Trouble for Estes

One day last week a helicopter augered through the summer air over Dyersburg (pop. 10,900) in West Tennessee, and settled down on the municipal football field. Out stepped U.S. Representative Pat Sutton to greet and meet a crowd of voters. Some had come only because they had never seen a helicopter before, but they stayed to listen. Certainly, none of them had ever seen a political campaign quite like the one Pat Sutton is waging against Estes Kefauver for the Democratic senatorial nomination.

A Navy veteran with six years in Congress, Pat Sutton, 38, was not well-known outside his own Sixth District (west central Tennessee) a month ago, and politicians gave him little chance against Kefauver. But in recent weeks he has pushed his way into Tennessee living rooms with the persistent zeal of a brush salesman. His technique is the marathon radio and television appearance, in which he sits before microphone and camera hour after hour answering questions submitted by listeners. His latest endurance broadcast began in Memphis at 7:30 p.m. one day last week, and ended 27 hours later. He was heard on eight radio and two TV stations, collected $5,500 from sympathetic listeners.

When Sutton talks about Kefauver, which is most of the time, he talks tough. Some of his charges are extravagant, but they are hard on Estes. He accuses Kefauver of being "leftish," and a one-worlder. Sutton has also made race an issue by quoting from a Negro newspaper that reported Kefauver as saying during his futile 1952 presidential bid that there would be no segregation if he were elected. Says Sutton: "We don't know if that's still the way he feels. He hasn't said. He was running for President then, and is now running for the Senate."

National political pundits had been curious whether Nashville Lawyer Ray Jenkins, the special counsel in the Army-McCarthy hearings, could whip Estes Kefauver. At week's end Jenkins settled that question by announcing he would not run. Kefauver's friends, who had not been worried much about Jenkins (or any other Republican), were not necessarily cheered. They were seriously concerned about Pat Sutton and the Democratic primary, and were advising Estes: stay home and start fighting.

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