THE DEMOCRATS RIDE HIGH

...Washington insiders have long known him as one of the ablest operators in the House...

...Each declares himself running on his own, which, in translation, simply means "not with Knowland...

...But they certainly have a good deal in common with Knowland, especially at any moment when Knowland is in conflict with Knight, the turncoat...

...The latter suffered from a further admixture of left-of-liberals with whom the press associated them at every opportunity, and there were several opportunities...

...Knowland, Brown asserts, is a willful, ambitious man, interested in being governor of California only as a step to the Presidency, a candidate so extreme in his views that he stirs up class warfare in areas where hard-won compromise once existed...

...leaders predicted exactly the kind of result that was recorded in June...

...Did Brown's June showing mark a change in the prevailing G.O.P...

...For purposes of simplification, a little historical oversimplification about California politics is useful here...

...And Engle's labor support, already strong in Los Angeles and the state's central valleys, has been growing steadily...

...Engle is just beginning to achieve a statewide identity...

...He talks too about helping small business, reorganizing the state's sprawling executive structure, and fighting inflation by tightening state regulation of utility rates...

...The coalition has held together since, despite occasional minor unhappiness on both sides...

...Knight was, and is, a special vexation, for they had every reason to believe he was one of them before it developed that his administrations were to be song-and-dance act variations on the Warren themes of bipartisanship and occasional friendliness to liberal and labor causes...

...When Knight, apparently en route to a primary defeat by Know-land, made what has become part of California political history as "The Big Switch" into the Senate race, some G.O.P...

...Publicly and privately, their remarks were acrid with bitterness and despair...

...If the Democrats do sweep to victory as forecast here, who are the men consequently to be reckoned with on the national scene...

...When Knowland declared himself a candidate for governor whether Knight sought re-election or not, and then strapped himself to an anti-labor right-to-work plank, the basic party split could no longer be avoided...

...While Nixon and Know-land usually drew their enthusiastic support, the conservatives chafed visibly and complained audibly at the Sacramento performances of Earl Warren (who has gone on to outrage them as Chief Justice of the United States) and "Goodie" Knight...

...Engle, next in line, is a quite different person...

...Brown and Engle are building what appears to be a carefully moderate and united position...

...He himself, Brown implies, is a moderate, careful, friendly man, a Warren and a healer...

...nomination with ease, he scored only a 790,000 to 558,000 victory over Christopher...

...The Council, in a February convention that endorsed the eventually successful primary candidate in every race, snowed some political maturity of its own...

...Vice President Richard M. Nixon, still potent nationally, will become a political guerilla in his home state, attempting to rally scattered and divided forces in territory controlled by the enemy...

...For those to whom the song didn't appeal, there was a slogan borrowed from the late Senator Tom Connally...

...They decided that Knowland should have their support—as far as Sacramento, anyway...

...And, going beyond personalities, many agreed with Knowland that 1958 offered a splendid opportunity to prove to the party nationally that a conservative could win in a major industrial state...

...On the basis of similar success in legislative races, the Democrats seem almost certain to take control of both houses of the state legislature for the first time since 1899...

...His record is clean enough to afford him little worry there, however...

...With the aid of Campaign Manager Fred Dutton, a 35-year-old lawyer who has done a remarkable organizational and helm-steadying job, Brown has displayed little of the vacillation that sometimes marked his past...

...The Vice President has no choice but to campaign in the state this fall, but his usual effectiveness is bound to be reduced...

...Usually more liberal than such party leaders as Brown and Engle, it sometimes irritates the leadership...

...he drew a total of 1,603,000 votes, 313,000 of them from registered Democrats...

...The whole spectacular and hitherto uninterrupted brass band march of California Republicans on Washington will dwindle, at least temporarily, to quiet delegations visiting the Vice President's office-in-exile on Capitol Hill...

...When the primary was over, Knight's friends had contributed heavily to the Knowland debacle...

...But nothing to date indicates that he or those helping with his campaign have anything new to offer except bombast ("Reuther, Hof-fa, and Bridges will run the state...

...But the Council almost balked at Engle...

...All this, of course, adds up to a notably brash forecast well in advance of a hotly-contested election in a two-party state, especially one in which the Republicans have had such consistent success...

...The Republicans have been governed by an amalgamation of financial, industrial, and political leaders, using money, newspapers, and public relations techniques successfully without ever forming a year-in, year-out political organization of any depth...

...Now that the Republicans are committed to Knowland, a man on whom the Democratic leaders are confident they have hung a different kind of "extremist" label, they are eager that their candidates, especially Brown, appear ready to inherit the magic cloak of moderation first tailored for Warren...

...Know-land, gritting his teeth, refrained from endorsing Knight's primary opponent, Mayor Christopher, but a good many of his followers could not bring themselves to such iron self-control...

...There are a number of Southern Californians who might forge to the front at any time, among them a one-time loser as a Senatorial candidate named Richard Richards who is still far from through...

...And Knowland's friends had helped Christopher do severe, perhaps fatal, injury to the Knight cause...

...In 1952, however, some of those drawn into active party work by the intelligence and charm of Adlai Stevenson decided that the party needed remaking...

...The temptation is not to be underrated, but Brown, even as a big winner in a big state, should not be overrated...

...The ultimate choice was a party spear-carrier, George Milias, a small town hotelman without the muscles or the mandate to do any head-knocking...

...officeholders in Washington than in California...

...Thus California's June primaries not only determined the nominees in each party, but gave an accurate "popularity poll" measure of their relative strength at the time...

...Both he and Christopher also picked up substantial Democratic vote totals, however, Knight polling 385,000 in the opposing party's primary with strong help from AFL labor leaders, and Christopher drawing 221,000...

...That isn't entirely their own doing, of course...

...What difficulties they have now, in an organizational way at any rate, really come from the foretaste of victory...

...The leaders in this campaign contend, with considerable evidence in support, that one of the Democratic Party's major troubles in past California campaigns is that it has always appeared to be extremist (remember Upton Sinclair and his End Poverty in California campaign), while the Republican Party, at least in the cases of Warren and Knight, was preaching, and often practising, sweet moderation...

...Apart from being less well known than Knight, Engle's chief concerns would seem to be the possibility that almost all of Christopher's primary total of 779,000 might end up in the Knight column in November and that Knight's considerable labor backing might give the governor a better-than-usual break among the additional voters in the general election...

...In the major race, that between Knowland and Democratic Attorney General Edmund G. (Pat) Brown for the governorship, persuasive might even be regarded as too weak an adjective...

...The issues Knowland pushed in the primary, primarily labor issues, are just being pushed harder...

...The Democrats can expect favoring winds for some time to come...

...Many of the party's right-wing leaders, including the G.O.P...

...It took a long time and unusually favorable circumstances for an itching party to get him to move out of the attorney general's chair into a rougher arena...

...For many years neither party had anything that could call itself a machine...

...This last came from the Brown camp where the only fear left is that of over-confidence...

...Under the state's cross-filing law, it is usual for candidates to file for the nominations of both parties, and Knowland and Brown did so...

...Knowland was willing, but Knight refused to stand still even for an exchange of band-aids...

...In a close vote, during which the Brown forces held their collective breath, Engle won out...

...Some of the other candidates whose opponents seem neither so far behind nor so intransigent as Know-land have other fears...

...The situation is complex, but the reasons are simple...

...The obvious first choice is Brown, who would undoubtedly be the state's favorite son in 1960, and in whose name the delegation to the party convention would be kept as a unit for bargaining purposes...

...The Democrats are not fully united either...

...powerful one...

...Not only Knight, but all the state's other major G.O.P...

...The Nixons and the Knowlands, even the Knights, names known to all America, will go to the Republican convention in 1960 carrying little from California but their fame...

...The basic Democratic problem is really one of what is going to happen after the election, if it is won...

...All are Democrats...

...Such Republican notables as Senator William F. Knowland and Governor Goodwin J. Knight will be retired to private life...

...As a two-term attorney general and the leader of the state's Stevenson forces in 1956, he was the only Democrat well enough known to challenge Republican control in Sacramento with any real hope of success...

...While some of the top Democrats occasionally get upset about what they call "antics," they do not doubt its value to the party cause...

...Without significant opposition from members of his own party, he got a total of 1,731,000 votes, 173,000 of them from Republicans...

...Brown is plumping for a state fair employment practices code...

...Some G.O.P...

...If this group of relative unknowns does unhorse some of the princes of the G.O.P., it will control, for the first time since 1938, the political strength of the nation's second largest state...

...Roger Kent, the lawyer and country squire who was state chairman during the last two years of the party build-up here, has already been mentioned as a possible national party chairman, although he would still have to be regarded as a long shot...

...If anything, the Council was more eager that Brown make the race than the cautious, distinctly non-aggressive candidate himself...

...Whatever was wrong with the Know-land primary campaign, he assumes, is highly contagious, and he doesn't want it anywhere near his still open wound...

...Don't cut up what you ain't got...

...They have seen the party's legislative strength rise year by year with the aid of local campaigns by Council clubs and affiliates...

...The result was the California Democratic Council, now a powerful party voluntary organization with a genuine mass base of some 40,000 members...

...This, Council members say, sometimes endangers their financial support and carefully arrived at strategy on touchy issues...

...The party was a curious, ill-suited, and unhappy combination of a few big money backers and an active group of "go for broke" liberals...

...In his speech to the G.O.P...

...But the indicators of a solid Democratic triumph are a lot more persuasive than those usually found in readings of political tea leaves...

...If it was a vagrant breeze, it was a HALE CHAMPION is a staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle...

...Because its leaders tied it to the statutory party at all levels of organization, the Council, composed of hundreds of clubs, some pre-dating the Council, has been unusually effective in contests both inside and outside the party...

...The 50-year-old Knowland has only recently been able to devote his vast energies and monolithic force to the campaign, because Senatorial duties kept him tied to Washington for most of the year...

...There are others who may emerge with some national standing too...

...So they are wary of grass roots clubs...

...Beyond that is another matter...

...Even as a ticket-balancing Vice Presidential candidate, however, he seems unlikely...

...For the purposes of the immediate campaign, however, the struggle between the Council and the older leadership, now personified by the 53-year-old Brown, is over...

...He and Brown, in short, don't seem to be important possibilities in their own right, but together they could play a decisive role in choosing a man to their liking...

...He also concerns himself with countering Knowland's many sorties against his record as attorney general...

...Supported by a majority of the state's 15 million residents and equipped with an electoral vote bloc that gets larger and larger with every census, it will rival New York in importance in the 1960 Democratic national convention...

...The genial Brown drew 2,265,000 votes, 374,000 of them from registered Republicans...

...Engle, as chairman of the powerful House Interior Committee, does most of the talking on the specifics of the state's infinitely complicated and all-important water and power problems...

...Five of the state's 30 Congressmen won the nominations of both parties in the primaries and are thus already safely back in their seats...

...Knight, handicapped by an intra-party scrap with San Francisco's Mayor George Christopher, trailed badly with a total two party vote of 1,175,000...

...The first fall campaign report of the state's best known public poll, one with a good record on major issues and candidates, reported 57 per cent of the voters decided on Brown, only 31 per cent committed to Knowland, and 12 per cent undecided...

...Report from California The Democrats RIDE HIGH by HALE CHAMPION Unless something remarkable and unforeseen happens before November 4, the Democratic Party is about to take over control of the state of California, lock, stock, and legislature...

...The best estimates are that the November election will draw not more than a million additional voters, probably less, and the California past indicates that the Democrats almost always do better among these additional voters who turn out for the general election...

...Nixon is still doing what he can, but he may have to wait until after a November disaster before enough Republicans will listen to him...

...Nonetheless, Engle came through the primaries in handsome style...

...Peace was then certain in spite of some other endorsements that didn't sit too well with the Brown people...

...But they are all sure that having "Democrat" attached to their names is their single greatest asset and they don't want to do anything to reduce its value...

...No matter who eventually assumes leadership, however, one thing seems clearly possible...

...He just doesn't seem to have that kind of drive or dedication...

...The Council's chief disadvantage in its own view is that it is not easily controlled, that policy coming down from the top sometimes collides publicly with opinions coming up from the bottom...

...In Brown it accepted a man with a generally satisfactory record on most issues, and, importantly, an excellent record on civil rights...

...Knowland wasn't able to do much primary campaigning because of his busy minority leader's schedule in Washington but was much better known than his rival...

...Every few weeks the Republicans schedule another harmony and revi-talization meeting, but none of them has produced a notable amount of either to date...

...All summer long, Nixon and like-minded Republicans tried to patch up the wounds...

...California Republicanism has long had a strong conservative faction, but since World War II the conservatives have got much more philosophical and practical satisfaction from G.O.P...

...When Knowland, ambitious for the Presidency, decided the road led through Sacramento, the conservative caucus weighed the risks of the future against the aggravations of the past...

...Here it is: Because of California's unique primary system, Brown has already given the idol of the Republican conservatives the licking of a lifetime...

...When, later in the primary campaign, Knight made it clear that a Knowland loss to Brown was hardly more than he felt the Senator deserved, similar bitterness and despair turned up in the other camp...

...That kind of power generates rivalry for possession where none existed before, and such rivalry is already certain among California Democrats...

...Fred Dutton's first rate job as Brown's manager guarantees him a further career if he wants one...

...legislative candidates who had survived for years in basically Democratic districts did not even bother to seek reelection...

...Every major Democratic candidate has been happy to declare himself against the feared "right-to-work" proposal, designed, of course, to destroy the union shop...

...Another major indicator of the strength of the Democratic display in June was the way in which widely known, longtime Republican incumbents in lesser state offices trailed in total votes behind candidates who had little or no public identification except the "Dem" appearing after their names on the ballot...

...Moreover, these totals came in a relatively heavy primary turnout of approximately 65 per cent of all registered voters...

...Perhaps one last question needs an answer...

...Some of the stitches might be ripped out before the 1960 convention, but the outlook for November is peace...

...convention in August, Knowland sounded again as if he were refighting the Taft campaign in Ohio in 1950 as he charged that "Buster Brown" is just a front man for the secret boss of America, Walter Reuther...

...Representative Charles Engle, the Democratic Senatorial candidate, figures to have the toughest major fight on his hands, largely because his opponent, Governor Knight, is the best known man in the state, not excluding Knowland or Nixon...

...But relative harmony, achieved on the lyrics of "Sit Down, You're Rocking The Boat," took them through their August convention...

...But if Brown should seek, let alone win, the Democratic nomination, it would come as a profound shock to most California observers...

...winds or did he only catch a vagrant gust...

...Skillfully, the Brown campaign always returns to one central theme...

...The Democrats scraped along with a few local cells and some patronage from the national party...

...the rift among Republicans, despite efforts to close it, still looks like the Grand Canyon...

...For the time being, however, he would be limited somewhat by his role as a first term Senator, albeit one of the most experienced and adept legislators to enter that citadel in some years...

...The choice of a state chairman in August was so difficult that no outstanding leader who was both acceptable to all major factions and willing to take on so potentially suicidal a political job could be found...

...Christopher's refusal to make even a pretense of an effort to deliver supporters to Knight has lessened the first concern...

...Brown thus got about 58 per cent of the votes cast for the major* candidates, Knowland only 42 per cent...

...candidates, have refused to link themselves to the Knowland campaign and the "right-to-work" drive...

...Although labor is not a dominant force in the Council, support of labor has great symbolic significance for Council members, and Engle, representing a huge district stretching over the state's least populated areas, had voted for the Taft-Hartley Act...

...Favored to win the G.O.P...

...The dubious are fortunately always with us, however, and they are entitled to their own close look at the evidence...

...he would have to change markedly to become a serious candidate for the Presidency...

...On the issues too, the Democrats stand pretty well united at the moment, not only among themselves but with labor...

...The Council recognized all this, and there was never any serious conversation about supporting anyone else...

...The section of the Republican Party that regarded the Warren-Knight policy of moderation as either wise or expedient or both reacted with shock and dismay...

...His Congressional record, otherwise satisfactory or better in their eyes, especially on public power and conservation matters, thus was not considered that of a fighting intellectual Democrat, and they almost endorsed Peter Odegard, a University of California political science professor, instead...

...Further, as a generally liberal Westerner in a growing swing bloc of Western Democratic votes, he may have more leverage in that body than is usual for a freshman...

...Knowland, a vigorous campaigner, seems likely to come back some distance from this low point, but not enough to make him a serious threat...

...satrap of vote-heavy Southern California, publisher Norman Chandler of the Los Angeles Times, favored, and still favor, Nixon for the Presidency, apparently regarding his well-advertised Eisenhower Republicanism as forgivable strategy in the national arena...