REPUBLICANS: Kansas Candidate

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Few months ago the titular head of the Republican Party, Herbert Hoover, not daring to risk defeat in his home state, but bent on having at least a strong voice in the convention, rallied a few potent cronies of the State's Republican machine and entered a delegation of convention candidates in California's primaries. Nominally pledged to Republican State Chairman Earl Warren, the delegation was well understood to be "uninstructed." In opposition to it, William Randolph Hearst put forward a delegation pledged to Alf M. Landon. Few days later he was joined by lightweight Governor Frank Merriam, who had been ignored in the Hoover slate. Governor Landon, sticking steadfastly to his pose that the nomination must seek him, refused to approve or repudiate the Hearst-Merriam ticket (TIME, April 6).

It takes two sides to make an issue, and in the California campaign which followed, Alf M. Landon was definitely not an issue. Puffed by Hearstpapers, he got courteous treatment, many a kind word from Hoover supporters. Their cry: Is William Randolph Hearst, a New York Democrat, to become master of California Republicanism? When California Republicans marched to the polls last week and said "no" by 344,000 votes to 256,000, that verdict was almost universally interpreted as a thoroughgoing rebuff to William Randolph Hearst and Frank F. Merriam.

Not a blow but a blessing in most observers' eyes was the California vote to Governor Landon. Ever since Publisher Hearst took up the Landon candidacy, and especially since he and his entourage descended on Topeka last December in two private cars and a chartered Pullman, Hearst support has been a prime Landon problem.

"I believe that Hearst as an ally of any politician is a form of political suicide," declared one of Alf Landon's supporters, wise old William Allen White of Emporia last month. "Hearst is a hitch-hiker on the Landon bandwagon. Sooner or later Landon will have to throw him off or feel Hearst's gun in his ribs. For his own good luck—the sooner the better."

Last week California voters solved Alf Landon's problem for him. Publisher Hearst could still puff the Landon boom, but the one instrument by which he could have exerted real pressure on the Kansas candidate had irretrievably slipped his grasp. Commented Governor Landon: "I am entirely satisfied with the California results."

Friends & Foes. Untraveled Alf Landon has no such multitude of friends throughout the land as Franklin Roosevelt had cultivated before 1932. By the same token, he has few enemies. Candidate Herbert Hoover is reputed to have privately called Candidate Landon "wishy-washy" and "smeared with oil." Candidate Frank Knox has publicly declared Alf Landon a man after his own mind, whom he would gladly support in a Presidential campaign. Candidate William E. Borah last week announced: "If Mr. Knox or Mr. Landon comes to the Cleveland convention with a fair expression of the public that he is their choice, I'm not going to stand in the way."