National Affairs: Johnson Adrift

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President Hoover will not have Senator Hiram Warren Johnson's vote Nov. 8. Last week the white-crested Republican insurgent cut himself adrift from his party's national ticket and thus brought his twelve-year hatred of his fellow Californian to a political climax. To 70 California editors who asked where he stood Senator Johnson testily replied:

"I am a Progressive Republican; Mr. Hoover is not. He has justly earned the title of Ultra-Conservative. . . . The Progressive believes this Government belongs to all its people. . . . The Standpatter, paying lip service to common humanity, makes a mock of his words by his court of special classes. . . . My views are those of a long lifetime. [Mr. Hoover's] have been acquired in the very brief period he has resided among us. . . . The Republican party is not at stake in this campaign. It is only the ambition of one man who but a little more than a decade ago did not know which was his party and who before that had no American party at all. ... In the present cataclysm with 11,000,000 unemployed and suffering and want on every hand . . . I cannot and will not support Mr. Hoover."

Whom he can and will support Senator Johnson did not say but few of his followers expected him to disfranchise himself election day.

Stumping California last month Governor Roosevelt boldly bid for Senator Johnson's support by calling him "a warrior in the ranks of true American progress." Senator Johnson "immensely appreciated" those kind words (TIME, Oct. 3). Since then California has been drifting away from its adopted son in the White House. Last week's betting odds were 2½ to 1 that the President would lose his own State.* That Drifter Johnson, without actually making fast to the Democratic ticket, would do all he could to promote the drift, seemed perfectly predictable.