The Fresh-Faced Elder

He will be 70 next month, has no previous political experience, raised far less money than his main rivals, could not afford television commercials, has a rambling speaking style, and sometimes seems so becalmed that he is said to wink by opening one eye. Because such conventional debits count for little in this eccentric campaign year, S.I. (for Samuel Ichiye) Hayakawa last week won the Republican Senate nomination in California.

It was no squeak-through victory against a patsy, either. Running against three serious opponents, Hayakawa achieved a comfortable eleven-point plurality over Robert Finch, 50, his principal adversary. Finch, once a close friend of Richard Nixon's, was California's top vote getter ten years ago when he won the lieutenant governorship. Later he served as Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare in the Nixon Administration.

There was little difference between the candidates' campaign pitches--both followed mildly conservative lines--and the rivals agreed in explaining the results. "I wasn't really surprised," Hayakawa said as the votes were counted. "Disillusionment with politics helped me. I have no lOUs to the political buddy system."

Hayakawa does candidly acknowledge his debt to the student riots of the late '60s. A semanticist with an excellent reputation among academics, Hayakawa was approaching retirement age in 1968 when he was made acting president of San Francisco State College. The school had been sundered by violent demonstrations. Short, normally mild of mien and sporting a tam-o'-shanter, Hayakawa became an instant celebrity when he summoned riot police to the campus and suppressed the radical uprising. At one point the scholar personally ripped the wires from the protesters' public address system in mid-diatribe. Today he says: "I had to become an effective college president in five minutes. I'm still living off the television time I got in 1968, 1969 and 1970."

In quelling the troublemakers and reopening the school, Hayakawa became something of a hero to conservatives and was appointed San Francisco State's regular president. His entry into Republican politics was hindered by one detail: he was an enrolled Democrat, a flaw that he did not remedy until three years ago.

Japanese Analogy. Republican voters this year seemed unconcerned by his late coming to their party. If Hayakawa's campaign rhetoric was less than sensational, Finch's was downright dull. Hayakawa answered questions about his age with an allusion to his ancestral homeland: "Before World War II in Japan they killed off all the older politicians. All that were left were the damn fools who attacked Pearl Harbor. I think that this country needs elder statesmen too." If that rather strained analogy does not help, the age issue is reduced by the fact that he still tap-dances and fences.

While the Republicans were willing to accept a quirky non-pol, Democratic voters chose the competent if bland alternative. They renominated Incumbent John Tunney, 41, who withstood a rough challenge from Tom Hayden, once the kind of radical youth leader warred upon by Hayakawa.

The Democratic contest got downright nasty. Hayden's wife, Jane Fonda, played on the divorced Tunney's playboy image by insinuating that he dated teenagers. Tunney's supporters made cracks about Hayden's financial dependence on Jane and her show-biz friends. During a TV debate in which the candidates were questioned by newsmen, Tunney was asked if he indeed took out adolescents. "I dated when I was a teenager," he deadpanned. When Hayden asked Tunney why he accepted certain campaign contributions, Tunney shot back: "Because I didn't have a wife who gave me $381,000."

Now Hayakawa, the aged neophyte, must compete against another youngish pro. Considering the burden of incumbency in this year's anti-Washington, antibureaucracy atmosphere, Tunney's fall could be as difficult as his spring has been. And Sam Hayakawa might just become a venerable freshman.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.