union in 1934, and almost all of its original leaders, including Mike Quill, were either Party members or close followers of Party policies. The TWU won the right to represent New York City's public transit workers after several years of clandestine organizing, a series of small strikes, a sitdown strike in the BMT's Kent Avenue powerhouse in 1937 and an overwhelming victory among IRT employees in an NLRB election several months later. Yet while the CP played a leading role in that organization, Party members, even those whose party membership had been open in the past, chose to downplay or conceal their membership. Hogan, a CP candidate for Congress in 1934, kept his party affiliation private, to the extent that was possible, after he became President of TWU Local 100, the local of New York City subway workers. The party discontinued its shop papers, which went by names such as "Red Dynamo" and "Red Express", in 1935, when TWU organizers claimed that the party's overt role in the union was interfering with their efforts and when Popular Front alliance-building replaced Third Period separatism. While the party remained influential — some said dominant — in the union until 1949, and the union closely followed party policies on issues such as civil rights, public ownership of the subways and fare increases, the party took no credit for its contributions and party members vigorously rejected claims of employers, intra-union opponents and investigators that the party was, in fact, a major influence in the union. CIO The CP similarly gained influence at first in the newly formed Congress of Industrial Organizations, or CIO, on the strength of individual members' work. Lee Pressman, the General Counsel for the CIO and later the United Steelworkers of America, was a member of the CP and the underground Ware group involved in espionage for the Soviet Union. The first publicity director for the CIO, Len De Caux, was likewise a member of the CP throughout his years with the CIO as were many more organizers and rank-and-file activists within the unions affiliated with the CIO. Individuals like Pressman and De Caux would not have considered working for the CIO if the CP had not shifted its position from sectarian purity to first a united front and later a popular front policy that favored alliances with other "progressive forces." At the same time the New Deal was turning to