Not Just Amateurs

The best single reason why Harold Stassen won in Wisconsin and Nebraska was Harold Stassen himself. But U.S. elections are not won singlehanded. Last week Harold Stassen's rivals suddenly realized that he had built a tight powerful organization.

The Stassen team, a highly varied group, operated with the zest and fire of dedicated men. But unlike Willkie's zealous amateurs, it included many an experienced hand. Its key men:

P: Warren Burger, 40, a husky, handsome St. Paul lawyer who is Stassen's chief of staff. An idea man with tremendous drive, he runs the national headquarters in Minneapolis, makes all but major policy decisions for the boss.

P: Victor Johnston, a shrewd, silver-haired journeyman politician who last week took over the operation of Stassen's Washington office. He managed the Wisconsin campaign, kept the Stassen memory green in 1944 while Stassen was in the Navy.

P: Al Lindley, a dour, bristle-haired lawyer who has been a Stassen strategist since the time Stassen was a brash county attorney bucking the G.O.P. machine for nomination as governor. He is treasurer of the Minnesota Fund, holds the purse.

P: Bernhard Levander, chairman of the Minnesota Republican Central Committee, another longtime Stassen man. Young (32) and razor-sharp, he is contact man and director at the ward and precinct level.

"Now Sit Down . . ." Stassen's national headquarters, which occupies the whole tenth floor of Minneapolis' Pillsbury Building, hums like a fraternity in rush week. Telephone calls pour in at the rate of 1,000 a day. In a huge mailroom, some 60 volunteers run clacking mimeograph machines, stuff envelopes, mail out an average of 300,000 letters a day. The volunteers, who work in shifts, are drawn from a pool of 700 society women, debutantes, office girls who come in after hours.

Scattered across the country are 49,000 "Citizens for Stassen" who get a steady stream of bulletins. Each new member is urged to get five additional members. After the Wisconsin primary, every worker got a personal letter thanking him and concluding: "Now sit down and write to your friends in Nebraska and Ohio." Senator Ed Thye, a farmer, wrote to 20,000 Nebraska farmers. Athletes are asked to write to athletes, veterans to veterans, even optometrists to optometrists.

Politicians & Politasters. Not all the activity is in Minneapolis. In Ohio last week, Earl Hart was energetically directing the primary campaign from a parlor-bedroom in Cleveland's Carter Hotel. A slight, intense man with a palm-of-the-hand knowledge of Ohio politics, Hart was-campaign manager for Senator Harold Burton in 1940, for Ohio's Governor Thomas Herbert in 1946. Eastern headquarters in New York's Sheraton Hotel is headed by an affluent New Jersey lawyer named Amos Peaslee. In Philadelphia, Jay Cooke, great-grandson of the Civil War financier and a onetime G.O.P. candidate for the U.S. Senate, is in charge. In Chicago, active Stassen supporters include former Under Secretary of the Navy Ralph Bard, United Air Lines President William Patterson, and Walter Paepcke, chairman of the board of the Container Corp. of America.

All this takes money, and the Stassen organization has it. Originally, all campaign expenses came from the Minnesota Fund--a war chest set up by a group of wealthy Minnesotans. Chief of the backers and money-raisers was Harry Bullis, wealthy board chairman of General Mills. Others: James Ford Bell, recently retired board chairman of General Mills; John Cowles, board chairman of Cowles Magazines (Look) and president of the Minneapolis Star and Tribune; John S. Pillsbury, board chairman of Pillsbury Mills; and Jay Hormel, board chairman of George A. Hormel & Co. But in the last 18 months, over 13,000 people from all over the nation have contributed an average of $35 apiece--a total of about $450,000. The money, say Stassenites, has been spent as fast as it came in.

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