Combine that with Göttingen being the capital of the maths world at the time [2], and I wouldn't be surprised if that dispute had some (now mostly forgotten) influences on funny maths squiggles in general.
Tangentially, the original question feels somewhat asked in bad faith imo, calling many names "bad" with unearned authority, and implicitly seeking popular votes to support their position. Also sentences like:
> BTW Abramowitz & Stegun uses P. Wow. See p 629.
It's great if you're passionate about maths, but clutching pearls over the use of "P" instead of "℘" is a bit much (reminds me of the "π vs τ" debate and how upset that seems to make some mathematicians. Meanwhile Euler, who came up with using "π" as a circle constant, wasn't consistent about what value he gave it at all[3] - he'd just pick whatever circumference-to-radius ratio worked best for his proof at hand).
It's pretty clear that "℘" essentially originated as a Fraktur-based glyph that most Germans of the time would intuitively read as the equivalent of "P" in Antiqua. The letter "P" is pronounced "Pe" in German. No mathematician would have been confused by Abramowitz & Stegun's notation, just like writing "R" instead of "ℝ" won't confuse anyone either.
Also Milton Abramowitz was a Jewish man. He might have felt a certain way about using letters associated with German nationalism, but that's just me speculating.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%BCtterlin
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiqua%E2%80%93Fraktur_disput...
[2] https://theconversation.com/how-one-german-city-developed-an...