A committee will be appointed tomorrow by the Fair Practices Campaign Committee, a non-partisan organization, to probe charges and counter charges about the injection of the Jewish issue in New York City’s hot, primary campaign for the Democratic nomination of a candidate for mayor.
State Controller Arthur Levitt, who is running in the Democratic primaries for his party’s mayoralty nomination against the incumbent Mayor Robert F. Wagner, has accused pro-Wagner forces of spreading word that a Levitt victory would amount to pitting “a Jew against a Jew.” Mr. Levitt is a Jew, as is the Republican mayoralty nominee, State Attorney General Louis J. Lefkowitz, while Mr. Wagner is a Catholic.
Mr. Wagner and former Senator Herbert H. Lehman, one of his principal backers, have denied the Levitt charges. Mr. Lehman called the injection of the Jewish issue into the campaign “scandalous” and “a malicious tactic.” Mayor Wagner said in a television interview that investigators for the American Jewish Congress and the Anti-Defamation League could not find anyone who had seen the leaflets mentioned by Mr. Levitt.
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