NEVADA: The New-Model Cord

In large, lonesome Nevada last week the winter snows that gave the state its name† began melting on the mountain flanks. Below the snowline, 110,000 sq. mi. of the nation's sixth biggest state came alive with spring activity. Along the Sierra Nevada, Basque sheepherders led freshly shorn flocks to summer pasture, kept wary vigil against marauding mountain lions. In the revived ghost town of Virginia City, cars disgorged Midwestern tourists to gaze at Piper's Opera House and Lucius Beebe's Territorial Enterprise. Around Reno, candidates for grass widowhood whiled away their residence on dude ranches. Along Las Vegas' gaudy Strip, vacationers pumped the slot machines and queued up for ten-course $1.25 lunches. And at a state convention in Hawthorn (pop. 3,700), Nevada's Democratic Party was practically taken over lock, stock and barrel by one of the most remarkable new figures in U.S. politics: Errett Lobban Cord, sometime Wall Street tycoon and longtime millionaire recluse, now turned glad-handing vote chaser at the age of 63.

The Shy Tycoon. To his Nevada neighbors, E. L. Cord is the Democratic state senator from Esmeralda County, where jack rabbits outnumber the 430 registered voters. But in other parts of the U.S., Cord's name has other meanings. Automobile buffs remember the Cord 812, with its front drive, its classic lines and its $2,395 price tag* as one of the finest U.S. cars ever produced. Wall Street remembers Cord as the golden negotiator and operating man who put the Auburn Automobile Co. in the black, and held substantial interests in American Airways, Lycoming Manufacturing, New York Shipbuilding and Stinson Aircraft before he sold his holdings for $2,632,000 during a 1937 fight with the Securities and Exchange Commission. California knows Cord as the man who developed a fabulously profitable eight-block stretch of Beverly Hills' Wilshire Boulevard, owns the 31-acre Pan Pacific Auditorium, has a huge chunk of Santa Anita track stock.

Yet during his 40 frenzied financial years Errett Lobban Cord made a fetish of personal privacy, kept his door closed to all interviewers, stayed out of the gossip columns and away from all but a chosen few friends. It was only when he went into politics two years ago that Cord suddenly emerged as a hail fellow who obviously enjoyed his new role.

The Open Door. Cord's political start came when he was appointed to fill a vacancy in the state senate from Esmeralda County; he explains his decision to accept as a simple matter of civic consciousness. Cord quickly began moving into the Democratic power vacuum created by the 1954 death of U.S. Senator Pat McCarran. He won labor support by pushing through a bill hiking unemployment benefits from $50 to $75 a week. He found favor with Nevada's powerful gambling interests by leading the fight for a bill giving them new tax benefits (the bill was vetoed by Republican Governor Charles Russell). He built up a statewide political organization, won control of the Democratic machinery in both Reno, and Las Vegas. In his plainly furnished Reno office, he held court for all comers. Says one party leader: "He began giving two hours at a crack to people he wouldn't have let in his office two years before. And he loved it."