WI: Mafia kills Thomas Dewey in 1935

In 1935, Thomas Dewey was appointed as a special prosecutor investigating the NY Mafia. In response, mobster Dutch Schultz wished to have Dewey killed, but the Commission (the united 'board of directors' of the US Mafia) refused to allow it and instead had Schultz killed. What if they had instead gone with his suggestion and had been successful? Do they deter investigation, or do the prosecutors come back with a vengeance? Who might replace Dewey as the head of the liberal Republicans down the road, and is that faction more or less successful than OTL?
 
The Mafia gets cracked down hard, IMO, at least for a time; for an equivalent, look at how Italy reacted when two leading opponents of the Mafia (Magistrate Giovanni Falcone and prosecutor Paolo Borsellino, who were close friends) were assassinated in Sicily in the early 1990s. In Italy, where the Mafia was a part of daily life, people were outraged...
 
As Unknown said above, there's a major crackdown on the mob way earlier. IOTL, they managed to fly under the radar of the FBI for quite a while. J. Edgar Hoover outright refuse to even recognize their existence, until the late 1950s and into the 60s when there was irrefutable evidence in the form of the Apalachin Meeting, and the Valachi Hearings. It wasn't even until the RICO Act was passed in 1970 that we really saw a concerted effort against them. But here, in the course of the investigation to follow, the organized structure of the mob will become more apparent much earlier. Rather than being a loosely bound confederation of hoodlums, people see that this is heavily structured from the top down.
 
I think the more realistic POD is not the Mob going along with Flegenheimer on this but his killing Dewey before they can kill Flegenheimer. I discussed this many years ago in soc.history.what-if:

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Supposedly one of the reasons Arthur Flegenheimer (better known as "Dutch Schultz") was killed was that he was attempting to have the young prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey murdered--something that the rest of the Mob thought was a very bad idea, likely only to result in public outcry and a severe crackdown on crime.

Anyway, suppose Schultz had succeeded (before himself getting hit, either for the Dewey job or for other reasons) in killing Dewey. In that case, (a) Who becomes the GOP candidate for governor of New York in 1938 (I assume whoever it is will be defeated by Governor Herbert Lehman as Dewey himself was that year) and 1942 (when Dewey succeeded)? (b) More important, who are the likely Republican presidential candidates for 1944 and 1948?

Of course, (a) and (b) are not unrelated. In addition to all the OTL rivals of Dewey for the nomination in 1944 and 1948, any Republican who succeeded in getting himself elected governor of New York in 1942 and 1946--and there is no reason to think that only Dewey would be capable of this, both of these having been good years for the GOP--would instantly be mentioned as a candidate for the GOP presidential nomination. Maybe Irving Ives (1896-1962) who in OTL was a state legislator from 1930 until he was elected to the US Senate in 1946. (Ives was re-elected in 1952; in 1954, upon Dewey's deciding not to run for a fourth term as governor, Ives became the GOP candidate for that office and lost narrowly to Averell Harriman...)

(Naturally, another consequence of Dewey's murder would be a tremendous demand for a crackdown on organized crime--though how long such a crackdown would last is another matter...)
 
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I think the more realistic POD is not the Mob going along with Flegenheimer on this but his killing Dewey before they can kill Flegenheimer. I discussed this many years ago in soc.history.what-if:

***

Supposedly one of the reasons Arthur Flegenheimer (better known as "Dutch Schultz") was killed was that he was attempting to have the young prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey murdered--something that the rest of the Mob thought was a very bad idea, likely only to result in public outcry and a severe crackdown on crime.

Anyway, suppose Schultz had succeeded (before himself getting hit, either for the Dewey job or for other reasons) in killing Dewey. In that case, (a) Who becomes the GOP candidate for governor of New York in 1938 (I assume whoever it is will be defeated by Governor Herbert Lehman as Dewey himself was that year) and 1942 (when Dewey succeeded)? (b) More important, who are the likely Republican presidential candidates for 1944 and 1948?

Of course, (a) and (b) are not unrelated. In addition to all the OTL rivals of Dewey for the nomination in 1944 and 1948, any Republican who succeeded in getting himself elected governor of New York in 1942 and 1946--and there is no reason to think that only Dewey would be capable of this, both of these having been good years for the GOP--would instantly be mentioned as a candidate for the GOP presidential nomination. Maybe Irving Ives (1896-1962) who in OTL was a state legislator from 1930 until he was elected to the US Senate in 1946. (Ives was re-elected in 1952; in 1954, upon Dewey's deciding not to run for a fourth term as governor, Ives became the GOP candidate for that office and lost narrowly to Averell Harriman...)

(Naturally, another consequence of Dewey's murder would be a tremendous demand for a crackdown on organized crime--though how long such a crackdown would last is another matter...)

In 1944 the nominee might be Willkie again, who'd probably lose to FDR - as would just about any other Republican.

In 1948 the nominee might be Stassen, who IMO would have a good chance against Truman.
 
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