Straws in the Wind

Like an autumn gale the political winds swept through the U.S., stirred the blood of politicos in both parties, carried a week's heavy crop of political straws. Among the straws:

P:Pausing in San Francisco after a one-day speaking trip and a huddle with northern California's Democratic leaders, Front Runner John Kennedy all but took himself out of next June's California primary, tempting though the 81 delegate votes were. "Every Democrat with whom I've discussed it in California in the last twelve months has been reluctant to have a serious interparty split," said Kennedy. And, he admitted sadly, he could find "no Democrat" in California who thought he should risk a primary fight against Governor Edmund G. ("Pat") Brown.

P:After a two-day swing through the Middle West, including a three-hour conference with Adlai Stevenson, Pat Brown headed back to California with the an nouncement that he would be "only" a favorite-son candidate. Two days of shoptalk with the Democratic elders had convinced him that he should not be a serious candidate for the presidency. P:From Washington, word leaked out that Favorite Son Brown might have his sights focused on a lesser prize. In a September conference with Lyndon Johnson, the peripatetic Brown said frankly that Johnson could never win the California primary, though he thought Missouri's Stuart Symington could. This was enough to start a cautious Symington-Brown boomlet, which Symington backers hope to push into a second stage next winter at a Symington testimonial dinner in Missouri--with Brown as the featured speaker and most favored veep. P:In Norman, Okla., oil-rich Oklahoma Senator Robert S. Kerr (himself a Democratic presidential hopeful in 1952) was quick to announce his support of Colleague Lyndon Johnson's candidacy. P: In Peoria, Ill., Lawyer Stephen Mitchell, Democratic National Committee chairman during Adlai Stevenson's 1952 campaign, announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for Governor of Illinois, even though he faces a head-on collision with the state's Democratic boss, Chicago's Mayor Richard Daley, or Daley's candidate for the nomination. P:In Philadelphia, Harold Stassen, who eleven years ago was a red-hot prospect for the Republican presidential nomination, got an unbrotherly, unloving cut in his campaign for mayor of Philadelphia, when the Bulletin and the Inquirer, both independent Republican newspapers, endorsed his opponent in next week's mayoralty election. Incumbent Mayor Richardson Dilworth, a Democrat.

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