Red & Rip

Washingtonians of the 1940s may recall Florida's florid, horse-faced Democratic Senator Claude ("Red"') Pepper with some awe, if not affection. He bounced into the Senate in 1937, bounded from New Deal cause to New Deal cause, for a time became a glib apologist for Russia and a booster for left-winging Henry Wallace--and set an alltime record for getting himself photographed kissing his wife in public places. Defeated in 1950 by Democrat George Smathers,* Pepper repeatedly made comeback promises, and last week he was trying to keep them. His opponent: conservative Democratic Senator Spessard Holland.

Sweating in the summer heat, the candidates whooped through receptions, rallies, teachers' meetings, radio and TV stations, livestock markets, transit garages, factory shift changes, military bases, even (for Holland) a screwworm-eradication plant. According to Pepper, Democrat Holland, 66, was a "Rip van Winkle" who "is asleep most of the time and looks backward when he is awake." According to Holland, Pepper, 57, was a "radical, Communist sympathizer, socialist-trend thinker, Red, ultraliberal." On one big campaign issue, integration, there was no issue: Spessard Holland is an avowed segregationist; Claude Pepper noisily declaimed that he, too, opposes the Supreme Court integration decision.

At week's end Pepper and Holland were still racing breathlessly across Florida, trying to make their charges stick before the primary election day next week. Florida's politicians gauged it a close race, with Claude Pepper given a chance. It was enough to give Washington the shakes.

*Word-wise George Smathers was said to have won over back-country Floridians by malapropian innuendo. Gasped Smathers righteously: "Claude Pepper is known all over Washington as a shameless extravert! Not only that, but this man had to matriculate before he could go to college, and he has a sister who was once a Thespian in wicked New York. Worst of all, it is an established fact that Mr. Pepper, before his marriage, habitually practiced celibacy!"

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