Victory for Extremists

In Alabama the Democratic Party last week pledged itself to the brand of extremist politics that has been rife in the South since Little Rock. Items: EURJ In the runoff primary for Governor, Attorney General John Patterson, 36, piled up a record vote to defeat Circuit Judge George Wallace by 64,388 even after Patterson had been unmasked as the favorite of Ku Klux Klan leaders and had made a public appeal for the votes of Klansmen. Opponent Wallace, himself an unhooded knight of white supremacy, first attacked Patterson for his K.K.K. ties, then shut up when he saw that the charge was backfiring in Patterson's favor. More important than the Klan issue was the fact that Patterson had taken a tough stand against retiring Governor "Kissin' Jim" Folsom and ridden the across-the-ballot tide against Kissin' Jim's political kin.

t| Electing their 72-man state executive committee the Democrats gave a narrow (39 to 33) edge to the states' rights extremists. The new committee promptly repealed the loyalty oath by which state party candidates, including presidential electors, are pledged to support the candidates of the national party. Purpose: a warning to Northern Democrats and everybody else that the Alabama party is ready to go Dixiecrat again on the civil rights issue.

In Tennessee last week, three-time Governor Prentice Cooper, 62, stepped into the primary race for the U.S. Senate against able Democrat Albert Gore. Cooper, white supremacist, decided that Tennessee's resentment over Little Rock will let him whip up a lively campaign before the Aug. 7 Democratic primary, started off by reminding voters that Albert Gore refused to sign the 1956 Congressional Southern Manifesto denouncing the Supreme Court's 1954 desegregation decision.

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