Results tagged “Gazette and Daily” from York Town Square

The Gazette and Daily, a supporter of one of Harry S. Truman's opponents in the 1948 presidential election, played the story of the president's visit at the bottom of its front page. Background posts: Harry S. Truman's first York visit: 'A statesman is only a dead politician' and Crowd to Truman on second York visit: 'Give 'em h---, Harry' and Other presidential visits listed.

Harry S. Truman's June 1948 appearance was the first by a president in York since Franklin Delano Roosevelt's train passed through in 1934 and 1938.

Truman's train stopped at the West Market Street crossing, and he spoke from its platform to a crowd estimated at 5,000.

"Only about a third of you turned out to vote for this Congress," Truman, candidate for election to the chief executive's seat he had assumed upon Roosevelt's death, said.

"And you got exactly what you deserved." ...

The left-of-center Gazette and Daily was no fan of GOP Congressman Chester Gross, who was voted out of office in 1948. In fact, Gross had defeated the newspaper's owner, Democrat J.W. Gitt, for the congressional seat four years earlier. So, for Gitt, Gross's loss would have meant rough justice. Background posts: In York County and beyond, presidential races have produced rages through the ages, York cartoonist's work helps celebrate peace activism and Newspaper's founding date hard to pin down.

On Election Day, 2008, a large voter registration lead would make Republican incumbent Todd Platts the favorite over Dem Phil Avillo for the 19th district seat in the U.S. House. Indeed, early results show Platts is leading .

Sixty years ago, the race went the other way.

This view comes from the porch of the Gitt Mansion, although its owner, The Gazette and Daily's J.W. Gitt, spent much time in its library. Background posts: Old York newspaper won't die or fade away, Gitt and his Gazette sported same eccentricities and Two ornate mansions that Hanover Shoe built.

J.W. Gitt would ride the trolley to downtown York from his estate on a hillside outside Hanover.

He would oversee a left-leaning newspaper that would cause waves locally and across the oceans.

He would play some golf and then catch a trolley back to the tranquility of his Hershey Hill mansion.

There, he would spend evenings in his large library re-equipping himself to fire darts the next day against the Cold War.

A recent edition of Spaces magazine, published by the York Daily Record/Sunday News, explores his evening retreat:

A letter published in the York Daily Record this week criticized us for not supporting Geno's Steaks for posting a sign requiring English when ordering.

"The York Daily Record will never change," he wrote. "You are still the same commie newspaper as your predecessor, The Gazette and Daily."

It's been a while since I've heard the "commie" claim levied against us. (Maybe people think it, but seldom say it.)

That label stuck to J.W. Gitt's Gazette and Daily even though the FBI could not connect the Cold War publisher with the Communist Party. And his biographer says he resigned the Progressive Party because of Communist infiltration.

It was 10 years ago that I wrote about the lack of true evidence linking the leftist York County publisher and his newspaper with the Communist Party.

I'll repeat it here:

York County Congressman Jimmy Lind probably winced partway through a letter from a constituent in July 1950.

"I am sick and tired of the pussy-footing that has gone on in York with the hotbed of local Communists maintained, led, and sponsored by Josiah W. Gitt ... ." the letter said. ...