Stirrings of Spring

In most U.S. congressional districts, a man whose wife has accused him of adultery with a round dozen women would be carrying an impossible political handicap. But in California's 26th (southwest Los Angeles) this week, James Roosevelt, F.D.R.'s eldest son, stood up before the 26th's Democratic district convention to ask its endorsement as the party's candidate for Congress. A few delegates booed, but the majority heard Jimmy out, cheered him heartily. By a vote of 91-77 the convention endorsed Jimmy for the party nomination in the heavily Democratic 26th.

Other stirrings of political spring:

P:1n Maine, the whole state is talking about the Jones boy. Young (32), brash Robert L. Jones, once a big noise in the state Young Republican organization, announced that he will run against U.S. Senator Margaret Chase Smith in the Republican primary next June. Most political observers are less interested in Candidate Jones than in the man they believe is behind him: Joe McCarthy. The Wisconsin Senator has neither forgotten nor forgiven Senator Smith's 1950 "declaration of conscience" attacking McCarthy's methods. Last November, when McCarthy spoke in Bangor and Portland, Jones was at his side and in his speeches ("A Maine boy who is making a name for himself," said Joe). Last month, Michigan's Republican Senator Charles Potter fired McCarthy's Maine boy as his research assistant after Jones 1) issued an unauthorized statement backing McCarthy in the Army affair and 2) continued to set up his campaign against Mrs. Smith. Last week Jones insisted that he is not a McCarthy candidate at all. But he took pains to classify Mrs. Smith as a "left-winger" and Senator McCarthy as "a great patriot."

P:1n Alabama, U.S. Senator John Jackson Sparkman is facing a real fight for renomination, largely because he was the Democratic candidate for Vice President in 1952. His chief opponent, Birmingham's Democratic Representative Laurie Calvin Battle, is campaigning effectively on the charge that Sparkman has let geography be his guide on the civil-rights issue during and since the 1952 campaign. Said Battle: "He kicked it on one side of the Mason-Dixon Line and caught it on the other."

P:1n New Mexico, two good men bowed deeply to each other, then started down the track in what is expected to be a close race for the U.S. Senate. Said popular Governor Ed Mechem: "I guess I'm the only Republican simple-minded enough to run against my opponent." Said Democratic Senator Clinton Anderson: "Thank God I'm running against a clean, honest man."

P:1n California's Sixteenth District (west Los Angeles County), Republican Representative Donald Lester Jackson faces trouble. A member of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, Jackson last year said that Washington's Methodist Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam "has been to the Communist front what Man o' War was to thoroughbred horse racing [serving] God on Sunday and the Communist front for the balance of the week ..." Recalling that comment, the Rev. S. (for nothing) Mark Hogue, minister of the Westwood Hills Congregational Church, announced that he is going after the Democratic nomination for Jackson's seat. Said Candidate Hogue: "I am ... dedicated to the American tradition of freedom of religion. I feel very strongly that Mr. Jackson has endangered that freedom in his brutal attacks on Bishop Oxnam and the Methodist Church."

P:1n safely Democratic Oklahoma, wisecracking U.S. Senator Robert Kerr, a millionaire oilman who fancied himself as a contender for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1952, will have to fight to hold his Senate seat. His opponent in the Democratic primary: former Governor Roy Turner, millionaire oil & cattleman, who will have the quiet support of Kerr's Democratic colleague in the Senate, Mike Monroney.

P:1n New Jersey, former Representative Clifford Philip Case resigned as the $40,000-a-year president of the Ford Foundation's Fund for the Republic to file for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate. Case, who built a good record during his five terms in the House and was a key man in the Eisenhower preinauguration organization in 1952, stands a good chance of unseating ineffective Senator Robert Hendrickson in the G.O.P. primary.

P:1n Philadelphia, the split in the Democratic organizations all but ruined the Democrats' good chance to win the governorship of Pennsylvania. Because he could not get a solid endorsement from the squabbling party organization at home, Philadelphia's District Attorney Richardson Dilworth has declined to run for governor. That practically assures the election of Republican Lloyd H. Wood, a lawyer and turkey farmer now serving as lieutenant governor.

P:1n South Carolina, Governor James Francis Byrnes, 74, who has spent 44 years in public offices ranging from court reporter to U.S. Secretary of State, announced that he is withdrawing from politics. Byrnes, who cannot succeed himself as governor, asked Democrats in his home county (Spartanburg) not to elect him as a delegate to the state convention this month.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.