National Affairs: Duel in the Sunshine

As a chartered plane bearing Adlai Stevenson rolled up to the Sacramento airport administration building, a crowd of 250 supporters, carrying placards that read "Let's Have Another 20 Years of Treason" and "Stevenson Clicks in '56," was waiting to welcome him. Smiling and confident, Stevenson stepped off the plane, kissed a baby and was photographed while the crowd, prompted by a photographer, waved a welcome. Grinned Stevenson: "They're a well-trained bunch."

Four days later, after a commercial plane taxied to a stop at the Fresno airport, a tired, hungry Estes Kefauver trundled out after sleeping fitfully across the U.S. Only a few supporters were there to handshake. By sheer coincidence, Attorney General Edmund ("Pat") Brown, the most important elected Democratic official in California, had just flown in from San Diego and was waiting for his luggage. "Why hello, Pat," said the unshaven Kefauver. "You need a shave." Brown, who had been called a Stevenson "boss" by Kefauver's supporters, grinned and cracked: "When you're a boss spending a lot of time in a smoke-filled room, you always need a shave."

"Eggheads, Arise!" From those dissimilar starts, Adlai Stevenson and Estes Kefauver last week began their duel in the sunshine—the preferential primary fight for California's 68 votes at the Democratic National Convention. At the beginning it did not seem much of a fight. Almost all of the party leaders and Democratic money in California are pledged for Stevenson. Kefauver's supporters could only resort to an appeal over the heads of the leaders; they had to cancel a scheduled television show at week's end because they did not have enough money to pay for it.

For Stevenson, the trip around California was the jog of a man running well ahead. He went to bean dinners, box suppers and strategy lunches. At Sacramento he was serenaded to the tune of Love and Marriage with:

You and Adlai

You and Adlai

When your vote is counted won't do badly

If you'll back him, brother,

Democracy won't have to smother.

Later, at a meeting in the Oakland municipal auditorium, Stevenson found it necessary to calm the frenzied crowd of 3,600 after it interrupted his talk repeatedly with applause, cheers and stomping. Raising a hand, he said: "You must not get so excited. This is just a primary. The main bout will be next November."

The Oakland meeting, heavily attended by students and faculty members from the University of California, was probably the most enthusiastic of all. In the invocation Dr. Fred Stripp, a speech teacher who is acting pastor of the South Berkeley Community Church, pronounced a prayer that indicated inside information: "We believe Adlai Stevenson to be Thy choice for President of the United States."

The mood of the crowd communicated itself to Stevenson. "I am one of those who does not believe all students are dangerous or even that all professors are subversive," he said. "In this era marked and even scarred by a new form of anti-intellectualism, I say, eggheads of the world arise—you have nothing to lose but your yolks." As Stevenson left the hall one group of University of California instructors and staff members broke into another serenade, to the tune of Clementine: