Lehman Elected New York Governor by Record Vote; First Jew in Office

years old and a native of New York City where he was born on March 28, 1878, comes from a distinguished Jewish family. A brother, Judge Irving Lehman, has served on the bench of New York State courts since 1908. For fourteen years Judge Irving Lehman sat on the Supreme Court Bench, being elected for a four year term in 1923 by nomination of both parties and again by nomination of both parties, he was elected an Associate Judge of the New York Court of Appeals to serve until 1938.

Colonel Lehman came to his first political office in 1928 after achieving a wide reputation which reached across the Atlantic as philanthropist and a Jew to whom nothing affecting the welfare of the Jewish people was alien.

In the four years since he first assumed office, he has achieved through his public acts, a reputation for progress and humane leadership. The complex character of his duties which have frequently called upon him to act as Governor of the State have not caused Colonel Lehman to give up his affiliations with local, national and international endeavor.

In 1930, Colonel Lehman was awarded the Zeta Beta Tau medal as the Jew who has done most for Jewry and Judaism.

Colonel Lehman was one of the organizers of the Joint Distribution Committee which has spent close to $100,000,000 in relief and rehabilitation work in Europe and Palestine, and served as chairman of its reconstruction Committee.

He was also one of the leading spirits in the establishment of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, of whose Council he is a non-Zionist member. Among the offices he holds are that of vice-president of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee; and he is associated with the American Ort, the Jewish Colonization Association, the American Jewish Joint Foundation in Europe, the Palestine Loan Bank, the Russian Agrojoint Committee; the Russian Agricultural Fund and the Baron de Hirsch Fund.

Other organizations in which he plays a role are the National Labor Committee, the Cardiac Vocational Committee, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, the Association for the Advancement of Colored People; the Henry Street Settlement, the Hebrew Sheltering and Guardian Society; the Bureau of Jewish Social Research; the New York Foundation and Young Judaea.

One of the most important functions of his public activity since 1924 has been the role of mediator he has played in the garment industry. Colonel Lehman, who consents to act as mediator only if requested to do so by both parties to a dispute, has been successful in averting serious strikes in the labor industry. The last strike which he settled at the end of last summer would have affected 27,000 workers of the ladies garment industry in New York.

Mr. Lehman resigned his business affiliations when he came to public office, including that of his active partnership in the banking firm of Lehman Brothers, considered the third largest banking firm in the United States.

Since the age of twenty-one, when he founded the Boys Club at the Henry Street Settlement, Mr. Lehman has taken an active interest in welfare work. He finances a camp for poor boys and with Aaron Rabinowitz financed a $500,000 model housing project for 400 poor families on the East Side.

Mr. Lehman’s parents were Mayer and Babette Lehman. His father came to the United States as a penniless immigrant from Germany and settled in the South. There he became a friend of Jefferson Davis and served as a soldier in the Confederate Army during the Civil War.

After the war the family came to New York where Colonel Lehman was born. A tradition of the family for sixty years is that one of its members must sit on the board of Mount Sinai Hospital. Colonel Lehman was a member of the Board from 1915 to 1920, when Mrs. Lehman took the office.

Colonel Lehman is a graduate of Williams College from which he received his A. B. degree in 1899 and an honorary M. A. in 1921.

It was through his work at the Henry Street Settlement that Colonel Lehman first met Alfred E. Smith. In 1924, Governor Smith named him a member of his Mediation Commission. In 1926 Colonel Lehman served as manager for Mr. Smith’s fourth campaign as governor and during the latter’s presidential campaign was his financial director.

It was Mr. Smith who was responsible for the Colonel’s nomination as Lieutenant-Governor.

Colonel Lehman’s activity during the World War brought him into contact with Governor Roosevelt.

At the age of 39, when the war broke out, Colonel Lehman desired to enlist as a private in the army. When because of his age, he desisted, he sought a commission in the first officer’s training corps. When this was held up because of his age, he applied to the Navy Department and was assigned to duty under Franklin D. Roosevelt who was then Assistant Secretary of the Navy.

Simultaneously the Army sought his services and he was assigned to the Ordinance Department, first as Captain and later as Colonel in charge of the purchase, distribution and storage of all supplies for General Pershing’s army overseas and here, whose value was billions of dollars.

After the armistice Colonel Lehman was retained as special Assistant to the Secretary of War and the War Department Claims Board. He was awarded the Distinguished Service medal in July, 1919.