Meet the People

Sirens screaming and horn ablare, Benton & Bowles are riding the air. Tinsel and paint and a jester's cap, Tinkling bells and a moit of pap, Under our elms and over our maples Selling themselves as they sold their staples.

In this querulous doggerel, a disgruntled voter in the Hartford Courant last week recorded her opinion of the noisiest off-year campaign in Connecticut history. Benton & Bowles, formerly of the advertising firm of the same name, were Governor Chester Bowles and William Benton, whom he had appointed to the U.S. Senate. Chester Bowles, a man whose left of Truman policies inspire a little of the same devotion in his supporters and rage in his opponents that Franklin D. Roosevelt did, wanted to be governor for four more years. Benton, trying to keep his Senate seat (which he has held for ten months) was running for office for the first time, with the best huckstering tricks conceived by the sincere-tie set.

Cold Air. "The problem is to project yourself as a person," explained dynamic Bill Benton, who owns Muzak, runs the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and as an Assistant Secretary of State once directed the Voice of America. He hired a helicopter, plastered a big sign on it: "Here's Bill Benton," and went hopping about the state like a man on an aerial pogo stick. A leather-chair type gladhander, he strove for the common touch. At country fairs, he handed out windshield stickers and buttons, told the crowd: "I will say for you ladies that I've had an experience such as you may understand. Men's trousers weren't made to be worn in helicopters--the cold air goes right up them."

Benton's one-minute radio spots were pre-evaluated for crowd appeal, his comicstrip ads pretested for reader interest. He set up street-corner booths, stocked them with pretty girls, ran off five one-minute movies showing Benton the homebody (his wife showing off his scrapbook), Benton the internationalist (his trip inspecting ECA's Italian projects, aimed at the state's 239,000 Italians), Benton the statesman (flashes of Marshall, Eisenhower and Baruch endorsing his "Marshall Plan of Ideas").

Dishes & Stymies. His G.O.P. opponent, also a wealthy amateur in national politics, matched him trick for trick. A partner in the Wall Street firm of Brown Brothers, Harriman, tall, ruggedly handsome Prescott Bush had 15-minute TV spots, five-minute TV spots, and one-minute TV spots. A Yaleman (Skull & Bones), director of more than half a dozen corporations, and a sportsman (as onetime U.S. Golf Association president, he is generally credited with leading the campaign for the abolition of the stymie), Bush felt his problem, too, was to meet the people. He had himself photographed shaking hands with dishwashers and machine-shop foremen, a maneuver he brought off with the hearty air of the big boss at the annual company outing, made up for his rival's helicopter by singing second bass in a quartet with three Yale undergraduates at major public appearances. They sang the Whiffenpoof Song, though some of his backers thought he should shush his Yale connections. He pronounced Bowles (Yale '24) the philosopher of leftism, Senator Brien McMahon (Yale LL.B. '27) the spokesman, and Benton (Yale '21) the captive, announced that his campaign was based on "Korea, Communism, confusion and corruption."

Though "Philosopher" Bowles had not begun to campaign in earnest, for two turbulent years he had kept himself on the state's front pages by his horrendous battles with the Republican House. Bowles boasts a record of low-rent houses built, schools expanded, a bipartisan plan for reorganization of the state's government. He had tried to raise minimum wages, and extend unemployment benefits; labor outfits were solidly for him. His rival, Congressman John Davis Lodge of the Boston Lodges, talked about the Administration's "sad story of blunders," looked handsome for the news cameras (he was once a movie actor, supporting, among others, Shirley Temple), and addressed meetings in Italian while his Italian wife, a former professional dancer, performed a tarantella.

No Red Wagons. All this gallimaufry seemed to embarrass Senator Brien McMahon, a traditional-type politician. As chairman of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, McMahon had taken on the mantle of an atomic statesman, and he kept it wrapped determinedly about him. He paid no attention to his Republican opponent, ex-Congressman Joseph Talbot of Naugatuck (Yale LL.B. '25), another old school politico who was picked partly because he was, like McMahon, a Roman Catholic. Big and old-shoe friendly, Talbot toured the state in a blue-and-yellow sound truck emblazoned: "No red on my bandwagon," and accused Democrats of being naive about Communists.

Not since 1934 had the Democrats won an off-year election in Connecticut. Even in presidential 1948, Bowles had won election by a bare 2,200 votes, while Truman lost the state. Before the tide turned in Korea, Republicans had hoped to pick up one and possibly both Senate seats. Now nobody was making any predictions: it was that close.

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