As I said in the beginning in regard to Walters career as a songplugger. The main part of song plugging is not the quality of the song, but how you handle the politics. Although I'm sure handling politics was part of his job as a land developer for the last quarter century, he was about to get into politics in a major way when his good friend Bill O'Dwyer resigned as Mayor of New York and another good friend Vincent Impellitteri wanted O'Dwyers job. Walter signed on to manage his campaign which made political history and like all politics made some enemies.

In the fall of 1949 Shirleys old pal Bill O'Dwyer won his second term as mayor of NYC in a real lanslide. Re elected with him were City Council President Vince Impellitteri and comptroller Lazarus Joseph (no relation that I know of) . Just eight months into his second term, President Truman asked O'Dwyer to become ambassador to Mexico. Bill took the job and that put Impelliteri in office as acting mayor and facing another election in the fall of 1950. However Impellitteri did not have the support of the Democratic Party and turned to his old pal Walter Shirley for help.