Feud in the Palmettos

Florida's florid Senator Claude Pepper, a man with an eye for political talent, took a shine to young George Armistead Smathers as soon as he spotted him back in 1938. Smathers, a handsome, athletic law student, had been captain of the University of Florida basketball team and president of the student body. Pepper made him a sort of junior-grade campaign manager, later helped him get a job as an assistant U.S. attorney in Miami.

Smathers came through handsomely. He made a big name for himself in prosecuting a Florida white-slave case. During World War II he served as a Marine officer in .the Pacific. After the war, the Senator helped his protege run for Congress. Smathers got elected to the House, and pleased his mentor by voting in the New Dealing Pepper tradition.

Biting the Hand. But George Smathers in due time developed an overwhelming urge to set out on his own. He shifted his political sights to the right, rounded up support among businessmen, University of Florida graduates, Dixiecrats and Republicans (many of whom registered as Democrats to back him)and filed for U.S. Senator. His opponent: Claude Pepper.

It was a terrible hotfoot for the Senator. Thirty-six-year-old George Smathers was not only ambitious, but he was the first opponent really to threaten Pepper in the 14 years since he went to the Senate. Pepper hit the road even before Smathers took the stump. Last week, only six weeks away from the Democratic primary, the only election that counts in Democratic Florida, they were whaling away at each other in the hottest campaign the state had seen in years.

Hitting the Road. As he rolled through the Central Florida citrus belt last week, Congressman Smathers was doing everything possible to label Pepper a proCommunist, an apologist for Joe Stalin and a backer of that Yankee monstrosity, the FEPC. He ominously quoted Lenin as saying that the "best way to communize any country is to socialize its medical profession," and then implied that Pepper was a Leninist for supporting the Administration's national health-insurance bill. Smathers' supporters carried dislike of their opponent to the dining table, where the gag was to say "Please pass the black salt."

The 49-year-old Pepper (who said bitterly that Smathers had "stabbed me in the back") was campaigning just as hard. Smathers' sound truck played Dixie at every crossroads; so did Pepper's. The Senator cried that his opponent was a tool of the rich in general and of the Du Pont interests in particular. And to win favor with Florida's numerous old folks, Pepper backed the Townsend Plan, lock, stock & barrel.

Administration politicos, looking on from close at hand, at Key West, anxiously considered ways & means of helping Fair Dealer Pepper, who--though he is not beloved by them--has been useful. One helpful Administration gesture under consideration: to postpone a Senate vote on FEPC until after the Florida primary, so that Pepper, who has backed FEPC, will not have to cast so controversial a vote at so crucial a time. There was also talk of inviting Pepper down to Key West, to give him the benefit of shaking hands with the President before all of those newspaper cameras. Pepper badly needed small favors.

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