Party Twang

Democratic National Committee members had no sooner gathered in Washington for their first meeting since the 1958 elections than California's Stevensonite Paul Ziffren drew the battle lines. In view of the sweeping national character of the Democratic election victory, said he in effect, the party had better forget its Southern drawl in favor of a Yankee political twang. From that point on, the Democrats spent most of their time skirmishing over the issues of North v. South --with about the usual results.

The Southerners arrived in Washington determined to second the vote of the Louisiana Democratic State Central Committee and oust moderation-minded Louisiana National Committeeman Camille F. Gravel Jr., who, since 1954, has backed several civil rights measures. Gravel was supported by National Chairman Paul Butler, who insisted that only the National Committee itself can boot one of its members. Gravel won a resounding 91-to-15 vote of endorsement.

In the weeks before the National Committee meeting, some of the Southerners had had bigger game in mind than Camille Gravel: Chairman Butler, who for months had been daring them to get out of the party if they could not line up with national Democratic policy on civil rights. But in the elections' aftermath, with liberals more clearly in party control than at any time in the last decade, and with a smashing victory on the record, most realistic Southern committee members had given up any hope of deposing Butler. In the event, they got their faces rubbed in the ashes of resentment: by an 84-to-18 vote, the National Committee specifically commended Paul Butler for his "forthright utterances on civil rights."

All of which meant that the North was in complete control of the Democratic Party--except in the U.S. Congress, where senior Southerners predominate among committee chairmen, and only until 1960, when Democratic presidential candidates will start courting Southern delegates for convention votes.

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