Less Than a Bomb And More Than a Sparkler

Looking toward the big year of 1964, politicians of both parties tried to assess last week's off-year elections in terms of the explosive power of the civil rights issue. The results were inconclusive. The issue had no megaton power -- yet. But even though it cast its sparks in all directions, it plainly was much more than a Fourth of July plaything.

Problems in Philly. In Philadelphia, Democrats were fearful that Mayor James Tate, a party plodder who inherited the office last year when Crusading Liberal Richardson Dilworth resigned to run unsuccessfully for Governor, would be in trouble with whites for his acquiescence to demands from a notably militant grouping of Negro organizations. As it turned out, Tate won--but by the thinnest edge the Democrats had sweated in twelve years of power.

Ninety-four percent of Tate's 61,000-vote margin came from the city's 17 predominantly Negro wards. But among white voters Tate did poorly, barely managed to split even with Republican James T. McDermott, a political unknown. In heavily Italian South Philadelphia, scene of some of the city's worst racial clashes over Negro integration thrusts in housing and jobs, Democrat Tate lost two of the three wards that voted hugely for Dilworth in 1959 and John Kennedy in 1960.

Since Philadelphia gave Kennedy a 331,500-vote plurality in 1960, enough to swing the whole state for him, U.S. Representative William Green, boss of the city's well-oiled Democratic machine, professes not to be worried about next time. Another Democrat whistled a graver tune: "Pennsylvania is no sure thing for Kennedy. We've got troubles."

Border-State Breathtaker. In Kentucky, Democrat Edward T. Breathitt, 38, won the governorship by a breathless 13,000 votes out of 880,000 cast. A protege of outgoing Democratic Governor Bert Combs, Breathitt supported Combs's controversial, sweeping anti-discrimination executive order by promising to put civil rights before the state legislature. His Republican opponent, Louie B. Nunn, 39, called the order "dictatorial," vowed to rescind it. Breathitt's pluralities fell sharply in such forget-it-we're-Democrats places as western Kentucky's First Congressional District, the old Kentucky home of the late Democratic Vice President Alben W. Barkley. Louisville, where Negroes have full franchise, gave Breathitt a 4,000-vote margin over Nunn.

Who's the Supremest? In Mississippi, where only 6% of the state's Negroes have the vote, the issue was who would be the supremest white supremacist. Paul Burney Johnson Jr., Democratic Lieutenant Governor, had a head start as the outdoing disciple of segregationist Governor Ross Barnett. Once a man gets the Democratic nomination in Mississippi, he is usually as good as elected, but Johnson had to work hard to win the general election last week. He was opposed by Republican Rubel Phillips, who ran as a Goldwater-backing candidate and polled an amazing--for a Mississippi Republican--123,000 votes. The last Republican to run for Governor in the state, in 1947, got 4,102 votes.

Democrat Johnson lambasted Phillips as being no Republican at all (Republican Phillips was recently a Democrat), while Phillips accused Johnson of being, of all things, a Kennedy Democrat. It wasn't a very elevating dialogue, but Mississippi may become a healthier place if it does in time become a two-party state.

The Champion. In Boston, where some 30 of the city's 190 schools have 85% or more Negroes--and are therefore described by civil rights organizations as being de facto segregated--Mrs. Louise Day Hicks was re-elected chairman of the Boston School Committee, and emerged as the city's champion vote getter. Mrs. Hicks, a lawyer, had attracted a good deal of attention by insisting that in Boston "there is no de facto segregation." She piled up 20,000 more votes than able Mayor John Collins, 44, who won re-election by pointing to his record of massive urban renewal.

In several places around the U.S., Negroes themselves ran for office, with mixed success. In Lexington, Ky., Harry N. Sykes, a bowling alley operator and onetime basketball player for the Harlem Globetrotters, became the first Negro ever elected to the city commission. In Essex County (Newark), N.J., a militant Negro-Puerto Rican slate ran as third-party "New Frontier Democrats," failed to win any offices but trimmed votes enough from regular Democratic candidates to help several underdog Republicans get elected. (The Democrats had a bad day generally in New Jersey: the Republicans won control of both houses of the state legislature for the first time since 1957.)

All in all, it was the very inconclusiveness of the civil rights issue that left politicians warily watching it, like a fuse that might--say, next year--blow any or all of them to eternity.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.