THE YOUNG PROS

The Democratic old pros looked back in wonder last week to try to figure how Jack Kennedy did it. Chief reason was the band of young pros around him. Key men among them: Robert Francis Kennedy, 34. Hard-driving Bobby graduated from Harvard ('48), played varsity end, dallied briefly with journalism as Palestine war correspondent for the Boston Post before entering the University of Virginia law school ('51). He managed Jack's Senate campaign in 1952, then joined Senator Joe McCarthy's investigations subcommittee and feuded constantly with equally quick-tempered Chief Counsel Roy Cohn. Appointed counsel of the Senate rackets committee in 1957, he flayed Teamster hoods and faced down Jimmy Hoffa, added color to Brother Jack's campaign as a cocky crusader and bestselling author (The Enemy Within}. Father of seven, he got home to his wooded northern Virginia estate infrequently during far-flung primary battles, plans to be back in action this week as Jack's campaign manager after a three-day post-convention break.

Edward Moore Kennedy, 28. "Teddy" is the youngest of the Kennedy boys, is a strapping (6 ft. 2 in., 200 Ibs.) athlete who followed the family path to Harvard ('54), handled the familiar end slot on the football team, passed lackadaisically through the University of Virginia law school before taking up Jack's cause. A tousle-haired, outgoing Ivy Leaguer, Teddy has more warmth than Jack, more humor than Bobby, and a rapidly maturing political skill. During his Army hitch in Germany in 1952, he assiduously rounded up votes for Jack ("We had nine absentee votes in camp; I like to think we got all of them"). While still in law school, he stumped Massachusetts for Jack in 1958, gained experience for his role in pre-convention strategy--corralling delegates in the Rocky Mountain states. A licensed pilot, Teddy hedgehopped into remote areas, helped swing Arizona and crack Johnson's solid front in New Mexico. Sensing a saturation of Kennedys in the East, he plans eventually to move to the West with his wife (the former Joan Bennett of Bronxville, N.Y.) and infant daughter, and probably enter politics. Says Brother Bobby: "Teddy is really outstanding. He's going to be something."

Theodore Chaikin Sorensen, 32. A farm-belt Unitarian and soft-spoken intellectual, Ted Sorensen was introduced to his first political audience at the age of six as the son of Nebraska's Republican attorney general. First in his class at the University of Nebraska law school, he worked for the Federal Security Agency in Washington, joined the staff of freshman Senator Kennedy in 1953. They found keen enjoyment in a common intellectual approach to politics, collaborated on Kennedy's Profiles in Courage. Together, they traveled through every state from 1956 to 1960, compiled a detailed, 30,000-name list of top Democrats. Frayed by a 72-hour week as speechwriter, key advance man and political seismograph, Sorensen last year carved up his duties among other staff members, now serves as chief lieutenant, and defers more to Bobby.

Lawrence F. O'Brien, 43. A crew-cut Springfield, Mass, advertising and p.r. man, Larry O'Brien joined Kennedy in 1951, is the team's top organizer. Onetime aide to Massachusetts' Governor Foster Furcolo, O'Brien applied ideas tested in Kennedy's 1952 and 1958 Senate elections' to the crucial string of presidential primaries, used the Sorensen card file to build a network of Kennedy supporters in every major community of each primary state. A 14-page "Kennedy for President State Organizational Procedure" explained everything from selecting local veterans' committees to techniques for giving away car stickers in supermarket parking lots. A key O'Brien device is mass telephoning, undertaken at no expense by local volunteers and proven enormously effective in West Virginia. One of the fast-moving advance men, O'Brien prowled through Wisconsin, made eight trips to Indiana in a single month, camped on the doorstep of California's Pat Brown until Brown got out of Jack's way. He worked 20-hour days at Los Angeles, faces a months-long grind as director of organization for the Democratic National Committee.

Philip Kenneth O'Donnell, 36, wiry World War II 6-17 bombardier-navigator and ex-Harvard football captain, joined the Kennedys through Friend Bobby in 1952, is a specialist in precinct-by-precinct organizing and a liaison man for Kennedy HQ and state supporters. Pierre Salinger, 35, stubby, cigar-chewing ex-night city editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, ran into Bobby at the McClellan hearings and went to work for him as an investigator, now is Kennedy's press secretary, sometime speechwriter and frequent emissary. Old-style Boss John Bailey, 55, Connecticut's Democratic state chairman and first important politico to swing behind Kennedy in his 1956 vice-presidential race, concentrated on the East in the campaign. Illinois' Hyman B. ("Hy") Raskin, 51, ex-deputy chairman of the National Committee, one of Stevenson's top organizers in 1952 and 1956, joined Kennedy last year and ranged over the Western U.S. for him. Kennedy's brother-in-law, Stephen E. Smith, 32, used administrative experience gained running his father's New York tugboat company to co-ordinate the campaign's details from Washington HQ. Another brother-in-law, Robert Sargent Shriver Jr., 44, who manages Chicago's $75 million Merchandise Mart, handled Midwest fund raising, supervised civil rights platform-writing.

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