The New Breed

There have been admirals in the Kentucky navy with more power and prestige than many Republican state chairmen in the South since the Civil War. As leaders of a small and suspect minority, many G.O.P. chairmen shrugged off any chance of winning state elections, dozed on dusty courthouse steps, and dreamed of the election of the next Republican President and the patronage that would flow down from Washington.

But things are changing in the old Confederate states. Dwight Eisenhower's popularity overcame the desuetude of G.O.P. state organizations; he carried four Southern states in 1952 and five in 1956. Richard Nixon won three in 1960 and polled 4,700,000 votes in the South -- only 400,000 less than John Kennedy. As the surprising G.O.P. sentiment bubbled up, virtually without local leadership, the party began attracting a new breed of politician-- furrow-browed, button-down, college-trained young amateurs who, one by one, took over control of the state parties from apathetic and aging professionals. The new wave is now in command of Alabama, Mississippi, and South and North Carolina. The four rebel state chairmen:

Mississippi's Wirt Yerger Jr., 32, who works in his father's Jackson insurance agency, is chairman in a state where homeborn Republicans were lately regarded as freaks. Yerger's chief rival for Mississippi Republican supremacy was the late Perry Howard, a Negro, who was national committeeman for 36 years, lived most of that time in Washington, and racked up a record of almost absolute in effectiveness. Yerger has organized local leaders in nearly half of the state's 82 counties, has small sympathy for those party members who are along just for the ride. Says he: "I don't care who it is, bank president or anybody, if he's just going to give us conversation, we don't want him. We want people who are going to get out and fight." Several hundred of Mississippi's fighting Republicans have agreed to let the party draw drafts on their personal checking accounts for $5 to $100 a month.

South Carolina's Robert F. Chapman, 36, a towheaded Spartanburg lawyer, is setting up campaign schools and importing officials from the national headquarters to lecture. Says he: "We're getting away from the post-office and patronage crowd. There were a lot of Republicans in the South who didn't want the party to grow because it might outgrow them." Under Chapman, South Carolina Republicans are running their first major candidate for the Senate since Reconstruction: William D. Workman Jr., 47, a widely known, highly respected syndicated columnist and pro-segregationist author (Case for the South), who is seeking Democrat Olin Johnston's seat.

North Carolina's William E. Cobb, 39, a slender, crew-cut lumber broker in Morganton, has been zealously building up his party since taking over the G.O.P. leadership in 1958. In 1960 Republican Robert L. Gavin managed to poll 46% of the vote for Governor. Cheered on by Cobb, nearly 1,000 delegates showed up at the annual state convention in March--nearly twice the expected number. Declared Cobb: "We are the nucleus of a political bombshell that can go off at any time."

Alabama's John Grenier, 31, is a vigorous Birmingham lawyer who won the chairmanship from the Old Guard last month. In 1960 Grenier spearheaded the Nixon effort in Birmingham, takes pleasure in the fact that the Republican Presidential candidate got 60% of the vote. Since taking over the state chairmanship, Grenier has opened a full-time headquarters, complete with staff, Addressograph machines, multilith offset printing presses, and a $150,000 budget. Says Grenier: "The young people were sick and tired of the one-party system in the South. It was just ridiculous, and the old people wouldn't change it. We can win. We've got a product and a sales force, just like a business. The product is conservatism in the South."

The efforts of the new breed have already paid off in small ways. In the last two years, Republicans have elected a mayor in Mobile, put the first two party members in the South Carolina legislature since Reconstruction, and sent Texas' John Tower to the U.S. Senate. Southern Republicans talk of doubling their number of Congressmen from seven to 14 this November, a hope that may prove forlorn. Clearly, the new breed has a long way to go. But at least and at last it has made a beginning.

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