REPUBLICANS: Kansas Candidate

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Almost overnight the nation's press blossomed with stories about the "Great Economizer," the "Kansas Coolidge." Enormously curious to know what the fuss was about, the public demanded more & more. After two-and-a-half years of political pyrotechnics in Washington, a quiet, undramatic family man who made nickel bets on baseball games and believed in running a government on a pay-as-you-go basis made spectacularly popular copy. In Kansas City's Muehlebach Hotel three Landon friends, a small-town lawyer and two small-town newspaper publishers, set up a two-room campaign headquarters, began answering Landon correspondence, making reprints of complimentary Press pieces on the Governor, which they sent out only on request. Landon friends began to spread out over neighboring states for quiet, unofficial missionary work. Up to Jan. 1, 1936 all this activity had cost not more than $2,500.

Manager. By last week Landon headquarters in Kansas City had grown to a dozen rooms, while expenditures had passed the $57,000 mark and Candidate Landon had acquired a national campaign manager in the person of his onetime political foe, John D. M. Hamilton. Long on opposite sides of their Party's liberal-conservative fence in Kansas. Republicans Landon and Hamilton patched up their differences, with Alf Landon becoming Governor and John Hamilton becoming Republican National Committeeman. A dynamic, able public speaker, jut-jawed John Hamilton was called to Washington in 1934 as general counsel of the National Committee, later assigned to help Chairman Henry P. Fletcher pep up the Party, make fight talks against the New Deal at $15,000 per year. Last March he moved out of National Committee headquarters to become Alf Landon's Man Farley. If Alf Landon wins the nomination at Cleve land, he is expected to replace Henry Fletcher as National Chairman with John Hamilton.

Under Manager Hamilton's expert ministrations, the Landon campaign has snowballed along this year in orthodox political fashion. Flocking to a likely win ner, politicians amateur and professional have climbed the Landon bandwagon.* The five-month record of the American Institute of Public Opinion poll : Dec. Feb. Apr. May Landon 33% 43% 56% 56% Borah 26 28 20 19 Hoover 12 17 14 14 Knox 8 7 5 5 Vandenberg 3 4 4 5

Hearst. Last week newspaper head lines which have been monotonously announcing that "Missouri Delegates Are Pledged to Landon" or "Landon to Get 90 New York Votes, Leaders Hint" bore news of a different stripe. Cried they: LANDON LOSES IN CALIFORNIA. In Topeka, Governor Landon, whose boom has been so largely created by headlines, admitted that this trumpeting of defeat was a solemn setback, his first. But observers who read beneath the headlines found a different story.