Big Bill in the Ring

In San Francisco's olden days, it was great sport to watch five or six blindfolded boxers climb into the ring and flail for all they were worth. In California last week, a similar sport was engaging the interest of fun-loving Democrats: the Republicans were flailing away at each other, and if they were not blindfolded, they at least seemed blind to the possibility that they were courting wholesale knockout.

There was Big Bill Knowland, U.S. Senate minority leader, campaigning in the gubernatorial Republican primaries, whacking away in behalf of a right-to-work law. There was G.O.P. Governor Goodwin J. Knight, campaigning for Knowland's Senate seat, and counting heavily on his friends in Labor. There was San Francisco's Republican Mayor George Christopher, Knight's rival for the Senate nomination, swinging blindly away at Goodie, striking only at the soft underbelly of party unity. And there were a score or so of other Republican lesser office seekers who were doing their darndest to convince the electorate that, Bill Knowland notwithstanding, they are for Bill Knowland but against right-to-work.

Big Bill was not about to back down, although he is fully aware of the havoc around him. Only recently, when he offered to help fellow Republicans by campaigning for them in their districts, there was an embarrassing silence. And then, only last week, Knowland nervily turned up in Fresno to talk to the state C.I.O. convention on Political Education. Three hundred and fifty delegates sat on their hands as Big Bill earnestly offered the information that 1) he is not unfriendly to labor, and 2) he will do his best to further right-to-work laws for the benefit of what he calls "union democracy," a state defined by labor leaders as something akin to union-busting.

"I'd give anything," sighed one top Republican leader last week, "if Bill had not picked up that right-to-work issue. President Eisenhower, Dick Nixon and Secretary of Labor Mitchell have all indicated varying degrees of disapproval of right-to-work laws, but we can't publicize that at the same time we are trying to promote a candidate for governor who takes the opposite position. It's a dilemma."

As for Goodie Knight--the story was that the only thing Goodie has to fear is an endorsement from Fellow Republican Knowland.

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