The Campaign Trail

In his vote-hunting expedition across the land, Estes Kefauver and the reporters covering him were dined in Corvallis, Ore. (pop. 16,000) by local Democrats, who asked everyone to get up and introduce himself. One tired reporter arose and announced: "Peter Kumpa, Baltimore Sun, candidate for retirement." Like dozens of bleary-eyed colleagues, Reporter Kumpa, 30, was roughing it on the campaign trail. 1956 airborne style, and finding it rougher than ever.

The almost obsolete campaign train, which will be revived fitfully this month, was relished by none: it once meant days on end without showers, air conditioning or stationary sleep. But the new prop-stop technique creates tighter, more ambitious travel schedules and a clutter of motor cade side trips, makes it far tougher to get a story written--and to file between the incommunicado hours aloft.

Bungles & Breakdowns. The most nightmarish grind on the campaign circuit is the chaotic 18-hour-a-day Kefauver schedule. Often up at 5 a.m., the reporters go through a jumble of airport receptions, several press conferences, street rallies, appearances at fairs and carnivals. Through it all, they suffer the repetitive drip torture of Kefauver's appeals for "the little fellow" (irreverently known among the reporters as "the pygmy vote").

The trip has been dogged by mishaps, bungles, delays and breakdowns, from the plane's mimeograph machine to the press bus, which left the newsmen on an Oregon roadside thumbing rides to the Portland airport. One unscheduled dash in Michigan sent the party on a breakneck 82-mile round-trip drive to the Mackinac Straits Bridge, which Governor G. Mennen ("Soapy") Williams insisted on showing to Kefauver for the benefit of photographers. A padlock had to be broken before the candidate could get on the structure after nightfall--to greet a crowd of five workmen and one woman who had waited three hours for him. In the absence of any great demand from photographers, Governor Williams used his own camera.

Writing and filing have been catch-as-catch-can; the Western Union press representative, Harold Griffin, has lent his shoulders as a desk at an airport, has stood holding a typewriter while a reporter banged away at it.

During a single half hour in Oregon, a Kefauver press conference was scheduled, unscheduled, rescheduled and unrescheduled. Even Tour Director Charles Tyroler was moved to write a parody of the fickle itinerary. Sample: "11 a.m., previously unscheduled press conference in airport lounge. Kefauver drops bombshell. No ime to file. 12, rally in phone booth at local drugstore . . . Note--due to time changes and miscalculations by Kefauver staff, group is scheduled to depart Yakima Defore arrival there."

Despite--or because of--the ordeal, the reporters and staff have enjoyed a freewheeling camaraderie. Each group has thrown a party for the other. At one of them, tireless Candidate Kefauver himself gallantly delivered a reporter's written spoof of his speechifying cliches and halting style. Reported the New York Daily News's Gwen Gibson: "While some don't like him as a politician, reporters with him have learned to like the stumbling, fumbling Tennessee Senator as a person."

Forecast. By comparison, the Nixon and Stevenson campaign tours are models of sober efficiency. The pampered newsmen with Stevenson need not even bother to register at their hotel stopovers; their keys are handed to them as they enter. Buses and police escorts are prompt; breakfast is invariably hot as the plane takes off each morning, and the Stevenson press staff, headed by Clayton Fritchey, gets all the speeches out in advance. But newsmen with Stevenson travel in a separate plane, get less access to the candidate than those with Nixon and Kefauver.

Nixon Press Secretary James Bassett, on leave as city editor of the Los Angeles Mirror-News, gets out copies of major speeches as much as 36 hours in advance. Another unusual press service has been offered by New York Timesman William Blair. At Nixon's first press conference in Indianapolis, Blair sat in the front row and held up a small microphone that led to a miniature wire recorder in a shoulder holster. Since then the reporters have been checking their quotes with Blair's machine, and even the Nixon staff has regularly consulted "dicky bird," as the newsmen dubbed the gadget because of the chirping squeal when it is run to replay a speech.

For all the rush, the reporters manage to pour out a steady flow of copy: 80,000 words a day from Stevenson, 40,000 from Nixon, 15,000 from Kefauver. Privately, though 27 felt uncertain about the election's outcome, 36 out of the 44 who ventured a forecast picked the candidate who has yet to hit the campaign trail: President Eisenhower.

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