Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR Disputes Recent Article on California Primary Elections In his article, "Strange Bedfellows in California" [The New Leader, May 31], Frank Mankiewicz seems surprised that the AFL has...
...Davison (and California AFL leaders) : A quid pro quo agreement exists between the Governor and the AFL on anti-labor legislation (but surely not on furthering AFL-sponsored legislation, unless this was wholly secret) ; what more can labor ask of a political candidate...
...As a result, that body is the fountainhead of almost all the anti-labor legislation introduced in the Legislature...
...Perhaps it will develop that Stephen Mitchell has an anti-labor record, too...
...Davison says made him "the best friend labor had ever had in the Governor's chair," Warren lost the AFL endorsement to James Roosevelt...
...The labor movement can ask a candidate, if it means what it says about its general responsibilities, for a genuine liberal platform, alive to the needs of the total community, and not the narrow porkchoppery displayed by the California AFL...
...Davison must know that this is common knowledge in California, certainly within labor's ranks...
...The first objection raised to my article is the most important...
...The fact is that, whatever his record in the past, Graves today stands flatly for these and all the other liberal measures in the AFL platform, and against the anti-labor measures which Knight had to reverse his field to oppose...
...What I said—and it is the fact—is that without extreme pressure by these two giants of labor there would have been no Knight endorsement, and that it was nearly rejected anyway...
...Labor in California has no such "secure knowledge...
...Over the past several elections, California has been forging a sturdy liberal-labor coalition...
...Says Mr...
...Mankiewicz, however, should not assume that, because he would be elected under a Democratic label, which he acquired only in 1953, labor can feel confident that he would be its friend...
...At that time, with an 8-year record which Mr...
...As for Graves's labor record, it was admittedly meager...
...Mankiewicz erred when he said that the AFL never endorsed Warren...
...But don't you think, as "non-partisan journal, that you should have pointed out that none of the Democrats on the committee took McCarthy up on his misstatements and inventions...
...On the record, there is no doubt that Graves will take the liberal-labor position if elected, whereas Knight's action in confining his labor sop to specific anti-labor measures would seem to indicate that he will remain the free-wheeling right-winger of old...
...The answer, obviously, is: "Plenty...
...It was not I who assumed Graves's political virtue because he wears the Democratic label...
...He was openly endorsed in 1946, when he soundly and deservedly trounced Robert W. Kenny in both Republican and Democratic primaries...
...DEAR EDITOR Disputes Recent Article on California Primary Elections In his article, "Strange Bedfellows in California" [The New Leader, May 31], Frank Mankiewicz seems surprised that the AFL has endorsed Governor Goodwin Knight for reelection, even though he recognizes that a quid pro quo exists in Knight's stand on anti-labor legislation and on the furthering of AFL-sponsored legislation in California...
...Felix Schmidt...
...Graves's labor record, insofar as he has one, is poor...
...We all know how he then went on to become the best friend labor had ever had in the Governor's chair...
...As Executive Secretary of the League of California Cities and the League's lobbyist in Sacramento, he was in constant opposition to organized labor's legislative demands...
...And if Knight seems to be taking a leaf out of the Warren book on labor matters, and if he is to be judged by his actions as Governor, does he, too, not deserve labor's support...
...More than that, when legislation was introduced into the State Legislature designed to improve the working conditions of state and municipal employes, Graves generally opposed it...
...The difference, if these charges are correct, is that Graves did it from the comparative obscurity of the League of California Cities...
...Thus, Graves's labor supporters, too, have a strange bedfellow...
...In saying that the AFL had denied its support to Warren, I overlooked the 1946 campaign cited by Mr...
...But, if he opposed the State Senate reapportionment and supported the anti-public-housing amendment, he did no more than Governor Knight...
...For example, labor could ask that a candidate support an FEPC, that he not instigate cuts in the State University appropriation by using up its surplus to show a balanced budget, that he support the State Senate reapportionment which the State AFL sponsored in 1950, and that he do more for the unemployed than suggest that they go to Ventura County and pick lemons...
...Son Francisco Frank Mankiewicz Says Democrats Know As Little About Communism As McCarthy It was very nice of you to point out the fundamental ignorance of Senator McCarthy about Communism in your editorial of June 21...
...While it is true that other, smaller unions joined in, I surely never said that only the two big unions supported Knight...
...Davison is an official AFL spokesman in this matter, but he has presented the routine explanation given by the State Federation here for its astonishing endorsement of Governor Goodwin Knight...
...I cannot believe their failure to challenge him was the result of anything but their own similar ignorance about Marxism, the Russian Revolution and the Soviet Union today...
...In short, Knight got his endorsement in return for a narrow pledge not to disturb organized labor's vested interests...
...Davison's logic appeals...
...If elected, Graves may also take "leaf out of the Warren book and change his labor views...
...In addition, a significant portion of the California AFL was still annoyed at Warren for the one piece of anti-labor legislation he approved in 1947?a bill aimed at jurisdictional strikes...
...Finally, Mankiewicz says that labor has a secure knowledge that Richard Graves will be pro-labor if elected...
...Moreover, 28 central labor bodies throughout the 9tate endorsed Knight...
...it will not be strengthened by the kind of self-interest to which Mr...
...Graves also supported an anti-public-housing amendment to the State Constitution and fought to take powers away from the local housing authorities...
...The State, County and Municipal Workers have always considered Graves to be biased against Government employes...
...Actually, Knight's candidacy is being supported by officers of the Laundry Workers, State Theatrical Federation, Sailors' Union of the Pacific, Retail Clerks, Theatrical Stage Employes, Culinary Workers, State, County and Municipal Workers, Building Service Employes, and others...
...Surely, if they had known the difference, there would have been a magnificent opportunity to deflate McCarthy as an "anti-Communist...
...Reading, Pa...
...Is this not "rewarding labor's friends...
...Mankiewicz implies that it was purely combination of the Teamsters and Building Trades that forced the Knight endorsement...
...To be sure, prior to becoming Governor, Knight was not considered ?friend of labor...
...He actively and aggressively opposed reapportionment of the State Senate when this matter was offered as a referendum by the California State Federation of Labor...
...But as District Attorney for Alameda County, former Governor Earl Warren had also acquired an anti-labor reputation...
...True, he did not get official AFL backing in 1950, since his opponent bore the magic Roosevelt name and the then current fight against the Taft-Hartley Law identified the Republican party as the Taft-Hartley party...
...But there is more to it than that...
...Davison and had in mind the critical election of 1950...
...Knight did it as Lieutenant-Governor, a powerful vote-getter and tacit leader of the anti-Warren Republicans of California...
...What more can the labor movement ask of a political candidate...
...Washington, D. C. Sol Davison I do not know if Mr...
...He rejected the program outlined above, as well as virtually everything else proposed in the resolutions which come out of AFL conventions...
...Nevertheless, ?large roster of AFL officials and AFL-affiliated bodies openly supported Warren at that time, while many AFL leaders supported him privately...
...But I find it hard to understand what assumption or principle, if any, prompted the State Federation to add to its endorsement of Knight equally enthusiastic support for the Congressional candidacies of James Roosevelt and Robert Condon...
...San Francisco and Los Angeles have only one representative each...
...The membership of the State Senate is weighted overwhelmingly in favor of the rural areas...
...I do not believe this assumption motivated the AFL leaders and unions which bolted the Knight endorsement and worked hard for Graves in the recent primary campaign...
...Is Taft-Hartley any less identified with the GOP today...
...It was only after Warren's first message to the Legislature in January 1943 that labor's feeling of alarm at his election began to be dissipated...
...As for the efforts by the Teamsters and the Building Trades to swing the Knight endorsement, Mr...
...For that matter, isn't it true that it is not now, and was not then, a state issue at all...
Vol. 37 • July 1954 • No. 29
