mayor. Victor H. Blanc, a city councilman and former assistant district attorney, was elected to fill the unexpired term. Blanc was a veteran of both World Wars who, during his time on the council, led an investigation into corruption in construction at Philadelphia International Airport. In 1957, he ran for a full four-year term, but his connection with machine politics led Clark and Dilworth to withhold their endorsement of him. The Republican nominee was Emil F. Goldhaber, a local lawyer who had worked in the state attorney general's office and in private practice. He was unopposed in the primary. The split in the Democratic leadership made the district attorney's race the liveliest of the campaign, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer writer Joseph H. Miller. Blanc overcame the intra-party dissension to defeat Goldhaber, although his vote total was reduced to 56%, down from the 60% of the vote he received two years earlier. Blanc thanked the voters "who showed great faith" in him, and Goldhaber conceded by 10:30 p.m. on election night. Blanc would hold the position of district attorney until 1960, when he was appointed to the Court of Common Pleas. Goldhaber returned to private practice and was also later appointed to the bench, serving as a bankruptcy judge from 1966 to 1986. City Controller Under the 1951 City Charter, Philadelphia elects a City Controller to sit at the head of an independent auditing department. The Controller approves all payments made out of the city treasury and audits the executive departments. As an independently elected official, the Controller is not responsible to the mayor or the city council. The office was created as one of the good-government reforms intended to reduce the corruption that had previously plagued city government and led to the reform coalition of 1951. Republican Foster A. Dunlap had won the office in 1953, making it one of the few his party controlled in the city. The party renominated him without opposition. Democrat Alexander Hemphill was the organization-backed candidate, and he defeated political outsider George Glick without difficulty. Hemphill, who had worked with reformers in the campaigns that ultimately defeated the Republican organization in 1951, was a lawyer with a long history of involvement in Democratic politics. Unlike in the district attorney's race, the Democrats were united on the choice for city controller and Clark and Dilworth both publicly endorsed Hemphill. The result was a solid victory