The Lone Campaigner

Ohio's Governor John W. Bricker, the candidate who actually says he wants to be President, plugged valiantly away. As the only candidate actually campaigning, Honest John took not a single day's rest. At the Governor's Conference (TIME, June 5) he talked on tax and fiscal policy. He said nothing sensational, but he got in some characteristic licks for budget balancing and streamlined taxation.

As most other Governors went home for a well-earned rest, John Bricker motored on to Brickerville, Pa., the tiny hamlet (pop. 223) founded in 1732 by Great-Great-Grandfather Peter Bricker. There, the thrifty, devout Amishmen cheered when he plumped for free enterprise.

Next day found him in Trenton, N.J., attacking the C.I.O.'s Political Action Committee; the next, in Baltimore. By week's end he was in Hartford. He held a lengthy press conference, spoke at a G.O.P. luncheon and dinner, met most of the members of Connecticut's unpledged delegation to the national convention. When the news came in that Indiana's G.O.P. convention had refused to instruct its delegates for Tom Dewey, John Bricker said: "They won't be stampeded. The convention must be a deliberative one."

Everywhere he went, Honest John kept plugging, trying to smoke out Messrs. Roosevelt & Dewey. He gave his own opinion freely on every topic. And. although he got no credit, he won a major point during the week. He has long been on record against an international police force. When the Roosevelt-Hull blueprint was unveiled it contained no such provision.

Could Honest John ever catch up with

Tom Dewey? It seemed unlikely, but he went on gaining strength from all the Stop-Deweyites, and perhaps from the many citizens who have always been allergic to Tom Dewey and are now relishing the rising smear-Dewey campaign in the New Deal press. (Columnist Walter Winchell reported that odds on Bricker had dropped from 20-to-1 to 3-to-1.) His campaign, John Bricker said, would go on right up to convention time.

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