Who's for Whom

P: Venerable (81) States'-Rights Democrat James F. Byrnes, Truman-era Secretary of State and former (1951-55) Governor of South Carolina, blasted the Democratic platform as "a threat to our system of free enterprise," announced for Nixon-Lodge. He was for Eisenhower in 1952, for Virginia's Senator Harry Byrd in 1956.

P: Teamster Boss James Riddle Hoffa, who hates the Kennedy brothers (Jack and Bob) for their congressional battles against labor racketeering, urged his 1,600,000 Teamsters to go all-out against Jack Kennedy--though this did not mean being "for" Nixon. In another quandary, West Coast Longshoremen's Boss Harry Bridges refused to endorse any candidate.

P: The 1,250,000-member United Steelworkers of America and the 100,000-member International Chemical Workers Union, at separate conventions in Atlantic City, followed half a dozen other unions and the A.F.L.-C.I.O. general board in endorsing the Kennedy-Johnson ticket.

P: That veteran of many a campaign tea party, Mrs. Joseph P. Kennedy, downed coffee and cake on a four-day swing through The Bronx, Brooklyn and Long Island, and pulled out one organ stop farther than anyone else has. Referring to the wartime deaths of her eldest son Joe and her son-in-law, Rose Kennedy told the housewives: "Jack knows the sorrow, the grief, the tears and the heartbreaking grief and loneliness that come to a family when a mother has lost her eldest son and a young bride has lost her bridegroom. So I know that Jack will never get us into war."

P: Cleveland Pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock, whose books on the care and feeding of little citizens have sold more than 13.5 million copies, announced for Kennedy, on the ground that the Democrats would spend more money on education. No one was more pleased than 2 1/2-year-old Caroline Kennedy's mother Jackie. "Dr. Spock has come out for Jack," she told reporters at a tea in her Georgetown home, "and I'm for Dr. Spock."

P: Harlem's Democratic Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, who swung to Eisenhower in 1956 and before the Democratic Convention measured off Jack Kennedy's record on civil rights as "bad for a man from Massachusetts," reconsidered again, gave his "full, all-out support" to Kennedy and Johnson.

P: Voters under 30, who split nearly down the middle for Eisenhower (49%) in 1952 and gave him a heavy majority (57%) in 1956, are turning Democratic, reported Pollster George Gallup. A recent sampling of the youthful electorate found 39% for Nixon, 61% for Kennedy--biggest score for a Democratic candidate since F.D.R.'s 68% in 1936.

P: For Richard Nixon the week's least welcome endorsement came from Tampa Private Eye William J. Griffin, Grand Dragon of the Florida Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

P: Ending weeks of less than suspense, Georgia's Senators Herman Talmadge and Richard Russell announced for the Kennedy-Johnson ticket.

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