Jack, the Front Runner

Hatless and coatless, shock-haired John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Massachusetts' 41-year-old U.S. Senator, stepped smiling from an airliner at Salt Lake City one brisk morning last week. He shook the hand of every politician in sight, some now familiar from his two other Utah visits since 1956, and rode off to address a joint session of the legislature. "Like you, we in Massachusetts came to our state under great difficulties," he told descendants of Mormon pioneers. "We, too, had great faith in our churches." With photogenic wife Jacqueline alongside, he paid a cordial call on the Mormon Church's powerful officialdom. In the scheduled two-hour prop-stop, extended to 31, Jack Kennedy acted like what he is: the front-running candidate for presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention next year.

Since nominations are made by party politicians, Kennedy's hardest politicking was with 275 party faithful at lunch. He mentioned every important guest in the room and every top Democratic office holder, present or not, before he swung into a lively demonstration of his talent for flaying Republicans.

"I do not say that the President has remained silent on vital issues," he cracked. "On the contrary, we have heard many a bold platitude. We are given phrases instead of leadership, slogans instead of a program." Then, after a few bold platitudes of his own, Kennedy flew off to political rituals in three more states (an encounter with Oregon's candidate-heckling "Cavemen," a Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Boise, Idaho, a prop-stop in Butte, Mont.) on a routine three-day weekend of campaigning away from Washington. Said a top politician, as Kennedy departed: "He'll murder Nixon."* Behind the Front. Being unchallenged front runner, Kennedy is clearly the man his Democratic rivals must stop. Last week his lieutenants were only belatedly invited to a conference of Midwest Democratic chieftains in Milwaukee. (Top aide Ted Sorensen and brother Robert Kennedy/- showed up.) While the conference accomplished little, it underscored the fact that Minnesota's Hubert Humphrey and Missouri's Stuart Symington are in the favor of Midwest politicians. Both are working hard to expand the Midwest political base and head off the unchallenged vote preference for Kennedy.

Front Runner Kennedy is also drawing inevitable potshots from the rear, and a position-taking U.S. Senator pushing such hot subjects as labor reform, immigration, minimum wages, and unemployment compensation makes a target of high visibility. Busiest potshotter: New York's Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, a warm Stevenson admirer, who attacked Kennedy on two charges: 1) Jack, author of prizewinning Profiles in Courage, "understands what courage is and admires it, but has not quite the independence to have it" (he took no stand in the fight over the late Joe McCarthy); 2) Jack's father, Multimillionaire Joseph P. Kennedy, former Ambassador to Britain, is "spending oodles of money all over the country" on Jack's candidacy, "probably has paid representatives in every state." Challenged to name one hired agent, Mrs. Roosevelt answered that "my information came largely from remarks made by people in many places."

Catholic Issue. Kennedy's Roman Catholicism haunts the professional politicians, many of them also Catholics, who remind themselves of Al Smith's 1928 defeat as if it happened in 1956. Like Smith, Kennedy tried to get it talked out early by stating his position: "Whatever one's religion in his private life may be," said he in answer to a Look reporter's question, "for the officeholder, nothing takes precedence over his oath to uphold the Constitution and all its parts--including the First Amendment and the strict separation of church and state." The Catholic press across the U.S. charged Kennedy with taking a "religious test" for public office, raising an issue where none exists on division of church and state.

Potshots and all. Kennedy was obviously running first and fast. Said National Chairman Paul Butler, a perennial Stevenson backer, last week, "I would be less than fair if I did not say Senator Kennedy has substantial support throughout the country. Perhaps more than any other potential candidate."

* Latest count last week from the oddsmaking California poll: in California Kennedy leads Nixon (49% to 39%, with 12% undecided) by a wider margin than Adlai Stevenson (48% to 43%, with 9% undecided).

/-Brother Robert, chief counsel for the Senate labor racketeering committee, walked into a political hornets' nest when he said, at a Milwaukee press conference, that an unnamed "union" and "a large company" had, "within the last year," offered effective political support for brother Jack if Bobbie could get the McClellan committee to play ball. The offers, said Bobbie, were "dismissed," reported to Brother Jack--but not to Committee Chairman John McClellan. In Washington, South Dakota's Karl E. Mundt, senior G.O.P. committee member, demanded that "the whole nauseating affair be fully explored and publicly exposed."

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