National Affairs: New Party?

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California Democrats had been cautioned by Attorney General Bob Kenny to treat each other with "mutual respect" in the June 4 primaries and save their spleen for Republicans in the fall. But last week both disrespect and discord cropped up. Most of the Democratic regulars were backing ex-Congressman Will Rogers Jr. for Senator. The rugged radicals of the Hollywood Independent Committee for the Arts, Sciences and Professions, of the C.I.O.-P.A.C. and left-of-center A.F.L. unions were spending and electioneering hard for Congressman Ellis Patterson, who has often shown an agile adherence to the Communist line.

Rogers, privately endorsed by Kenny and publicly supported by "liberal" Author Carey McWilliams, suddenly saw Patterson billboards everywhere he turned. Democratic regulars sniffed a putsch, peeled off their kid gloves.

A Rogers campaigner went on the air to rattle a few skeletons in the Patterson closet: 1) the left-wing supported candidate was a turncoat Republican; 2) he had been a vociferous isolationist; 3) in 1940 he had called F.D.R. a warmonger.

Enraged, Pattersonites cried "foul," shoved an endorsement for their man through the Los Angeles County Democratic Committee, rattled in return the Representative's solidly "liberal" voting record in Congress.

But there was perhaps more to the row than just a primary battle. Warned C.I.O.-P.A.C. Campaigner "Slim" Connelly: "When we get through there won't be any Democratic Party. ... It will be an entirely new party. . . . After the primary the guys who now call themselves Democratic leaders . . . will be so isolated, you won't be able to find them. The new party is going to be the party of the people—the worker."