Machine v. Style

Early in the campaign, the Tennessee Democratic gubernatorial primary took on the look of a minor trial of strength between the forces of Lyndon Johnson and Bobby Kennedy. Former Governor Buford Ellington, 59, a friend of the President's who resigned in January as director of the Office of Emergency Planning, faced wealthy Nashville Lawyer John Jay Hooker Jr., 35, whose style is Kennedy with a drawl, a manner he acquired from Bobby and the late President. While Ellington stressed his experience, Hooker would intone, his right hand chopping the air: "I want every man, woman and child to pass the word that a new day has dawned for Tennessee."

Soon, the two candidates decided to cool their connections. Ellington found that the conservatives to whom he was appealing for support cared very little about Lyndon Johnson--or any other Democrat, for that matter. Hooker found himself under attack as an agent of "outside forces" trying to intervene in Tennessee politics. Instead of being a surrogate Johnson-Kennedy contest, the race turned into an out-and-out battle between Newcomer Hooker and the powerful Tennessee political machine controlled by Ellington and present Governor Frank Clement, who was running for the Senate in last week's primary. The organization, which has controlled the Statehouse for the last 14 years, proved stronger. Hooker failed in the urban areas he expected to carry, lost the Negro votes he had so stylishly courted. Ellington won 53% of the votes, and Frank Clement nosed out U.S. Senator Ross Bass for the Democratic senatorial nomination. There was no talk of a Kennedy defeat, nor any of a Johnson victory.

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