The Final Week

The real issues had been verbalized nigh unto death. And so, as the tensions mounted in the final week of the 1962 campaign, many candidates and their supporters turned to savage personal attack.

California's Democratic Governor Pat Brown complained: "I have been the victim of the filthiest campaigning I have seen in 20 years of public office." Cried his opponent, Republican Richard Nixon: "I am the object of the most massive campaign of fear and smear in the history of California elections."

Brown referred to pamphlets which accused him of collaborating with Communists. Democrats got court orders to stop distribution of some of them, named Nixon's Adviser Murray Chotiner as defendant in one such suit. Nixon cited an analysis of 4,400 questions telephoned to him on six telethons as evidence of a whispering campaign which accused him of being anti-Semitic and anti-Negro.

"Gestapo Tactics " Supporters of Michigan's Democratic Governor John Swainson screamed about 160,000 letters sent into Detroit by a mysterious "Committee for Honest Elections." The letters warned that anyone not properly registered would be violating the law if they voted. Charging "Gestapo and Soviet secret police tactics," Democrats claimed that the letters went only into heavily Negro districts, were aimed at keeping Democratic Negro voters away from the polls. A Michigan judge agreed, ordered the committee to leave the voters alone. For his part, Michigan Republican George Romney, his voice weakened by a cold, joked bitterly about the Democrats and Cuba: "First they wanted Joe Kennedy to go down there and buy it. If that didn't work, they planned to send Billie Sol Estes down there to steal it. And if that didn't work, they'd have sent Harry Truman down there to tell 'em where to go."

"In the Gutter." In Ohio, Democratic Governor Michael Di Salle, frustrated by his inability to draw Republican James Rhodes into any direct argument, renewed the charge that Rhodes diverted $54,000 in campaign funds for his personal use. Added Di Salle: "He won't make his income tax reports of the past ten years public because I'm sure it shows more than that $54,000 he borrowed from his campaign fund." Apparently unruffled, Rhodes replied: "A man who gets into the gutter deserves only our pity."

Invective has dominated the bitter race for Governor of Pennsylvania almost from the start, and last week Democrat Richardson Dilworth told a Philadelphia audience why. "The five or six issues we have have become deadly dull," he said. "Newspaper readers want something spicy. As a result, for the want of something better to do, we insult each other." He promptly demonstrated how this is done. Cried he of Republican William Scranton: "I would like to separate him from his skinny behind . . . Do you want a man for Governor who spent his time in the State Department helping the cleaning woman?" Scranton's standard answer: "Sir, you are a desperate man."

Kentucky's Senate campaign also turned personal as Republican Senator Thruston Morton's backers claimed that his Democratic challenger, Lieutenant Governor Wilson Wyatt, was involved in some shady financial deals. Wyatt barked back: "Morton now is willing to scoop into the mud in order to return to high places." Republicans contended that Democratic state employees were ripping down Morton billboards. Wyatt signs were smeared with hammer-and-sickle symbols.

In the Texas gubernatorial race, Vice President Lyndon Johnson seemed to be the main issue. Republican Jack Cox contended that Democrat John Connally is so close to L.B.J. that Connally would be a "puppet Governor." Connally charged that the Cox campaign is "conceived in hypocrisy, nurtured by hate," and that Cox is a "turncoat," since he once endorsed Johnson for President at a Democratic rally. Cox took this as a dastardly accusation and cried: "John Connally couldn't buy his way into office, now he is trying to blast in with smear tactics."

Only one substantive issue still made campaign headlines--Cuba. Democrats, predictably, leaped to line up behind the President, argued that Cuba was no longer a proper matter for debate. Said Colorado's Democratic Senator John A. Carroll: "At this crucial moment in our history, I earnestly hope that no one will attempt to make political capital of our situation in Cuba or in Berlin." Retorted Carroll's G.O.P. opponent, Republican Peter Dominick: "I strongly supported prohibiting the granting of foreign aid to Cuba in both the 1961 and 1962 foreign aid acts. I have publicly urged the creation of a naval blockade."

No Regimented Herds. Indiana's Senator Vance Hartke, chairman of the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee, was so carried away that he contended that former President Dwight Eisenhower should stop campaigning because of the crisis. Ike, on the stump, made his position clear. "A foreign crisis must not become an excuse for silence or submission by us Republicans," he told Midwest airport crowds. "The people of America must not be reduced to the role of a regimented herd blindly confusing total silence with loyalty."

In Massachusetts, Republican Senatorial Candidate George Lodge argued that a time of crisis is a time to elect someone with experience. Democrat Ted Kennedy preferred to talk about medicare and job retraining, got a lift from House Speaker John McCormack, who pretended to forget that Ted had clobbered his nephew, Eddie, in the bitter Democratic primary. Said the Speaker about the President's youngest brother: "He's a great man, and he'll make a great Senator."

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