California

...And the state GOP, beset with complacency and tired faces, is badly split at the top...

...Whether all this will be enough to swing the state's 32 electoral votes to Stevenson, however, is extremelv doubtful...

...In addition, Stevenson has the support of the powerful McClatchy chain of papers in Sacramento, Fresno and Modesto, support which has usually meant majorities through the San Joaquin Valley for the favored candidate...

...The Tennesseean's electoral strength has been overestimated, as the June primary demonstrated, but he has always had a sizable corps of supporters in the state asking only for the chance to work enthusiastically in his support...

...From the top down now, lines of communication are relatively clear...

...The faction-fighting is kept to a minimum, and the paralyzing left-right split so apparent in previous years (the liberals furnished the votes and hence the candidates...

...These legislative races are crucial...

...In addition, the California Democratic Council, a voluntary association of local clubs, largely an outgrowth of the Stevenson Clubs of 1952, has begun to play an important role in the party...

...the party in control of the Legislature after the elections of 1960 will reapportion the state's Congressional districts, now horribly gerrymandered in favor of the GOP...

...In addition, the major oil companies are in a terrific fight with the so-called "independent" oil companies over a proposition the majors have put on the ballot this year...

...The best guess, at this point, is that Kuchel will run slightly behind Ike...

...The Democratic cause here has also been helped by the presence of Senator Kefauver on the ticket...

...Perhaps only his immediate family will know that he was a United States Senator for four years...

...Knight's alliance with the State AFL, and the consequent position of "Knight men" in the Legislature on such crucial questions as the election of a Speaker, has created real animosity between the Governor and the young political yahoos who line up, in Congress and the Legislature, with Nixon...

...In a state with a 3-2 Democratic edge in registration, which had voted for FDR four times and Harry Truman once (despite a 200,000 defection to Henry Wallace), this was more than a mere landslide: it was demoralizing...

...and that if Ike's majority here dips below 150,000 Richards has an even chance...

...The past four years, with their two primary campaigns, had left their scars on these followers, but Kefauver's nomination at Chicago restored their spirits, and their strength in the joint campaign is indicated by the equality with which California posters and billboards advertise Stevenson and Kefauver together...

...In addition, the Democrats are the beneficiaries of a certain degree of press fairness absent before...

...The Kefauver adherents are back in the fold...

...The Hearst papers have gone even further, and often give the Democrats top billing...

...The majors call it "conservation," the independents call it "monopoly...

...On the Republican side, the monolith has cracked...

...there is still a possibility that a late Stevenson upswing and a large stay-at-home vote might tip the scales the other way...

...These vigorous amateurs, occasionally overcome with the desire to play a hard political role, occasionally carried away on the ideological waves which ne\er cease to wash these shores, have nevertheless, on balance, devoted themselves to the problem—rarely faced here by amateurs—of capturing local and state control for the Democracy...

...The best guess, as of now, is an Ike victory here, though by a sharply reduced margin...

...This year, things are different: The Democrats, for the first time since the middle Thirties, are as close to being a unified party as possible...

...The change in Democratic organizational strength since 1952 in California is considerable...

...Little understood by the voters, it would set up a conservation system under which, by the request of 70 per cent of the surface owners of an oil pool, a state commission could determine the amount and kind of drilling to he permitted...

...the conservatives were looked to—often in vain—for the money) has been blurred over in the new mood of moderation...

...A new volunteer organization has been established which seems a permanent fixture...

...The differences between the faction behind Governor Knight and that supporting the Vice President are deep and divisive, and the present apparent show of unity deceives no one...

...Senator Thomas Kuchel for the lat-ter's Senate seat seems overshadowed by the Presidential rare...

...The race between Democratic State Senator Richard Richards and U.S...

...Labor is united behind the Democratic ticket...

...First-rate Congressional and state candidates are running in nearly every district...

...And not only to Democratic leaders, but also to a New Leader analyst who thought—in print—that Stevenson had nearly an even chance to win the state...

...The Democrats are anxious to end this political mutilation of the state and, in the process of restoring honesty and integrity to government, gerrymander the districts in a manner which makes eminent Democratic sense...

...If Stevenson cuts the margin closer or carries the state, Kuchel will leave the Senate as quietly as he came...

...Late polls show the two close together, with Kuchel having a slight lead...

...California has probably been suburbanized in the past ten years more than any other area, and these new centers of middle-class population are apparently going to be Republican strongholds...

...Since the leaders of both sides in this don-nybrook are staunch GOP supporters, the battle cannot help but divert money and energy from the Republican campaign...

...the man nobody knows," is also making the rounds...

...But Kuchel cannot rouse any enthusiasm and has never done anything of note save to support Joe McCarthy, and Richards is getting the silent treatment from the state's dominant Republican newspapers...

...Richards is campaigning vigorously and Kurhcl...

...and the citizen is being bombarded with an estimated $10 million worth of advertising to help him make up his mind...

...The texts of all his speeches are given in (what we presume to be) full, and his charges against the Administration arc given front-page coverage...

...Some sectors of the press are behaving responsibly, for a change...

...This fight will cost Ike votes this year, and could lead to the election as Governor in 1958 of Democratic Attorney General "Pat" Brown...

...The result has been a series of attractive young candidates for state legislative office, five successful by-elections in the past twelve months, Democrats are united, but Ike is still popular and, for the first time in the memory of man, a good chance to capture both houses of the Legislature next month...

...The party which could once roll up majorities for Earl Warren and Senator William F. Knowland at the same election, which included liberal Congressmen, bigoted State Senators and men with no discernible views at all (such as Richard Nixon) has finally begun to show signs of cracking...

...The Los Angeles Times, which traditionally has seen no need to print any news about a Democrat if it would hurt the Republican campaign to do so, has given Adlai a fair amount of space...