California: Big Daddy

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At Bill Pearl's health studio in Sacramento last week, a grunting behemoth of a man did twelve pushups, then collapsed in a sweat. "God, you're strong, Jesse," gasped an admirer. California Assemblyman Jesse Marvin ("Big Daddy") Unruh, 38, surveyed his 275-lb. girth and rumbled happily: "If I get any stronger, I'll be so goddam strong I'll be deadly."

As a politician, Jesse Unruh already bids fair to become the most powerful Democrat in the nation's second most populous state. A resident of Los Angeles, he has made Southern California his undisputed Democratic barony. In the California assembly, where he is chairman of the key Ways & Means Committee, he has surrounded himself with a tough and loyal group of followers known as Unruh's "Praetorian Guard." Last week, with a majority of the assembly already pledged in writing to support him, Unruh seemed certain to become Sacramento's next speaker. All that remained was to remove Incumbent Speaker Ralph Brown—and Big Daddy felt sure that he could arrange for Brown to be appointed shortly to a high state judgeship in. Fresno.

When, some time in early 1962, Unruh picks up the speaker's gavel, he will take over a post that by the nature of its duties stands second only to the governorship in importance. And California's Democratic Governor Edmund G. ("Pat") "Brown, a political master of the hesitation waltz, should be no particular obstacle in the path of Unruh's drive for actual party power. Already Unruh is greeted far more warmly in John Kennedy's White House than Brown.

Eat, Drink & Be Merry. Jesse Unruh has come a long way from his boyhood on a cotton farm in Swenson, Texas (pop. 98). The Unruhs were hard-working sharecroppers. Nettie Unruh cut her three sons' hair all through high school, and when it came to buying clothes, all that the boys could expect were pants and shirts. ("Underwear," explains Jesse Unruh, "was just something to waste money on.") As a teenager, Jesse made his way to Los Angeles, got a job as a riveter at Douglas Aircraft. During World War II he served in Texas and the Aleutians as a Navy metalsmith, married a Corpus Christi teacher. Back in Los Angeles after the war, Unruh went to U.S.C., working nights in the aircraft plants to support his growing family (they now have five children). On campus he developed an insatiable appetite for politics, dabbled in ultraliberal causes. "The Communists," he recalls, "rushed me like they were Sigma Chi and I was a future Ail-American."

After graduation, Unruh barged into the maelstrom of Southern California politics, soon made a name for himself as a tough, liberal Democrat with a talent for back room profanity. In 1954 he was elected to the assembly. Eying the swarm of free-spending Sacramento lobbyists, Unruh decided that they could be put to systematic practical use. He became a one-man collection agency, spreading the lobbyists' largesse among deserving Democrats for their campaign chests. To cries that such practice is unethical, Unruh simply snorts: "If you can't take what the lobbyists offer and still vote against them, you don't belong here."