National Reports:
HAMILTON, SAM ROMER, JOSEPH K. FISZMAN, HOWARD D.
National Reports San Francisco: Frank Mankiewicz. Minneapolis: Sam Romer. Chicago: Albert N. Votaw. Boston: Courtney Sheldon. Dallas: Bicknell Eubanks. New Orleans: John Carmichael. St. Louis:...
...There were minor troubles...
...The state ticket was built carefully...
...Without much publicity, too, Mississippi voted on a Constitutional amendment which deprives 550,000 Negro citizens of the right to exercise their voting franchise...
...While Moye ran on an anti-Davis platform, emphasizing local issues, Cramer ran on the Eisenhower program alone...
...Charles Moye, a young Decatur attorney, ran in the vital Fifth District against incumbent James C. Davis, former judge of the Stone Mountain circuit, headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan for this area...
...Mississippi also adopted Georgia's school plan (which, incidentally, was rejected at the last moment by its original sponsor, South Carolina Governor James Byrnes...
...Whether the explanation should be given orally or in writing is to be decided upon by the same official...
...a Democratic office-holder accused of playing loose with finances was denied endorsement...
...These 70,000 voles make the Florida GOP eligible to participate in future primaries...
...he ran again in 1945 and won...
...he took metropolitan Wayne and Macomb Counties by 2 to 1. In large measure, it was a vote for a change, which in Michigan meant elimination of the veteran Republican officeholders...
...In 1950, for instance, a right-winger was nominated for Governor, and many Humphrey adherents proceeded to vote for Luther Youngdahl, the Republican incumbent...
...it included a country editor, a former United States prosecutor, a milk driver and a farmer...
...They made the party-liners their first target and helped organize Americans for Democratic Action...
...Harold] Saxon [Secretary of the Georgia Education Association] and [Kankakee] Anderson [Polk County School Superintendent] to Delaware where they belong and bring [Bryant] Bowles [head of the National Association for the Advancement of White People] down here where he belongs...
...As tallies poured in from the other small counties, especially those of northern Georgia, the picture took an unexpected though temporary turn which was responsible for the big wire services' premature announcements that the Amendment had been defeated...
...According to this amendment, a voter, before he is permitted to register for future elections, must take a rigid test to prove that he is able not only to read the State Constitution but also to comment on it and explain it--orally and in writing--for the officiating registrar...
...Less than half of the eligible voters cast their ballots in this case, and, of these, less than one third (less than 150,000, but enough to pass the amendment) gave their endorsement...
...Meanwhile, Humphrey had been a chief sponsor of the 19-14 merger of the Democratic and Farmer-Labor parties...
...His opponent apparently did not expect the defeat, since he spent only $2,000 on his campaign as compared with Cramer's $10,700...
...Karl Rolvaag, candidate for Lieutenant Governor, ceased being bashful about references to his father, Ole Rolvaag, revered for his Giants in the Earth...
...The Seventeenth District in suburban Detroit was captured by Judge Martha Griffiths...
...In summing up the elections in the South, it should be noted that, for the first time in Georgia's history, a Republican ran for the U.S...
...When the vote-counters had finished, Hubert Humphrey was returned to the Senate with a 150,000 majority...
...The final result, however, was 208,399 for and 181,050 against...
...Humphrey, rejected for military service, put his academic background to work for the Government, first directing the WPA's adult education in Minnesota and then serving with the War Manpower Commission...
...How many farmers voted Democratic is not evident, but apparently not many...
...The Republican candidate, J. Tom Watson, who died ten days before the election, nevertheless received an impressive 70,000 voles (compared to 230,000 for Democrat LeRoy Collins...
...The young ex-Marine became Humphrey's administrator of veteran affairs and later was civil-service commissioner...
...In 1943, Humphrey ran for Mayor of Minneapolis and lost...
...Humphrey, at 26, was a Depression-scarred "old man" to the younger students...
...Freeman had decided not to run in 1954, but Humphrey told him that the ticket needed his name and experience, and Freeman was nominated in the primary by an overwhelming vote...
...They will be plagued by a Republican State Senate...
...This was in sharp contrast to his hair-line recount victories in 1950 and 1952 by 1,154 and 8,600 votes respectively...
...The Democratic sweep was a triumph for G. Mennen (Soapy) Williams, who became the first fourth-term Governor in the state's history...
...The Democrats picked up two of the three or four close Congressional districts, thus securing 7 of the 18 House seats...
...Humphrey's nomination for Senator was the victory signal...
...Here, too, both sides used every trick known in political in-fighting, and for four years neither faction could claim victory...
...The Governor carried every county in the depressed Upper Peninsula...
...It was a bitter fight...
...How did the Democrats manage to carry the entire state ticket for the first time since the Depression days of 1936...
...Their employes are not willing to move to a state that lacks a stable public-school system...
...And, in a television appearance, Vice-Chairman Henry Stewart topped his colleague with "I'd rather have my son grow up in ignorance than grow up on a social basis with the colored race...
...But few friends of Humphrey and Freeman doubt that they will successfully combine ideals and administration...
...Cramer, a 31-year-old St...
...Petersburg attorney and former Democrat, received 2,000 votes more than his Democratic opponent...
...The Amendment's success is already having repercussions in the state...
...he had quit the University six years before to go back to work in his father's drug store, and, when he returned, he brought a bride with him...
...Orville Freeman was elected Governor, carrying with him every major state office except one...
...The elections also shed light on the thinking of leading politicians here...
...Even more perplexing, what happened to Senator Homer Ferguson...
...Everyone conceded that Patrick McNamara was respectable and campaigned surprisingly well, but...
...The most surprising feature of the election was the defeat of veteran GOP leader Homer Ferguson by an obscure AFL union official...
...Their weakness as political leaders in the community at large was pointed up in 1952 when Freeman lost Hennepin County (Minneapolis), once Humphrey's stronghold...
...The war temporarily separated the two...
...Geographically, the Democratic pluralities corresponded closely with the unemployment map...
...Actually, the Democrats won a bread-and-butter victory...
...Williams and the rest of the ticket hammered at unemployment, decreased incomes, and low farm prices...
...There is talk that certain firms which had planned to move to or expand in Georgia because of its favorable tax laws and cheaper labor are having second thoughts on the matter...
...In Florida, for the first time since Reconstruction days, a Republican, William C. Cramer, was elected to Congress...
...it needed not only vigorous leadership but a thorough housecleaning...
...Meanwhile, the Republicans ran with Ike and against the Farmer-Labor scandals of the '30s...
...Through it all, Humphrey ran with the entire state ticket in his embrace, pleading for a party vote "right down the line...
...This time Williams, ably assisted by Philip Hart, the candidate for Lieutenant Governor and Democratic heir apparent, carried along his entire ticket of political unknowns and pushed Patrick McNamara into the United States Senate to boot...
...The "young intellectuals" discarded some old notions of political behavior and acted like "old pros...
...His victory coincided with Freeman's discharge from the armed forces after being badly wounded at Bougainville...
...Governor-elect Marvin Griffin bluntly said: "I suggest we send [J...
...Much of it originated from the recently founded Citizens Councils, which, as their declaration proclaims, consist of "white males dedicated to the preservation of segregation...
...Michigan labor has come of age," exulted the Commissioner of Labor...
...House of Representatives...
...All this is indicative of a certain trend in the Deep South...
...He was ambitious politically and his taste of Government work spurred him on...
...Minnesota's Gold Dust Twins By Sam Romer MINNEAPOLIS A CHANCE MEETING in a University of Minnesota political-science class some 17 years ago culminated in this year's unparalleled election sweep for the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor party...
...An endorsed candidate came out for parimutuel gambling and was formally disowned...
...With control of the state house for the first time in 16 years, the Democratic-Farmer-Laborites have an opportunity to prove their program in practice...
...His preceding three terms were personal victories made possible by the many Republicans who regularly scratch their ballots for Soapy...
...the Twin Cities newspapers, for the first time in a generation opposed to the state administration, will be alert for any revival of political skulduggery...
...Freeman showed his battle-scarred face on the television screen when the Republicans called the Democrats a "war party...
...It was an odd amalgam: There were the idealistic "young intellectuals" around Humphrey, old-line labor leaders who yearned for the past glories of Floyd Olson's administration, some Farmer-Labor machine politicians who had been, more hungry than principled during the Olson regime, stand-pat Democrats whose political sights never rose above patronage favors--and a group of highly skilled pro-Communist manipulators who were determined to use the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party as a Soviet front...
...During the next two years, Humphrey spent almost every week-end in Minnesota...
...In late October, it was rumored the Republicans were slipping so badly that they were worried about Ferguson...
...He rolled up a plurality of 260,000 votes, the largest Democratic plurality ever achieved here...
...In the Sixth District (Flint and Lansing area), Michigan State College Professor Don Hayworth ousted Kit Clardy, the Michigan McCarthy...
...First returns from the big cities--mostly against the Amendment, though not to the extent anticipated--and votes from the small two-unit counties put the Amendment in the lead...
...Freeman was 19, a farm-bred youth whose campus activities ranged from political debates to reserve quarter-backing on the University eleven...
...With relatively little campaigning, Moye, although he lost by some 24,000 votes, gave Davis an unexpectedly stiff fight and--thanks to the independent voters, plus Democrats and Negroes dissatisfied with Davis--insured the presence of a Republican ticket in future Congressional elections in this district...
...But Freeman's nomination for Governor in 1952 meant victory again...
...Humphrey and Freeman quickly turned against the right-wingers, and a new struggle developed...
...Michigan Still Discussing Democratic Victory By Howard D. Hamilton LANSING MICHIGAN DEMOCRATS and labor are jubilant, Republicans and businessmen are bewildered, and Michiganders still are wondering what happened on Election Day...
...The result was a tremendous victory for the labor unions...
...Freeman enlisted in the Marines...
...Never before in Michigan have the CIO and AFL cooperated so effectively to mobilize the labor vote...
...a fifth Congress seat gave the Democrats control of the Washington delegation, and the 20-year conservative reign in the State Legislature's lower house was at an end...
...this was confirmed by President Eisenhower's eleventh-hour "political errand" on behalf of Homer...
...Jim Crow Scores Again in Georgia, Mississippi By Joseph R. Fiszman ATLANTA GOVERNOR Herman Talmadge's private-school plan to circumvent the Supreme Court's de-segregation decision, which the voters endorsed on November 2 in the form of Georgia's Fourth Constitutional Amendment, reflects the political and moral state of much of the South...
...Thus, the inner-party struggle was begun...
...Richmond: Lawrence King...
...This white official also has the right to decide who should take the test...
...The 1937 Humphrey-Freeman campus friendship must have seemed strange to their classmates, despite their common interest in political-science studies and university debating...
...The Republican trend in Florida was also evident in the race for Governor...
...The workers got out to vote in an off-year election and seem to have voted almost 100 per cent Democratic...
...Miles Lord, candidate for Attorney General, pinpointed a minor scandal in the Republican state house and blew it up to gargantuan proportions...
...In this radio and television era, propaganda for the amendment was conducted with the aid of old-fashioned circulars and mouth-to-mouth campaigning...
...On the slate level, the Republicans have a two-thirds majority in the Senate but not in the House, and hence will not be able to override vetoes...
...Six years of political in-fighting had not given the Humphrey-Freeman team much time to build the party outside the ranks of the already-convinced...
...John Sammons Bell, Chairman of the Democratic State Committee--who dared to break away from the Talmadge machine in 1946 and has been doing penance ever since--said that, if it came to a choice between non-segregated schools and no schools at all, "I feel I would rather have no schools at all...
...After hearing this, one thoughtful voter remarked: "We seem to be moving from inequality in education to equality in ignorance...
...Atlanta: Joseph Fiszman...
...Louis: William Wyant Jr...
...Humphrey and Freeman quickly recognized the new party's heterogeneous nature...
...for the first time in Georgia's history, the division between the rural and the urban vote was not clear-cut...
...The unrepresentative district structure, however, has enabled the Republicans to retain full control of the Legislature, as well as most of the Congressional seats...
...as late as November 2. Democrats were privately predicting a Ferguson victory...
...Both of them worked their way through school--Humphrey in a neighborhood pharmacy, Freeman as a hospital janitor...
...It ended in 1948, with the two sides solidly arrayed along pro-Wallace and anti-Wallace lines...
Vol. 37 • November 1954 • No. 47
