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Charles Sparks Thomas is a prosperous Los Angeles cloak-&-suit merchant. He has never run for office or made a political speech, and never wants to. Until a few months ago, his closest brush with politics was a matter of geography; he was born next door to Bess Truman's girlhood home in Independence, Mo., 48 years ago.

Now Charlie Thomas is the busiest Republican in heavily Democratic Los Angeles County. Yeasty young party members are flocking to his campaign--although he is not running for any office. GOPoliticians are cagily watching its progress and wondering if he will let them climb aboard his band wagon. The state's Republican brass is beginning to shine up to him. Bald Mr. Thomas is boldly wooing and winning Republicans to his side with such unprofessional talk as:

"Few organizations have been as awkward and unattractive as the Republican Party in recent years. ... Its leadership has been vague. Its salesmanship has been negative. ... A dreary record . . . under the heavy crust of big-name capitalists and old-line politicians."

Merchant Thomas' salesmanship is not negative. He has a businesslike plan for bringing youth back to California's tired GOParty, and the plan is catching on. His enthusiastic associates believe that he has found the secret for stirring Republicans into offensive action elsewhere.

No Place to Go. . . . Stocky Mr. Thomas, a 'Navy flyer in World War I, got the urge to do something personally about politics while he was serving for three World War II years as a special assistant to the Navy Secretary (his forte: aircraft procurement and contract negotiation). In Washington he was astonished by the small caliber of some of the political big guns he met.

It occurred to him that this was something of his own fault--"At home I hardly knew who my Congressman was." If he and his business friends were to get the kind of smart, vigorous representation they wanted, they would have to do something about it.

Back in his Los Angeles office (he is president of Foreman and Clark Inc., a retail clothing chain), he set himself to a new job: to organize Los Angeles County Republicans. Home was a good place to start. The low state of the party in Los Angeles gave it no place to go but up.

Merchant Thomas talked a couple of friends into lending their names and giving their money. Then, without so much as a telephone call to Republican headquarters, he set up his "Campaign Operations Group." He enticed to the Coast a former advertising man he had met in the Navy, 35-year-old Ross Barrett, gave him a $15,000 salary and three well-paid assistants, set them to work on a plan to sell Republicanism.

Barrett and his men got up typical admen's charts which graphically analyzed the bitter truth. In the last 14 years of Los Angeles County's tremendous (47%) growth, the Republicans had managed to win only 4% of the new voters. In the last two years the gain was a microscopic one-fifth of 1%. The county GOP had only four permanent employes--"not as many as it takes to run a good neighborhood grocery." Even the Communist Party had more permanent office space.

No Stuffed Shirts. The first job was to raise money to build a permanent organization and equip it with well-paid district directors and precinct organizers. A Thomas tenet: good money will attract good men to politics. Thomas, Barrett and their men stayed away from big-name contributors, concentrated on small businessmen. Another Thomas tenet: "Shun Stuffed Shirts, which voters usually associate with the party."

Finally, Thomas called in redhaired, 45-year-old John Barcome, chairman of the County Central Committee, who had been futilely fighting party poverty and disorganization. Barcome was astonished to find an entire program dropped into his willing hands. It included dreamworld finances, detailed analyses of GOP weak spots, plans for recruiting and paying cadres of workers.

Amateur Thomas and Professional Barcome agreed on the main target: the big group of voters in the $2,000 to $5,000 income bracket (about one-half of the county's families). Said Thomas: the majority of those families "are continuing from force of habit to think of themselves as Democrats because the Republican Party hasn't gone after their votes in a constructive, intelligent, organized way."

By last week GOP factions which had stayed aloof from the Central Committee were rallying around it. So were candidates. The merchandising had been so successful that the committee could count on spending $175,000 in the 1946 campaign alone; in pre-Thomas days, it operated on $15,000 a year. There were a dozen professional organizers at work. But no one expected a real payoff of the plan this year. The real target was 1948.

What will Thomas get out of it? He still says he wants no office--he just wants good men in office. His platform: "It will be all right with me if the Democrats copy our plan exactly. That will mean we'll have, good, solid political competition--and that will mean we'll get better men in Government."

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