The Taste of Triumph

The candidates for Governor of California--perhaps the biggest single prize at stake in the 1962 elections--have been denouncing and cajoling for months. Now, in time-tried style, both can begin to taste triumph. Says Democratic Incumbent Pat Brown: "I have never been more confident of victory. This will be a Democratic year in California." Says Republican Richard Nixon: "His campaign is dying and ours is surging with optimism. Yes, there is victory in the air." All of which adds up to the fact that it is anyone's race.

Nixon has zigzagged 18,000 miles across the state, most recently whistle-stopping from Santa Cruz to San Diego in a "Victory Special" train. He has squeezed some 163,000 hands, withstood 15 solid hours of more-or-less random questions from telethon viewers. He has livened his rallies with glamorous girls, organized everything from "Giant Fans for Nixon" to "Veterinarians for Nixon"--headed by the vet who cares for his dog Checkers.

Pat Brown has perspired through Mexican square dances and 90-minute television ordeals of his own. He rushes from factory gates to coffee shops, addresses everyone outside of a telephone booth. Whereas Dick sort of hugs babies, Pat really smooches them.

Spies & Smears. Anguished cries of "smear" have come from both candidates--with considerable cause. Democrats, for example, have launched a whispering campaign that reads the most sinister implications into a 1956 loan of $205,000 to Nixon's brother, Donald, by a firm owned by Defense Contractor Howard Hughes. On the other side, many G.O.P. county headquarters have been selling a 50-c- booklet by an alleged onetime FBI counterspy, which, among many other things, charges that "Governor Pat Brown, over the years, has established an unchallengeable record of collaborating with and appeasing Communists from top to bottom." Both candidates of course deny that they have anything to do with airing the other's dirty linen.

At the same time, both Nixon and Brown have tried to generate some genuine issues. Nixon has hammered hard at Brown with charges that his law enforcement is lax, that he is fiscally irresponsible, that the Democrats have failed to achieve industrial expansion sufficient to keep pace with the state's population growth, that Brown has refused to seek new laws to fight Communist subversion.

"Why," asks Nixon, "has crime skyrocketed in California? Because our local crime fighters have not had strong support from the present state administration. Remember, a police badge is only as good as the Governor who backs it up." On taxes, he promises to cut $50 million in government spending next year "so that we can get the surplus that will allow us to reduce taxes." As to growth: "California must have one million new jobs in the next four years. The state is now only doing half as well as it must do."

Calculated Risk. But it is Nixon's use of the Communism issue that has stirred the most excitement. It involves a calculated risk: it seems to try to placate the state's far-right Republicans, even while offending the Democratic and independent voters that Nixon needs to win (final state registration figures: Democrats--4,289,997; Republicans--2,926,408). Yet California, among all the states, is perhaps the most jittery about the threat of internal Communism. A recent poll showed that 66% of California voters favor a proposed constitutional amendment (opposed by both Nixon and Brown) that would empower any grand jury in any of the state's 58 counties to meet secretly, declare an organization subversive, and inflict penalties without appeal.

Brown, trying to turn the Communism issue against Nixon, claims that the former Vice President "is dealing in panic," that Nixon is simply rereading the same script that got him elected to Congress in 1946 and to the Senate in 1950. "Cliches like this went out with 'whizbang' and the Stutz Bearcat," cries Brown. But Pat is careful to advocate an expansion of anti-Communism teaching in the schools "in a nonhysterical atmosphere."

The Uptrend. Brown promised that he would not raise taxes if reelected; rather, he would exempt 840,000 low-income residents from the state tax rolls. He says that he will increase state aid to local schools, but he will not permit any deficit spending. His basic theme is that California is prosperous and that he and the Democrats have made it so. "We have money in the bank and our credit rating has never been higher," he says. "Today employment in California is breaking all records. In just the past year, our economy has produced 238,000 new jobs. Wherever you look in California--wages, profits, new construction--the trend is up."

Both Jack Kennedy and Dwight Eisenhower have visited the state to plead their party's cause. Kennedy plans to return for more campaigning. But despite all the issues, along with all the gimmickry, Californians will probably make their choice almost as if there had been no campaign at all: upon their personal preference for party or personality.

Nixon has tried to present an image of confidence and casualness. Yet his old self-consciousness still shows. Scowling angrily in front of television cameras, he recently complained to newsmen: "I think it's time that you fellows began to have a single standard, not a double standard in this campaign. You do not put the same questions to Mr. Brown with regard to his smears that you do to me." Brown, on the other hand, is loose as a goose--and sometimes sounds like one. Honked he in a recent nationwide television appearance: "The greatest issues in California are the issues of the greatest growth of any state in this union, and every issue that we have should be directed toward the problems of the future of this state, including taking care of them at the present."

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