Welty became involved in reform politics through the
League of Women Voters, where, as a new member at age 53, she was asked to serve on a panel discussing city management. Her persuasive advocacy led the League to appoint her chair of a committee educating voters about the council–manager system. As part of the unusual circumstances surrounding Weldy’s candidacy, Welty visited Weldy’s apartment shortly after Weldy entered the race in order to confirm that she was in fact a candidate and to invite her to speak at one of Welty’s public “Wake Up Yonkers” meetings, at which other council candidates were invited to appear. Weldy later stated that Welty had asked her to withdraw from the race, a characterization Welty disputed in a sworn
affidavit published in the
Herald Statesman. According to Welty’s affidavit, Weldy told her during the visit that she expected to be away in Virginia during the fall campaign, and a man present in the apartment stated that Weldy “had been coaxed into this” and would withdraw. During the campaign period, reporters described persistent difficulty in contacting Weldy, noting that repeated visits to her home were unsuccessful and that her photograph and biographical sketch were submitted anonymously to the newspaper’s night box. Later in October, affidavits filed with the Westchester County Board of Elections alleged that dozens of signatures on Weldy’s nominating petitions were duplicate or invalid. Counsel for the Manager League advised that Welty could seek a court order to have Weldy’s name removed from the ballot; election officials, however, stated that doing so would require reprinting all proportional-representation ballots at an estimated cost of
$500. Welty declined to pursue the challenge, explaining that she was unwilling to impose that expense on city taxpayers. though she received 159 first-round votes when the proportional-representation tally began on November 9, 1939. The final count concluded five days later, with Welty elected on the 21st count. In 1941, a Yonkers resident,
Joseph Borish, was reported to have served eight months in the county penitentiary following a perjury conviction related to forged signatures on Weldy’s nominating petitions, confirming the earlier findings of petition irregularities.
1939 election and reform majority In the 1939 election, Welty and one other “Manager League” reform candidate were elected to the five-member Common Council, joining two Democrats and one Republican. When the Republican caucused with the Democrats to choose the mayor, reformers lost the initial majority they had hoped to secure. Two years later, the reform group gained a three-member majority on the Common Council, electing its own choice as mayor and asserting a merit-based, professional approach to city administration in place of the patronage practices that had previously dominated. Throughout the 1940s, Welty and her allies continued to promote non-partisan, professional management and to defend the council–manager form of government. In 1945 she was in the minority when a three-to-two Common Council majority aligned with the political machine voted to remove City Manager Montgomery, prompting public protests from several hundred citizens in the council chamber. == Mayoral term ==