veteran Boston political observers, this indicates that Hynes will have a very good chance of defeating Curley for the second time.
Elected mayor of Boston in 1912, 1921, 1929, and 1935, Curley lost the mayorship in 1917, 1937, 1941, and 1949. He has also served five terms in the United States House of Representatives and one term as Governor of Massachusetts. In 1947, while a member of Congress, he served a term of five months in the Federal Penitentiary at Danbury, Connecti-cut for mail fraud.
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