POLITICAL NOTES: Two by Two

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To Washington last week went the chief executives of 45 states,* for Eisenhower Administration briefings on domestic and foreign affairs. Invited to the conference by the President, the governors—25 Democrats, 20 Republicans—studiously considered state, national and international problems. But their attention kept wandering to a subject that weighs heavily upon governors of both parties visiting Washington: politics. As a result, the conference became a two-ring political circus featuring a two-headed Democratic donkey and a similarly afflicted Republican elephant.

A Change of Name? The extra head on the donkey put in a somewhat embarrassed appearance in connection with a Democratic strategy conference scheduled by National Chairman Paul Butler immediately after the governors' conference. When the Eisenhower-arranged meeting was over, Ohio's independent Governor Frank Lausche promptly headed for Columbus, leaving behind a sharp rejection of Butler's invitation to the Democratic session. Said Lausche: "I do not contemplate joining a political meeting to figure out ways and means of defeating the man who has just been my host." The same afternoon, Lausche had an angry answer from New York's Governor Averell Harriman. Snapped Democrat Harriman: "I totally and utterly disagree with Mr. Lausche. We are here as governors, and not as guests of anyone."

The Democratic split became plainer when attention focused on Texas' tall (6 ft. 2 in.) Governor Allan Shivers. Less than three weeks earlier, Stephen Mitchell, Butler's predecessor as Democratic national chairman, had said that Shivers and certain other Democrats who supported Dwight Eisenhower in 1952—specifically South Carolina's James F. Byrnes and Louisiana's Robert F. Ken-non—should be kept out of the 1956 Democratic National Convention. In Washington last week, Shivers announced that he wanted to have words with National Chairman Butler, and muttered: "I want to know whether he's going to run this loyalty business or whether Mitchell is going to run it. I want to know whether it will be the chairman or the former chairman, and whether there will be two sets of rules."

One morning, after the Democratic governors breakfasted with their party's congressional leaders as guests of Speaker Sam Rayburn in the House dining room, Shivers and Butler huddled between the steam tables in the serving kitchen. When they emerged, red-faced from external and internal heat, Chairman Butler said: "The groundwork has been laid for unity and strength in the Democratic Party in Texas. If the Democratic Party is realistic enough to look for converts to the party ... it generally will have to be realistic enough to take back the penitents."

Although this represented Paul Butler's first sharp departure from the line of Former Chairman Mitchell, he was still out of tune with Allan Shivers. When Shivers was asked whether he could support Stevenson in 1956, the Texan showed that he was anything but penitent. Stevenson, he said, would have to make "considerable changes." What changes? "Oh," said Shivers, "he'd probably have to change his name."