Available Draftee

For 20 minutes the Jefferson City Junior College auditorium rocked and rolled last week as 1,600 shouting, foot-stomping delegates to the Missouri State Democratic Convention chanted over and over again: "We want Stu! We want Stu!" At the microphone, long-legged U.S. Senator William Stuart Symington, 54, his handsome features and square shoulders set off by a trim blue suit, beamed as he waited to acknowledge the nomination as Missouri's favorite son. "This is one of the greatest honors that has ever come to me," said Symington into the waning din. "As long as I live, I shall always thank you from the bottom of my heart."

Thus, without risking a political bruise or carrying a precinct, Stu Symington moved into the forefront of the Demo cratic Party's field of presidential hopefuls. His timing could hardly have been better; Kefauver and Stevenson were slugging each other into exhaustion, however temporary, and political leaders in both North and South, pending the outcome in California, were quietly looking over dark horses. Said Illinois' National Committeeman Jake Arvey, a steadfast Stevenson man: "All around the country I heard that Symington is the front-runner among the dark horses. Of course Stevenson would have to be stopped first."

In unanimously pledging the state's 76 convention delegates (half a vote each) to support Symington for the nomination until released, Convention Chairman William E. Kemp and fellow-Democrats hoped that they were starting a boom that would end in Symington's nomination--possibly on the third ballot. They recalled that their man had won his senatorial nomination in 1952 over Harry Truman's opposition, and carried Missouri (by 150,351) while Dwight Eisenhower was winning the presidential vote (by 29,599). Some Symington enthusiasts wanted to ride right off to launch a national campaign 1) in the South, where Symington's border-state reputation as a moderate on segregation is attractive, and 2) in big labor states, where his record as a union-supporting businessman might win votes.

But Symington himself was more cautious, told friends he wanted no politics to get in the way of his current Senate investigation of the state of the U.S. armed forces--which is winning him the kind of solid headlines that make the Kefauver-Stevenson debate sound irrelevant and immaterial. What Symington wants, explained a friend, is to go to Chicago not as an out-and-out candidate, but as a potential draftee. Says Symington: "If I catch on, I catch on."

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