page_title: 1955 Philadelphia municipal election
section_title: Mayor
hierarchical_section_title: 1955 Philadelphia municipal election / Mayor
caption_attribution_description: English: 1955 Philadelphia mayor election by ward
context_page_description: Philadelphia's municipal election of November 8, 1955, involved contests for mayor, district attorney, all seventeen city council seats, among other offices. Citywide, the Democrats took majorities of over 130,000 votes, continuing their success from the elections four years earlier. Richardson Dilworth, who had been elected district attorney in 1951, was elected mayor. Victor H. Blanc, a city councilman, was elected district attorney. The Democrats also kept fourteen of seventeen city council seats, losing one district seat while gaining another, and kept control of the other citywide offices. The election represented a further consolidation of control by the Democrats after their citywide victories of four years earlier.
context_section_description: In the mayor's race, incumbent Democrat Joseph S. Clark Jr., who had earlier declared he would serve only one term, did not run for reelection. He instead ran for election to the United States Senate in 1956 and was successful, serving in the Senate for twelve years. For the open seat, Democrat Richardson Dilworth ran against Republican Thacher Longstreth.
  After service in World War I and a law degree from Yale, Dilworth practiced law in Philadelphia. He and Clark were allies in the anti-corruption reform effort that had swept the city four years earlier. Dilworth had run for mayor unsuccessfully in 1947, with Clark as his campaign manager. In 1949, he was elected City Treasurer. He resigned that post to run for governor in 1950, but was defeated by Republican John S. Fine. Democratic party leaders had intended Dilworth to be their candidate for mayor again in 1951, but when Clark announced his candidacy, Dilworth agreed to run for district attorney instead. He won, taking just shy of 58% of the vote. In the primary election in May, Dilworth easily defeated his underfunded opponent, William A. Paschall, a local meat dealer.
  The Republicans nominated Thacher Longstreth, a 35-year-old advertising executive who had never run for office before. He emerged the victor of a four-way primary contest over George P. Williams (the Republican leadership's preferred candidate), city magistrate James J. Clothier, and Oscar H. Newman, a deputy constable. Longstreth's campaign got off to a rocky start when he broke with the city Republican organization over their failure to elect his preferred candidate, John M. Pomeroy, as chairman of the Republican City Committee. Although he did receive a campaign visit and endorsement from President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Longstreth had little other assistance from the Republican party machine and ran as an "Independent Republican". Republicans still held an edge in voter registration in 1955, but their share of the electorate continued to decline over previous years.
  The result was a landslide for Dilworth. In an election with higher than expected turnout, the Democrat took 59% of the vote, a slight increase over the party's tally from the mayoral contest of four years earlier. The Democrats carried 44 of the city's 52 wards. Longstreth conceded defeat early in the evening, and said that he hoped for "an administration that will be good for all people and the progress of our great city". The Philadelphia Inquirer described the result as "a ringing indorsement [sic] of the policies of Mayor Joseph S. Clark, Jr., whose Democratic administration was the key issue in the Fall ballot drive."
caption: Ward-level results in the mayor's race, with Dilworth in blue and Longstreth in red
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