Opinion: Bonus for Bushido

Under a soft, woolly tam-o'-shanter, San Francisco State College's stopgap president, S. I. Hayakawa, proved every whit as hardheaded as the cops in riot helmets whom he called to quell turmoil on his campus. Day after day, newspapers and TV showed the Japanese-American semanticist with his academic Bushido fully aroused. The result of all that public exposure, Pollster Mervin Field reported last week, is another instant political personality.

Hayakawa, 62, has only to toss his tarn into the ring to become a formidable contender for office. If an election were held today, Field's California Poll indicated, the Democratic educator would trounce incumbent Republican Max Rafferty, a hard-lining conservative, for state Superintendent of Public Instruction. Hayakawa could also provide a strong challenge to Republican Senator George Murphy when the former song-and-dance man seeks a second term next year. Only Governor Ronald Reagan seems safe.

So deeply has the campus-violence issue touched the electorate that in a few months Hayakawa has become one of the state's best-known figures. Field found that he had wider recognition than former Governor Edmund ("Pat") Brown and former Lieutenant Governor Robert Finch, now President Nixon's Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. Further, in a state that has in the past shown hostility to Asians, 82% of the voters said they were "strongly favorable" or "somewhat favorable" to what they have seen of the diminutive Nisei.