California: Kuchel v. the R.A.F.

In his 16 years as a U.S. Senator from California, Thomas Kuchel has never felt constrained to spend much time back home. This month, however, he is stumping his state with what for the easygoing Kuchel amounts to near frenzy. Max Rafferty, the fiercest tongue in the West, has Kuchel in the fight of his political life.

Although Kuchel is a formidable vote getter, his opponent in the June 4 Republican primary racked up a thumping vote himself when he was re-elected Superintendent of Public Instruction in 1966. Rafferty, an ultraconservative, is trying to unseat the liberal Kuchel by branding the G.O.P. Senate whip a traitor to the party. Item from a pamphlet claiming Kuchel sided with Democrats 61% of the time: "Would you have voted for the wasteful war-on-pov-erty programs and Great Society welfare schemes?" Rafferty is a man of harsh rhetoric who spatters his speeches with attacks on filth, flapdoodle, an archy and treason. Along with his blitz krieg of acrimony, he has loosed a horde of acronyms. The Friends of Rafferty have been incorporated as F.O.R.

His armada of light planes is the R.A.F.

To his aides, California is "Rafferty-land," and a telecommunications complex called R.A.M. (for "Rafferty Automatic Motion") links his busy, computerized Los Angeles headquarters to Raffertyland's eleven provinces — which are sprouting 70 field offices.

For his part, Kuchel is mending fences from the Mexican border to the Oregon line, defending his past failure to support fellow Republicans Reagan, Nixon and George Murphy, and hammering so hard for law and order that, as one critic put it, "he makes Barry Goldwater sound like one of the charter members of the A.D.A." No match for Rafferty on the stump, the Senator so far has avoided a direct confrontation. His tactics appear to be paying off. Kuchel has recovered from an early slump in the polls, and by last week seemed headed for another victory in June.