Running Start

An intense, rail-thin man with a bush of a mustache and thick-framed spectacles--a man society columnists joshed as Brazil's "worst dressed of 1958"--last week became front runner for the presidency in 1960. His name Janio Quadros.

Reformer Quadros, nominally a member of the Brazilian Labor Party but actually a political loner, built a hound's tooth record as Sao Paulo's Governor in a term that ended Jan. 31. On that record, in last October's elections, he won a federal Deputy's seat and at the same time pushed his own candidate into Sao Paulo's governorship over stiff opposition. In the other October political development of note, the conservative National Democratic Union (U.D.N.) broke out of perpetual second place to back seven winning Governors, seven Senators and 74 Deputies with the highest vote in its history--some 3,000,000.

Last week most of the U.D.N. marched into Janio's camp, even though he has no links to the party. Leading was Publisher Carlos Lacerda, U.D.N.'s fiery Chamber of Deputies floor leader and long an enemy of Quadros (he once called Quadros "dirty inside and out").

As much as he once disliked Quadros, Lacerda dislikes President Juscelino Ku-bitschek and his Social Democratic Party (P.S.D.) more. When he learned that U.D.N. President Juracy Magalhaes was negotiating an alliance with Kubitschek's P.S.D. that would make Magalhaes President in 1960, Lacerda conferred with Quadros, bannerlined the news in his Tribuna da Imprensa: JANIO--U.D.N.'S

CANDIDATE AND THE PEOPLE'S CHOICE.

Sao Paulo's U.D.N. at once pledged its support to Quadros. Across the nation U.D.N. Senators, Deputies, party chiefs, intellectuals and newspapers swung into line. Quadros loftily accepted: "I will need party support for the campaign, and even more to govern Brazil afterwards."

Thus nominated, Quadros went to Rio by train. When morning commuters cheered Viva our next President!" he started to wave, then, with charming sheepishness, scratched his head instead. He conferred with politicians of all parties, including

1) Kubitschek, whom he warned against seeking an unconstitutional second term;

2) War Minister and Field Marshal Henrique Baptista Duffles Teixeira Lott, only other visible candidate. This week, with typical political canniness, Quadros planned to board a freighter to Japan (54 days around the Cape of Good Hope) on a trip that will keep him away for three months--enough to avoid excessive pre-election exposure, enough to guarantee him a triumphal welcome when he returns.

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