Kingmakers on the Make

Across the land from Los Angeles last week rolled an Adlai Stevenson cry of chicanery, Said Adlai: He was beaten in the Minnesota primary because G.O.P. money was used against him. "In one night," cried he, "Republicans raised all the money needed to defeat me in Minnesota." He implied that perhaps that kind of money was being raised to head him off in California's June 5 primary.

Stevenson based his charge on a "report" from an unidentified friend and a column by United Feature Syndicate's pro-Stevenson Doris Fleeson. Columnist Fleeson wrote that Radio-TV Personality John R. (Tex) McCrary, an Eisenhower booster in 1952, had "boasted" about G.O.P. fund-raising for Estes Kefauver. In Manhattan Tex McCrary explained that he had merely commented at a private dinner: "I hear some Republicans helped Kefauver in Minnesota." Tut-tutted Kefauver: "Mr. Stevenson, of course, knows nothing of any Republican money. Apparently he is building up alibi."

"Love That Lyndon." Aside from this exchange, the Kefauver-Stevenson performance for the week had another highlight: a face-to-face encounter in the Los Banos, Calif. spring festival parade, with Adlai rigged out as a cowboy on a roan horse and Estes silk-suited in a Lincoln convertible. Even so, their general pitch was so routine that Democratic eyes and ears began to wander.

When Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Baines Johnson and House Speaker Sam Rayburn returned to Washington from their triumph over Governor Allan Shivers in the Texas Democratic conventions

(TIME. May 14), they were greeted at National Airport by a cheering, stomping crowd with band and banners. LOVE THAT LYNDON said one placard. Said another: THE U.S.A. NEEDS L.B.J. Old Sam Rayburn caused some quick sidelong glances when he said that "under our great and brilliant young leader we're going to march to higher victories."

While a good deal of talk about Lyndon Johnson as a presidential candidate was spreading across the South, the more likely possibility is that he will turn out to be a kingmaker. A heart attack victim, Lyndon Johnson as candidate would rob the Democrats of an issue they would otherwise use against Dwight Eisenhower. But as a skilled political maneuverer marching into Chicago with a considerable bloc of delegates behind him, he could be in a strong position to affect the nomination.

Friendly Capitalist. So could another Democrat. Last week former President Truman rolled into Manhattan to present a Four Freedoms Foundation award to New York's Governor Averell Harriman.

Maintaining that he does not favor any candidate, Truman went on to make what sounded like a nominating speech for Harriman. He called his old friend "a capitalist who has long been engaged in the war on poverty throughout the world," a man of vision who was not duped by the Communists. Said Truman: "I don't think there is any man in the U.S. I think more highly of."

The speech was only the latest indication that Truman favors Harriman. For weeks Frank McKinney, the Indianapolis banker once described by Truman as "the best national chairman the Democratic Party ever had," has been working for Harriman. Other former Truman associates, e.g., Wisconsin's Democratic Chairman Philleo Nash (a White House aide in 1945-52) and Farmers Union Counsel Charles Brannan (Secretary of Agriculture 1948-52), are privately for Harriman.

Harriman-Symington? Recently Frank McKinney, in a private survey for Truman, found that no candidate is strong enough to be nominated on the first ballot. McKinney also reported that he found Missouri's Senator Stuart Symington with enough second-choice support to be the nominee if the convention deadlocks. At first, this did not seem to fit very well with Truman's own announcement that he had decided not to be a member of the Missouri delegation (which will be pledged to Symington) because he wanted to remain a free agent. With the speculation season in swing, however, speculators began to calculate that perhaps Truman plus McKinney added up to a Harriman-Symington ticket.

Meanwhile, Truman sailed eastward for a seven-week visit to Europe (during which he will write a series of columns for Hearst's King Features Syndicate). Honest Ave Harriman got ready to swing west on a dozen-stop speechmaking tour through seven states. Warming up before he took off, Harriman stepped before the convention of the International Ladies Garment Workers' Union in Atlantic City and created his own slogan to succeed "New Deal" and "Fair Deal." What the U.S. needs to move forward from the Roosevelt-Truman era, he said, is a program based on "New Vision."

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