Road Signs in California

By the time the votes were counted in California's Republican primary last week, two political road signs were clear: Governor Earl Warren's fortunes are going down, Senator William Knowland's are going up. But no one could be entirely sure where California's 70 important delegates to the Republican National Convention will go.

Earl Warren, who did not do well with his primary forays in Wisconsin and Oregon, ran into trouble in his own state. He won the presidential-preference vote and California's 70 delegates, but he did not win handily; a slate with nothing to offer except opposition to Warren got more than half a million votes. The anti-Warren slate's in-name-only candidate for President was Representative Thomas H. Werdel of Bakersfield. His chief cry: Warren is not really a candidate for President, but wants to deal for a place in a national Republican administration.

Ten Years of Enemies. The political enemies that Warren had made in nearly ten years as governor--Republicans who don't like his bipartisanship, doctors who dislike his compulsory state health insurance proposals, oilmen who oppose his state gasoline tax--lined up behind Werdel who had lots of money to spend on the campaign. California observers who understand what Warren was up against consider that he did well to poll 997,609 votes against Werdel's 509,205. But outside the state, what will register is the size of the vote against Warren.

Inevitably, the Warren-Werdel contest was compared with the startling performance of Warren's political protege, 43-year-old Senator William Knowland. In the Republican senatorial primary, Knowland rolled up a total of 1,499,290 votes to 185,827 for two opponents. Under California's weird cross-filing system, Knowland also won the Democratic primary, is thus fully assured of re-election in November. Knowland's total vote, 2,450,435, was more than any other political candidate ever got in California primaries.

With these results to consider, politicians began to revise their thinking about California. Earl Warren has dim prospects as a compromise candidate in a situation that seems more & more to be a straight Ike-Taft contest. California's more promising figure now is Knowland, who has the bark & grain of vice-presidential timber.*

Assistant publisher of his father's Oakland daily Tribune and an ex-state senator, Knowland was appointed to the Senate by Warren in August 1945, while he was still serving as an Army major in Paris. Named to the seat vacated by Hiram Johnson's death, he was elected to a full term in 1946. He has long advocated a strong U.S. policy in the Far East, including more aid to Chiang and more force against the Communists. This, and his charge that the State Department's Far Eastern policy was "bankrupt," caused his enemies in Washington to label him "the Senator from Formosa." This political position, plus his Pacific Coast following, equip him particularly well to balance a ticket headed by Eisenhower.

The Leaners. While the primary thus changed the focus on Warren and Knowland, it only fuzzed the picture on the route California's 70 delegates will follow after Warren releases them. Warren," partly in answer to Werdel's deal charge, has insisted that he will not attempt to swing the delegates one way or another if he no longer has a chance to be nominated. But Warren is known to favor Ike.

Careful political observers who have inspected Warren's 70 say that at least 30 are firmly for Eisenhower as a second choice, at least four are solidly for Taft, and 15 will follow Warren's suggestion. The rest lean one way or another. If Warren suggests a vote for Eisenhower, and all the delegates go as they are now leaning, the count will be 56 for Ike, 14 for Taft.

But leaning delegates do not always fall the way they are inclined. A case in point is that of Delegate John J. Garland, wealthy Los Angeles realtor, brother-in-law of Publisher Norman Chandler of the Los Angeles Times and Mirror. Garland is a Warrenite, but favors Taft as a second choice. This is largely because Garland owes his position on the delegation to his relationship with Chandler, and Chandler is for Taft. However, Mrs. Garland (Chandler's sister) is for Ike, and so are Mrs. Chandler and some other members of the family who own stock in the papers. The Chandler family compromise has been to have the Times plug for Taft, the Mirror for Ike. With pressures of that kind at work, Garland could well be tipped from Taftward to Ikeward before the balloting starts.

There will be plenty of pressure on the California delegates from now until Warren frees the delegation in Chicago. Last week Ike's California strategists sat for eight hours in a room at San Francisco's Palace Hotel, drinking coffee, eating buttered snails and planning a four-week splurge that may even make California's eyes pop. They will bombard the delegates with mail and telegrams, have helicopters drop out of the sky to pick up signatures on Ike petitions, and otherwise seek to show that the voters want Ike. There is talk that some of the pros from the Eisenhower headquarters want to move into California to work on delegates, but the local volunteers are trying to hold them off. They say that the California delegation is of too high a type to welcome approaches by professional politicians.

The Taft forces, officially inactive until after the primary, are beginning to move on a quieter but no less intense basis. Their main effort will be along the line that the snaileating Californians-for-Ike deplore--personal buttonholing. They will try to convince the delegates that Taft really can win in November, and that Ike is just a public hero who can't take the Party's case to the people.

The primary is over, but the battle of California is just beginning.

* Knowland could run for both Vice President and Senator at the same time, despite a California law which prohibits a man from seeking two offices in one election. Reason: votes for Vice President are, technically, cast for electors and not for the candidate. There is precedent for the dual candidacy: Democrat John Nance Garner ran both for Congress and the vice-presidency in November 1932.

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