The Assault on Gibraltar-The 1966 Campaign

• Author: Franklin L. Kury
• Pages: 11-18

11

Chapter 2: The Assault on

Gibraltar—The 1966 Campaign

When I announced my candidacy for the Pennsylvania House of

Representatives in early 1966, I knew what to do to win—defe at

the incumbent candidate of a classic patronage politica l organiza-

tion. In fact, the next year at the inau guration of the newly elected Republican

governor, Raymond Shafer, the Republican delegation from Northumber-

land County marched in the pa rade with a large banner—“Northumberland

County, Gibraltar of the Republican Party.”

Northumberland County was considered such a strong Republic bastion

because the part y held the courthouse row oces, the mayors of the two

cities in the county, both seats in the state house of representatives, and the

state senate seats.1

e house seat I sought had not elected a Democrat since the Roosevelt

landslide in 1936. My opponent, Republican Adam T. Bower, defeated the

Democrat in 1938 and had held the seat ever since. He was the senior Repub-

lican in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives a nd chair of its Appro-

priations C ommittee.

e organization was loca lly known as the “La rk Machine” because of

its success in winning elections. e leader of the organization was Henr y

Wilson Lark, a wealthy businessma n with holdings in coal mines and a wire

rope plant. L ark led his organization with the same tenacity a nd desire to

win as Vince Lombardi did with his Green Bay Packers. He spared no eort

to elect his organization’s candidates and to defeat every other candidate,

whether they be Republican chal lengers in a primary election or Democrats

in the fall elections.

Patronage—political jobs—provided the basis for the Lark organiz ation’s

success. Every employee of the courthouse row oces and employees of the

Pennsylvania Highway Department had obtained their position by lling

out a patronage form in which they agreed to register Republica n, get their

family to register Republican, and contribute 5 percent of their salary to the

County Committee. is wa s also true for anyone from the county employed

1. ere was one exception. Larry V. Snyder, a Democrat who lost a foot in the Battle of the Bulge in

World War II, had been elected Prothonotary (Clerk of Courts).