Mrs. Black & the Neighbors

"If Shirley Black's middle name were Smith," said one of her foes in next week's California llth Congressional District primary, "she would not be running for Congress." But it isn't, and she is, and Shirley Temple Black is in the midst of an increasingly sulfurous campaign that is giving San Mateo County's half-million people a colorful spectrum of choice.

The district, represented for 15 years by the late J. Arthur Younger, a conservative Republican, is in a state of demographic flux. Though the sunny "peninsula," as San Mateo County is called, is populated largely by well-to-do, conservative-leaning commuters to San Francisco, nearby Stanford University exerts a liberalizing influence, and subdivisions have attracted a big influx of blue-collar workers.

In the past, the Democrats have given up the district without much fight; this time they outnumber registered Republicans 118,000 to 98,000, and while San Mateo backed Goldwater against L.B.J. and Ronald Reagan against Pat Brown, it also voted in the Republican primaries for moderate George Christopher v. Reagan and Rockefeller v. Goldwater. Mrs. Black faces nine primary opponents, plus write-ins. The serious candidates:

> Conservative Republicans William Draper III, 39, and San Mateo County Sheriff Earl Whitmore, 49. Handsome Bill Draper delights small groups with his friendly politicking, while the sheriff comes across like John Wayne.

>Republican Paul N. ("Pete") McCloskey, 40, crew-cut former Marine Korean War hero who talks like a liberal Democrat, is dovish on Viet Nam.

> Independent Democrat Edward Keating, 42, former publisher of muckraking Ramparts magazine, an avowed peace candidate who a year ago--under far less happy circumstances for Viet Nam dissidents--confounded the experts by grabbing 30,000 votes.

> Organization Democrats Roy Archibald, 47, a former San Mateo mayor, and Daniel Monaco, 45, a California state inheritance-tax appraiser, who may cancel each other out and cut into Keating's vote.

The Woman to Beat. Well financed, and protectively handled by the astute political PR firm of Whitaker & Baxter, Mrs. Black stands aloof from the men in her race, refusing to debate, shielding herself from interviews and making the rounds of teas and kaffeeklatsches reciting a script of prepared cliches. When someone cracks the simplistic pattern, her pleasant, natural naivete congeals into frigid, wary courtesy. Yet her aversion to pornography, big government, welfarism, crime, dope and Ho Chi Minh has thrust the gamut of national issues into the campaign along with such peninsular problems as high taxes, education and the noise from San Francisco's airport, which is in the midst of San Mateo County's most densely populated area. Shirley is the odds-on favorite to win at least a plurality and possibly the 50%-plus-one-vote tally needed for election without a runoff. Nonetheless, as her opponents slug it out, they remind voters that California has already elected former Actors Reagan and George Murphy to high office and talk hopefully of a "Hollywood backlash."

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