He saw himself as a "vice crusader" publishing fearless exposés about corruption and gangster rule in the city, while others derided him as a blackmailer who threatened to write defamatory articles about people if they didn’t pay him off.
His reason: he was a “newspaperman.” From then on, Kasherman fancied himself a crusader against the criminal activities controlled by Twin Cities' Jewish-American organized crime with the collusion of corrupt policemen and politicians.
Kasherman quickly resumed publishing the Public Press, and set his sights on Mayor Marvin L. Kline, a Republican, whom he accused of allowing gangsters to run rampant.
The December 1944 issue of the “Public Press” featured the headline “Kline Administration Most Corrupt Regime in the History of the City.” A month later, on the night of Jan. 22, 1945, Kasherman was ambushed after eating dinner with a friend and shot dead on a sidewalk at 15th and Chicago avenues in Minneapolis.
Still, the killing was a timely boost to the would-be mayor Hubert Humphrey, who capitalized on Kasherman’s death with the help of campaign staffers with inside knowledge of the investigation and the ability to plant newspaper stories about it that damaged Kline.