Even Number

If a U. S. Senator had introduced a bill last year proposing that eight billion dollars be spent for three great transcontinental toll roads, and seven running north and south, chances are that condemnation from Congress, the White House and the press would have been violent and immediate. Yet when Ohio's Robert Johns Bulkley introduced just such a bill in the Senate last week, the reaction was one of tolerant understanding. Neither the President nor any member of Congress could blame Bob Bulkley, for two of his proposed roads would run through Ohio, and on August 9 Ohio Democrats will choose between Robert Bulkley and George White, who is remembered by Ohioans as a great road-building Governor, as their candidate for the U. S. Senate.

In Congress the Bulkley proposal was but one more symptom of the fact that 1938 is an even-numbered year. In odd-numbered years, like 1937, the undisputed political capital of the U. S. is the disfranchised district of Washington, D. C. But in even-numbered years, like 1938, primaries and elections turn the political tides back from the Potomac to be replenished by votes. Swirling and churning through thousands of U. S. county seats and many a State capital, by last week the active electoral waves had already begun to sway the political fortunes of 1938 and beyond.

Beside the Senate fight between Roadbuilder Bulkley and Roadbuilder White, Ohio was looking forward to one of the liveliest gubernatorial battles of the year. At the Jackson Day dinner in Columbus, Democratic National Committeeman Charles Sawyer jarred many a diner by delivering a harangue against the "corruption and graft rampant" during the two administrations of Democratic Governor Martin Luther Davey. Practical Committeeman Sawyer's unsurprising solution was to enter the gubernatorial primary himself. Tree-Surgeon Davey, who once enjoyed a reputation as a champion of Labor, prejudiced it when he helped break the strike in Little Steel last summer, has since lost it altogether by calling out the militia to halt labor demonstrations.

Indiana's Democracy has been busy cleaning house to prepare for inspection by its big boss, white-crested and handsome Philippine High Commissioner Paul Vories McNutt, now en route from Manila to confer with President Roosevelt on Far Eastern conditions and scheduled to stop off in Indianapolis February 19. Two things Boss McNutt expects his lieutenants, Governor M. Clifford Townsend and Senator Sherman Minton, to have well in hand when he arrives are: 1) the boom for Paul V. McNutt for President of the U. S. in 1940, and 2) the defeat of Senator Frederick Van Nuys for party nominee at the-State convention in June.

The McNutt Presidential boom started on schedule January 21 when the State Democratic Committee met at the late Senator Tom Taggart's rococo hotel at French Lick Springs, accepted the resignation of Son Tom Taggart Jr. as national committeeman, elected as his successor Indianapolis Lawyer Frank McHale, deep-voiced, burly onetime University of Michigan footballer, original McNutt-for-President man. Also proceeding on schedule was the campaign against Senator Van Nuys, long on the outs with the McNutt-Townsend-Minton "two percent club," the machine organization to which State employes kick back that share of their salary. Having forfeited the last hope of Administration support by fighting the President's court plan, honest Senator Van Nuys last week seemed doomed. He had not even begun his campaign for the primary race against the "two percent club's" candidate, Fort Wayne Lawyer Sam Jackson.

Half of Illinois lives in Chicago and half lives "downstate," and the unwillingness of the twain to meet has made Illinois politics as unpredictable to the experts of the Roosevelt regime as to most of their predecessors. In 1932 the Chicago Democratic machine of Mayor Edward J. Kelly and old Boss Patrick A. Nash reached out to help Downstater William. H. Dieterich of Beardstown beat Downstater Scott W. Lucas of Havana for the U. S. Senate. Since then downstate has acquired an efficient political boss in the person of bald, forceful Governor Henry Horner (ne Levy), a onetime Chicago probate judge who quarreled with the Kelly-Nash machine and has set up his own "reform" machine to fight it. So last month, when paunchy Bill Dieterich, who has been a loyal if uninspired Rooseveltian in the Senate, returned to repair his Illinois political fences, he needed at least one machine to help him.

Both machines had other plans. Figuring that so long as they had to fight downstate they had better have a more effective campaigner, Bosses Kelly and Nash gave Bill Dieterich his walking papers. Their candidate, they indicated, would be U. S. District Attorney Michael L. Igoe. Irishman Igoe, a Chicago political veteran, had a major stroke of luck when Federal G-men last month captured Peter Anders, confessed kidnapper and murderer of Chicago greeting-card Manufacturer Charles Ross, took him from California to Chicago to be prosecuted by Mike Igoe's office. Candidate Igoe had himself photographed with Kidnapper Anders, got into the newsreels with a talk on Crime Does Not Pay. In Springfield, Boss Horner thereupon announced he would have nothing to do with Candidate Dieterich or Candidate Igoe, threw his support to Scott Lucas, who is now a Congressman.

Tennessee, like Illinois, is torn by a quarrel between a municipal boss and a Governor who has betrayed him. Governor Gordon Browning put one crimp in Memphis' Edward H. Crump when he forced through a County Unit Voting Law breaking up the well-organized Crump voting districts. Tennessee wiseacres predicted that Governor Browning could be renominated in August if he could elect his candidate, Thomas Cummings, mayor of Nashville over City Attorney Jack Keefe. When Thomas Cummings won by a tidy 2,933 votes last fortnight, prediction was that the Governor's appointee and anti-Crump ally, Senator George L. Berry, could likewise be renominated for the Senate. Last week, however, Governor Browning walked out of a matinee showing of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in Nashville to learn that Tennessee's Supreme Court, unexpectedly turning the tables, had declared the County Unit Voting Law unconstitutional.

Best signal that Pennsylvania is due for a political dogfight is the emergence of old Bull Moose Republican Gifford Pinchot, who squeezed into the Governor's chair three times as the result of Republican factional squabbles. Last month Gifford Pinchot, 72 and as erect as ever, spent a day with photographers throwing a new campaign hat into the ring for the Republican gubernatorial primary May 17. This time, however, the dogfight which oldster Pinchot was counting on was not in the Republican camp but in that of Pennsylvania's Democracy over John L. Lewis' determination to make his fellow United Mine Worker, Lieut.- Governor Thomas Kennedy, the Democratic candidate for Governor. Although Laborman Lewis sees no reason why this cannot be done, Senator Joseph F. Guffey and Governor George Earle, the latter slated for a Senatorial nomination and earnestly on his way to the Presidency, see plenty. Last week, when Senator Guffey met Mr. Lewis at a conference in Philadelphia which Governor Earle refused to attend, many Democrats feared that the Kennedy nomination might provoke a party split. Hoping for that possibility as eagerly as Republican Pinchot was Republican Senator James J. ("Puddler Jim") Davis as his only chance to avoid almost certain defeat at the hands of Democrat Earle.

Kentucky's smiling, dashing Governor Albert B. ("Happy") Chandler is the Administration's friendly Villain No. 1. Having built up a potent Statewide machine partly with the help of Federal Relief funds, the Governor last month refused to attend a testimonial banquet in Louisville for loyal organization wheelhorse and Senate Majority Leader, Alben William Barkley, gave a luncheon same day at which he promoted his own candidacy for the Barkley seat. A defeat for Majority Leader Barkley would be a desperate embarrassment to the Administration and popular "Happy" Chandler may well prove capable of inflicting it. Administration leaders have reportedly been trying to get junior Senator M. Mills Logan to accept a Federal judgeship and give the Governor his seat, a compromise which tubby Senator Logan discourages and which neither Alben Barkley nor "Happy" Chandler, both ambitious for higher office in 1940, feels he can afford to approve. Said Governor Chandler fortnight ago: "If you want to run for office, the time to run is when you are in and have somebody on your side. Washington is full of people who have been told to be good and their time would come, but it doesn't come."

When California's Senator William Gibbs McAdoo and his law partner, moonfaced Colonel William Haynie Neblett, put their machine in power through their successful Garner-for-President primary in 1932, two of their most important lieutenants were Attorney Peirson Hall and wealthy Los Angeles Oilman John B. Elliott. As a reward, Peirson Hall was made U. S. Attorney in Los Angeles. Oilman Elliott refused a political job, but year ago he sprang to Attorney Hall's side when Hall split with the McAdoo machine, charging that "several persons" (presumably Partner Neblett) were trying to run his office. Result: This year Oilman Elliott and eccentric Los Angeles Publisher Manchester Boddy (rhymes with toady) are supporting Peirson Hall against William Gibbs McAdoo. With Dr. Francis E. Townsend's personal attorney, Sheridan Downey, also in the primary race and U. S. Comptroller of the Currency James Francis Thaddeus ("Jefty") O'Connor understood to be hovering on the outskirts with White House blessing, 74-year-old Senator Mc-Adoo prepared for a rough campaign by going fishing at Miami Beach (see cut), praying for a full field to split the growing anti-McAdoo vote.

When Florida elected dark, eloquent Claude Pepper last year to fill the unexpired term of the late Senator Duncan U. Fletcher, Administration leaders welcomed him as a sincere Southern Roosevelt man second only to Alabama's Hugo LaFayette Black. Despite a talent for cracker oratory unusual in a graduate of Harvard Law School, it seemed that Claude Pepper would probably have to scratch to keep from following Hugo Black out of the Senate, when popular, conservative Congressman James Mark Wilcox announced his intention to enter the Democratic primary race in May. Senator Pepper's first stroke of luck was the rival candidacy of jovial, back-slapping ex-Governor Dave Sholtz, past national commander of the Elks. His second was the appearance in Florida of vacationing James Roosevelt. After solemnly pointing out that Franklin Roosevelt has promised to intervene in no State elections this year, James Roosevelt grinned: "Of course the Administration would be glad to see its real supporters returned to office." When this news was conveyed to him at a White House press conference last week, Franklin Roosevelt grinned too.

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