Adlai Gets the Word

In Manhattan Adlai Stevenson sat at the desk in his Savoy-Plaza Hotel room and labored over a speech for Minnesota delivery later in the week. Through a connecting doorway, Stevenson could see staffers huddled around a television set (its audio turned low so as not to disturb him, watching Arthur Godfrey's morning program and awaiting the network break-in that would bring word of President Eisenhower's press conference). Until the news broke, Stevenson believed that Ike would not run again. Yet Stevenson was the candidate for the Democratic nomination most favorably affected by Eisenhower's yes.

With Eisenhower as the Republican entry, the Democratic nomination would certainly seem less appealing to the dark horse candidates who might have cut in on Stevenson's lead. Chuckled Stevenson's Campaign Manager Jim Finnegan: "Now they'll be sitting around hoping that lightning does not strike." This could only hurt New York's Governor Averell Harriman, who had based his "inactive" candidacy on the hope that he might be tapped after a convention deadlock resulting from a multiplicity of candidates. Harriman's age (64) makes 1956 a now-or-never proposition, and he probably will continue to use his big New York delegation as a power wedge, but in actual fact the New York Daily News managed to sum up Harriman's situation in a single head line: IKE YES HAS HARRIMAN IN A WHIRL OF INACTIVITY.

Tennessee's Senator Estes Kefauver remained as the major threat to Stevenson, and by week's end Adlai had reason to feel confident about Estes. Flying from New York to Minnesota, where he collides head-on with Kefauver in the March 20 presidential primary, Stevenson found the powerful Democrat-Farmer-Labor organization of Senator Hubert Humphrey and Governor Orville Freeman working smoothly on his behalf. Freeman platform-hopped about the state with Stevenson, Humphrey returned home from Washington for a weekend of campaigning, and Eleanor Roosevelt was scheduled to lend a hand this week. D.-F.-L. Chairman Ray Hemenway predicted that Stevenson would defeat Kefauver "by a three-to-one margin in most districts, and take every one of the state's delegates." Even so, Stevenson was taking nothing for granted. "I'm not sure whether it is the Lord's work I'm doing," he told an audience at St. Paul, "but I sure want to win this primary."

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