WHO'S WHO IN THE GOP: WARREN

Before the Philadelphia convention next June, a major job of the nation's voters will be to absorb, weigh and compare the records in the Republican Who's Who of presidential candidates. Herewith, in the second of a series, TIME publishes the condensed biography and political record of California's Governor Earl Warren.

Vital Statistics. Age: 57 (born March 19, 1891 in a five-room frame house on Los Angeles' dingy Turner Street). Ancestry: his grandfather was Halvar Varran, a Norwegian carpenter, who came to the U.S. with his wife and two sons, settled in Iowa and anglicized his name; his father, Methias H. Warren,--born in Norway, moved from Iowa to California, became a master carbuilder for the Southern Pacific. His mother, Crystal Hernland, was the daughter of Swedish immigrants. Educated: Kern County (Calif.) high school, the University of California (1912), U. of C.'s School of Jurisprudence (1914). Married: in 1925, to Mrs. Nina Palmquist Meyers, a young Oakland widow with a son, James. Children: James, 28 (adopted); Virginia, 19; Earl Jr. ("Juju"), 18; Dorothy, 16; Nina Elizabeth ("Honey Bear"), 14; Robert, 13. Church: Protestant.

Personal Traits. A big (6 ft. 1 in., 215 Ibs.), smiling, pink-cheeked, blue-eyed Westerner, with thinning grey hair and an easy, friendly manner, he specializes in the homely, forthright phrase, a booming laugh, and a bone-crushing handshake; wears well-tailored blue, grey or brown suits, flashy ties, rimless glasses or glasses with colorless horn rims. He has a standing order that his office door remain open to all callers. He is a joiner: the American Legion, the Elks, the Masons (33rd degree and past Grand Master of California), the Native Sons of the Golden West.

Career. A lawyer by profession, he has been appointed to three public offices (deputy city attorney for Oakland, 1919-20; deputy district attorney of Alameda County, 1920-25; district attorney for unexpired term, 1925); elected to three (district attorney for Alameda County in 1926, re-elected in 1930 and 1934, state Attorney General, 1938; Governor in 1942, re-elected in 1946 on both Republican & Democratic tickets); never defeated in any election. He was Republican state chairman from 1934 to 1936, national committeeman from 1936 to 1938, keynoter of the National Republican Convention in Chicago in 1944 (when he put a damper on the vice-presidential boomlet started in his behalf).

Private Life. He lives in Sacramento's ornate Governor's Mansion, once the boyhood home of Journalist Lincoln Steffens, now converted from an ugly relic into a gleaming legacy of the gingerbread era. He has given up golf and handball. He reads extensively on contemporary problems, dips regularly into his Bible before going to bed and first thing in the morning. His hobby and main relaxation is his lively family. Between fishing trips with his sons, horseback riding with his daughters, near-monthly birthday parties for one Warren or another, he has time for few friends, fewer intimates.

Early Years. When he was three years old, his father went on strike, lost his job and moved to Bakersfield, where he became a chief inspector of shops in the Southern Pacific yards. Young Earl was brought up in a tough, frontier atmosphere, was riding his pet burro down the main street of Bakersfield on the day an outlaw shot & killed Deputy Sheriff William E. Tibbett, father of Baritone Lawrence Tibbett. He earned pocket money as a newsboy, later as a cub reporter for the Bakersfield Californian. In high school he spent summers as a call-boy waking up railroaders for the S.P., did odd jobs as a freight hustler and farm hand, learned to play the clarinet in the school band. He still carries a card in the musicians' union.

His father's dabbling in real estate turned out well enough to send him to college in return for a promise to become a lawyer. At the university in Berkeley he was a steady but not brilliant student (he flunked second year Greek), was too wild to pitch on the baseball team, became a gregarious member of a club named La Junta (later Sigma Phi). After law school and three years of private practice in Oakland, he jumped into World War I as an infantry private at Camp Lewis, Wash. He was sent to the Central Infantry Officers' Training Camp at Waco, Tex., was a first lieutenant when the armistice was signed. After the war he got a job as clerk on the state legislature's judiciary committee. In 1938 he paid a tragic return visit to his home town. His father, who had turned into a miserly hermit with a reputation for ruthless mortgage foreclosures, had been bludgeoned to death with a length of gaspipe. The murder is still unsolved.

Public Record, As a prosecutor, he swept up shoals of bootleggers, con men, grifters, oil stock swindlers, bunco artists; jailed the county sheriff for gambling graft; jailed the Alameda mayor, city manager, and councilmen for bribery and theft of public funds; became the recognized legislative spokesman for the state's 58 district attorneys. None of his convictions was ever reversed after appeal to higher courts. His most famous case: the 1936 dockside murder of the nonunion chief engineer of the freighter Point Lobos, for which three union officials and one fingerman were convicted. The trial was conducted amid cries of "frame-up" from labor, and followed by an admission that one juror had lent $24,000 to a deputy district attorney.

As attorney general, he organized the state's wartime civilian defense; backed exclusion of Japanese from the West Coast; staged a dramatic raid with a fleet of Fish & Game Commission boats on four offshore gambling ships, had them closed down after an all-night battle with fire hoses.

As governor of a state in which the political sands are always shifting, he has been a popular success by keeping to the middle of the road. Though a solid Republican, he has taken advantage of state electoral laws to run on both Democratic & Republican tickets, has appointed office holders of both parties. He has also 1) cut the state sales tax from 3% to 2 1/2 %; 2) raised old age pensions from $40 to $50 a month; 3) ticketed $450 million for postwar development; 4) raised gas taxes by 1 1/2-c- a gallon (over oilmen's protests) to finance new highway construction; 5) widened unemployment insurance coverage; 6) signed a bill outlawing jurisdictional strikes; 7) streamlined the state guard.

As a campaigner, he stumps tirelessly, touring the whole 1,000-mile length of the state with his driver, shaking hands and making small talk. Until he announced for the presidency last November, he stuck to California problems, kept mum on most national and international issues.

He is for: a balanced budget, debt retirement, lower taxes (in that order); Government stimulation of housing; rent control; prepaid health insurance at the state level; a permanent FEPC; the Taft-Hartley law (except for the anti-Communist and union press provisions); public power development; the U.N.; the Marshall Plan (conditioned on proof of mutual cooperation & self-help); equal attention to the problems of the Orient; Hawaiian statehood; universal military training.

Pro & Con. His critics say he is a confirmed fence-straddler who rides the donkey and the elephant at the same time, a phony liberal who proposes social reforms with one hand and fails to push them through with the other, a bullheaded, plodding mediocrity who never says or does anything out of the ordinary.

His admirers say he is solid, patient, dependable, an able, incorruptible administrator who has built up enormous public faith in his honesty and political integrity, a sound planner with a painstaking mind and tremendous capacity for work, a good organizer, born leader and proved vote-getter, who has earned the support of both major parties in state elections.

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