Fall Planting

The days grew shorter, the wind carried a sharp tang and the dogwood burned a sultry red. To farmers, it was a time for harvest. To politicians, it was a time for fence-mending and planting. Across the land rose the busy cries of forehanded candidates, cultivating votes and storing up good will for crucial congressional and gubernatorial elections of 1950. Some new voices last week:

In California, Lieut. Governor Goodwin J. Knight, who had gotten a whiff of powder when Governor Earl Warren seemed headed for the vice-presidency, loudly proclaimed he would run for the governorship next year whether Warren wanted the job again or not. Truman Democrats were frantically scouring the woods for someone to keep Jimmy Roosevelt, an unregenerate Eisenhower-before-Philadelphia man, out of the race. And photogenic Representative Helen Gahagan Douglas, who deserted the stage & screen to become the Administration's darling in Congress, was trying to make up her mind whether to enter the primary against Democratic Senator Sheridan Downey or wait and run for Republican William F. Knowland's seat two years later.

Meanwhile, Republicans and Democrats, each harrassed by a split within their ranks, were warming up with a special November election to fill the Fifth Congressional District seat of Republican Richard J. Welch, who died of a heart attack three weeks ago. The favorite: hulking, popular Jack Shelley, president of the state A.F.L. If he won, promised Democratic Congressman Franck Havenner, the Democrats would "rub salt into G.O.P. wounds all over the country."

In Illinois, former Representative Everett Dirksen, who deserted the isolationist camp in 1941, worked himself back into the good graces of the Chicago Tribune's Colonel Bertie McCormick, announced he would run against Senate Majority Leader Scott Lucas next year.

In Washington, Republicans cooked up an unusual scheme to unseat the Democrat's Senator Warren Magnuson. The plan was to persuade Republican Harry P. Cain to resign his Senate seat, still good for two years, and campaign against Magnuson for a fresh six-year term. No Senator has ever done it before, but Cain was sorely tempted.

In the Capital, Singing Cowboy Glen Taylor of Idaho, his glossy black toupee slightly askew, paid a sheepish and belated visit to the White House. He thought it was about time to congratulate Harry Truman on his victory last November--and to remind the President that he would be running for re-election as a Democrat next year. "I am not a member of the Progressive Party any more," said Henry Wallace's contrite vice-presidential running mate. ". . . [but] I didn't want to look like I was jumping on somebody's bandwagon . . . He's a good sport--he didn't rub it in."

To make the nation's autumnal rites complete, there was a familiar rustle of political petticoats. Maine's Margaret Chase Smith, only woman in the Senate, served notice she would fight to install a woman as Republican candidate for President or Vice President in 1952. "The party that nominates a woman . . . will win the 1952 election," promised Republican Smith. "I'm definitely not in a fighting mood for myself," she added. But if so, she seemed to be about the only politician in the nation last week who wasn't.

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