National Affairs: Bowron Bows Out

After a record 15 years as mayor of Los Angeles, long-winded, doggedly industrious Fletcher Bowron, who presided in the last decade over one of the most astounding episodes of municipal expansion in U.S. history, was finally beaten for office. His successor: Oregon-born G.O.P. Congressman Norris Poulson, a bespectacled, 57-year-old accountant who got into California politics as a state legislator in 1938, and served four terms in Congress before running for mayor. Against Poulson, an honest but undistinguished politico, Bowron was deprived of a campaign weapon which had served him well in the past: predicting direly that sin and corruption would reign unless he was elected. He campaigned, instead, against the powerful Los Angeles Times, which threw its support to Poulson. By describing Poulson as the "puppet" of Times Publisher Norman Chandler, Fletcher Bowron made the race close—but not close enough. The vote: Poulson 287,619, Bowron 252,721.