The Hoosier Plank

Governor Roger Branigin is running for one of the least consequential positions in American politics--his state's

favorite-son candidate for President--and his platform has but a single, sturdy plank: Indiana for Indianians.

"Hell, yes," he declares. "I'm serious. I want to make Indiana more effective. We have not been as effective a force in national politics as 63 convention votes and a 5,000,000 population should dictate." To increase Indiana's political heft, Branigin means to control those 63 votes during the first ballot in Chicago, and to do that he must beat Robert Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy in the primary. If, along the way, he became the party's candidate for Vice President, well, says the Governor about half seriously, "stranger things have happened."

Informal History. On the hustings, speaking in his raspy voice, Branigin says of Kennedy and McCarthy: "They are tourists in Indiana, and should be treated as such. We don't mind them having a fight here, but we don't want them to carry away the arena." He reserves his choicest thrusts for Kennedy. "I really don't think they can buy Indiana, but they're going to try. I've heard that the Kennedys paid $2,000,000 more for West Virginia than Thomas Jefferson paid for the entire Louisiana purchase ($15,000,000)."

Branigin, 65, may not have his rivals' national reputation, but he is perfectly cast in the role of defender against those he calls the "outlanders." A prosperous corporation lawyer before running for Governor in 1964, he won by 263,000 votes, the largest plurality in the state's history. He has since burnished his popularity by keeping spending down.

But it was more than state solvency that caused the Indianapolis Star to call him "all Hoosier from his head to his toes." His family has been in the state since 1821. He is a walking repository of Hoosier lore, with which he delights audiences. As Branigin expounds early Indiana history, Lieut. Colonel George Rogers Clark comes out a combination of Daniel Boone, Kit Carson and Davy Crockett; Clark's conquests of Kaskaskia, Vincennes and Cahokia sound only slightly less momentous than Saratoga, Trenton and Yorktown.

Hunting Horseradish. He is fond of citing the state's illustrious sons and daughters, mentioning the only Hoosier President, Benjamin Harrison, in the same breath as Marjorie Main, Jimmy Hoffa, John Dillinger and Eugene Debs. He talks familiarly of Booth Tarkington, remarks that James Whitcomb Riley was "more of a devotee of the glass than the typewriter," and notes that "we had Theodore Dreiser, who wrote Sister Carrie and scared everybody in Indiana right out of their wits." He brings up that other literary figure, one James Buchanan Elmore, author of the lines: "My wife has gone ahunting/ Horseradish for her meat." Branigin pauses after that recitation, as if savoring the image, then observes: "This did not sell well."

He is full of nuggets of what he calls Hoosier philosophy, e.g.: "Whenever you hear a man say it's not the money, it's the principle, you can bet it's the money." Branigin himself got into the primary contest as a matter of principle. Lyndon Johnson asked him to run as a presidential standin, and although the Governor was never a Johnson fan, he believed that party loyalty demanded his acceptance. "Here I agree to do it," he says, "and just a few days later [when Johnson pulled out of the race] find myself dropped through a trap door." But Branigin, who cannot by law succeed himself, seems to be finding the trap enjoyable.

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