IN THE KITCHEN WITH MAGGIE

The man to whom President Kennedy paid tribute in Seattle last week is one of the U.S. Senate's most informal and durable personalities. In his moments of reflection, Washington Democrat Warren ("Maggie") Magnuson says of his own success: "I've been in 23 elections, big and small, and I've always had the votes. I go to the people and I listen to what they've got to say, and then I tell them what I've got to say."

After eight years in the House of Representatives and 17 in the Senate, Warren Magnuson has not changed much. "He is," says a friend, "the ever-loving, good-time-Charlie Scandinavian come out of the woods on Saturday night for fun, sociability, and a yearning to spread joy." In the cave of winds that is the U.S. Senate, Magnuson speaks seldom, putters about the aisles with an unlit cigar clenched between his teeth. Says he: "If you've got the votes, you don't need the speech, and if you need the speech, you don't have the votes." For that matter, Maggie preaches to others what he practices himself. Entering the Senate late one afternoon to drop some home-state bills into the hopper, he found Illinois' Democrat Paul Douglas delivering an epochal speech to an empty chamber. Magnuson sidled up to Douglas and whispered: "For God's sake, Paul, nobody's listening to you." The startled Douglas sat down and Maggie hoppered his bills.

Magnuson's effectiveness comes from his off-chamber work as chairman of the Senate's Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee, senior Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, and member of many subcommittees. All this he calls "kitchen work." Says Maggie: "The hard part is the kitchen work. These Liberals, as they call themselves, they aren't the real Liberals. They get nothing done. They want to be out on the front porch talking while the rest of us are back doing the kitchen work. Well, I'll tell you where to look if you want to find a good Senator and a good Liberal or what have you. Look in the kitchen."

As a result of his kitchen work, Magnuson can and does point with pride to the Bonneville Power Administration, the Hanford Atomic Project, a $9,000,000 federal appropriation for Seattle's 1962 World's Fair, as well as to a healthy share of Government contracts for Seattle's Boeing plant, for the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and the Sand Point Naval Air Station. He speaks of the vast Columbia River Basin reclamation project as though he had built it himself--"This year I put up the Glen Canyon transmission lines." In his tribute last week, former Senator John Kennedy wryly listed Maggie's Senate techniques: "He never visits the Senate until late in the afternoon, when almost everybody has gone home. He comes in at the last minute and waits until he can have the floor, and then he says, 'What's my business? Oh, it's nothing important. Just the Grand Coulee Dam.' "

Born in Moorhead, Minn., and orphaned as an infant, Warren Magnuson grew up in Lutheran Scandinavian surroundings, roamed the Northwest as a young man picking crops, put himself through the University of Washington and its law school, was elected to the state legislature in 1932, and became King County (Seattle) prosecutor in 1934. Two years later he won his seat in the House and in 1944 moved over to the Senate where he became a gay blade. He had been married in 1928 to a former Miss Seattle and was divorced in 1935; now he was on the town.

But none of his Senate colleagues held it against him. Once, when Georgia's venerable Senator Walter George chided him in the Senate lobby for missing a late-night vote, Maggie replied: "Senator, I knew you would take care of my interests and you didn't need my vote. To tell the truth, I had an engagement in the late afternoon with a very beautiful woman--a blonde, kindly girl. We had a cocktail, maybe two. Then we went to dinner at the Shoreham. It was a lovely dinner. The girl had a little wine, and she was really beautiful in the candlelight. Then--well, Senator, you wouldn't have wanted me to be rude and abandon her, would you now?" Said Walter George: "Warren, I just never would have forgiven myself--or you--if you had abandoned that young lady."

Today, at 56, Warren Magnuson has fewer candlelight dinners. But he holds to other informal interests. A sleepy-eyed, pot-raking poker player, he likes nothing better than to spend an evening with Cutty Sark and cards. When Harry Truman was in the White House, Maggie was a poker-playing friend.

Next year, Maggie comes up for re-election to a fourth Senate term, and at last week's $100-a-plate testimonial dinner more than $260,000 was collected for his campaign. But there has been no evidence so far that he will have serious opposition--and as things now stand, he will probably spend $250 for his filing fee, may turn much of his war chest over to three of his state's colleges and universities for a "Warren G. Magnuson Merit Award."

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