John Hynes and James Michael Curley are the top finishers in the preliminary election for mayor.

Hynes, with 108,144 votes (107,551-Beatty) and Curley, with 77,268 ((76,884-Beatty) finish ahead of former police commissioner Joseph Timilty (15,711) and Thomas O’Brien (1,536) in the first preliminary election for mayor under the new city charter. According to Curley biographer Jack Beatty, Curley subsequently announces he is suspending his campaign to save Boston from the “leftist” New Boston Committee, which had evolved from the Youth for Hynes organization founded by Harvard Law School graduate Jerome Rappaport.