California: Proposition 14

Who is W. Byron Rumford?

For the record, he is a 56-year-old resident of Berkeley, a Negro, and a veteran Democratic member of the California state legislature.

But all that is beside the point. What really makes Rumford important is that his surname has come to serve as the one-word identification of the most bitterly fought issue in the nation's most populous state. In California, the intensity of interest in the "Rumford" issue overshadows that of such relatively piddling contests as the one between Johnson and Goldwater, or between recently appointed Democratic Senator Pierre Salinger and Republican Challenger George Murphy.

Shock Waves....