Big Red & the Grundykins

From U.S. Steel's sprawling Fairless plant in the East to Pittsburgh's glowing furnaces in the West, Pennsylvania is bursting with prosperity. In Election Year 1956, the voter can savor ground breast of ox at his political picnics. Yet. in the midst of such plenty, a once mighty Pennsylvania institution and a once unbeatable Pennsylvania leader have fallen upon breadcrust-hard times. The institution: Pennsylvania's regular Republican Party organization (still known as the Grundy machine after its longtime boss, stiff-necked Uncle Joe Grundy, now 93 and removed from politics). The leader: Republican Senator James Henderson

("Big Red") Duff, as willing to fight at 73 as when he was a brawling lad in the wildcat oilfields, but now trailing in his campaign for re-election against Philadelphia's ultraliberal, former Mayor Joseph Clark.

Jim Duff and the Grundy machine are not falling together. They are, by mutual choice made years ago, falling apart. It was progressive Republican Duff who first demonstrated the vulnerability of the Republican organization grown fat, arrogant and corrupt. With the help of the Grundy machine, Duff was elected governor in 1946--and was one of the state's ablest. A major reason for his success was his refusal to show fear or favor toward the machine that demanded both. The breakup was swift and spectacular: Duff's Senate election in 1950 was almost as bitter to the Old Guardsmen as Democrat Joe Clark's Philadelphia mayoralty win in 1951 or Democrat George Leader's gubernatorial victory in 1954.

"Ike Told Me." In the last four years the Republican organization has seen its statewide registration lead plunge from more than 1,000,000 to about 400,000. This year the machine may not be able to raise enough money to pay for poll watchers in Philadelphia. Such is the sorry state of the regular G.O.P. organization that it could not even produce 100 ushers for Vice President Richard Nixon's Philadelphia speech early this month. (The Citizens for Eisenhower finally rounded up the volunteer ushers, picked up the radio and television tab, turned the affair into a success.)

As a U.S. Senator, Jim Duff soon played into the hands of his old enemies. A free-swinging heavyweight (6 ft. 1 in., 182 Ibs.) and distinctly an executive type, he needed more room to punch than the Senate cloisters could give him. He stepped down from the Senate's back benches only to give early, effective preconvention support to Dwight Eisenhower in 1952. Although he has since been one of the Administration's most loyal supporters, he has also been one of the least influential. In his distaste for the Senate, bristle-haired Jim Duff neglected both friend and foe back home; e.g., last spring, when the Republican State Committee met in Philadelphia, Duff did not even show up to contest the old Grundy machine's control. Unhappy Jim was reluctant to stand for re-election this year, finally agreed only because "Ike told me he needed me."

"BubbleGum Candidate."Once the decision was made, the old warrior's battle gorge began to rise. "I'm getting," he says of Opponent Joe Clark, "so I hate that guy's guts." Chugging around in his Ford station wagon, Duff has covered some 6,000 miles in his campaign, plans another 10,000 before Nov. 6. ("Damn, I've never done anything like this before.") To Jim Duff, the biggest issue in the 1956 elections is peace. "For anyone to think that Stevenson could replace Eisenhower as the keeper of the peace," he tells his audiences, "is fantastic beyond the dreams of imagination."

He savagely attacks Joe Clark, describing him as a "bubblegum candidate" whose membership in Americans for Democratic Action means involvement "in a powerful leftwing and underground activity." When he is accused of unfair tactics, Big Red merely snorts: "You can't hit Joe Clark below the belt because he is all belly and no head." Midnightly, Jim Duff can still be found shaking hands in hotel lobbies or sweating away on the next day's speeches, which he insists on writing himself.

Duff's is a lonely fight, especially since he is getting little help from members of the regular organization. (One notable exception: State Chairman George Bloom, a Grundy follower, who is doing his best.) Only last week was Duff able to wangle enough money from the organization controlled state committee for his first 15-minute statewide television appearance. But just as important as his trouble with the machine is the fact that Jim Duff got off to a Labor Day campaign start against a popular, appealing Democrat who has been working hard and effectively since Lincoln's Birthday.

"Ranting & Roaring." Joe Clark, 55, is an all-out, unabashed liberal. "A liberal," he once wrote, "is one who believes in utilizing the full force of government for the advancement of social, political and economic justice at the municipal, state, national and international levels." With Richardson Dilworth. who succeeded him as mayor, and Jim Finnegan. now Adlai Stevenson's campaign manager. Clark led the revolt that turned Philadelphia from a Republican stronghold into a Democratic bastion.

As a politician, lean Ivy Leaguer (Harvard '23) Joe Clark is equally at home tossing off a bourbon and water with the boys in the back room, talking earnestly and persuasively to small groups of do-gooders, or delivering the sort of spread-eagle oratory that Clark himself sometimes calls "ranting and roaring." His most effective issue so far has been Jim Duff's Senate absenteeism. Pointing to an empty chair on the speaker's platform, Clark cries: "That's where the junior Senator from Pennsylvania is supposed to be sitting, but he is almost never there. Do we want our chair empty? I'd like to sit in that chair."

Presidential Rescue. If Joe Clark is to sit in Duff's chair, it will be despite a tongue" that sometimes lands him in trouble. In Pittsburgh, the home town of patronage-powerful Mayor David Lawrence, Clark went out of his way to denounce Pennsylvania's spoils system as run both by Republicans and by Governor George Leader's Democratic administration. But such is the unity of Pennsylvania's Democratic Party (a unity due in large measure to the enjoyment of the patronage that Joe Clark derides) that Democrat Lawrence found himself able to laugh the whole thing off. "It was silly of him to say that when he didn't have to," scoffed Lawrence, "but it doesn't matter."

To Pittsburgh last week, in a determined attempt to rescue Jim Duff, came Gettysburg Farmer Dwight Eisenhower, whose own popularity remains high in Pennsylvania. After Ike's blue-ribbon endorsement (the warmest of the campaign to date), things looked somewhat brighter for Jim Duff, who has never yet lost an election. Republican headquarters in Harrisburg and Pittsburgh reported a surge of financial contributions and volunteer workers. State Chairman Bloom heaved an audible sigh of relief about the improved state prospects. But some of the Grundy boys were still following after their oldtime leader (1904-21), Boies Penrose, who believed firmly in the precept that when it came "to deciding between losing an election and losing control of the party, lose the election." Unless organizations, volunteers and the powerful influence of Dwight Eisenhower are joined in putting Jim Duff across, Pennsylvania's Republican wreckage may not be worth controlling--not even by a Grundykin.

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