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Show Hot and Heavy Campaign Predicted As Ike and fidlai Vie for Presidency By the time the Democratic convention screeched to a halt In Chicago on July 26 America had the line-ups for what Is shaping up to be one of the most crucial presidential elections In the nation's na-tion's history. To compete with Republicans Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon for the presidential prize the Democrats picked Gov. Adlai Stevenson of Illinois and Sen. John Sparkman of Alabama and they did it the hard way. In a wide-open, bellowing, week-long convention. When, on that fateful Friday evening, eve-ning, the forces behind Adlai Stevenson Ste-venson pushed him over the top to receive the presidenial nomination on the third ballot it was the climax to one of the most violent and raucous rau-cous political conventions ever held anywhere. Ever since the opening of the big quadrennial meeting on Monday, July 21, the 1,230 Democratic delegates dele-gates Inhabiting the swarming floor of Chicago's International Amphitheatre Amphi-theatre had fought like the Kilkenny cats over civil rights, candidates, party loyalty, and a few other less profound issues such as whether or not to adjourn." Breach Healed But in the end, the main breach that had threatened to divide the party a liberal vs. conservative fight over the now famous Moody loyalty "assurance" resolution In this respect he is in a certain amount of accord with the Republican Repub-lican nominee, Eisenhower. Sen. John Sparkman, the Democrats' Demo-crats' vice-presidential choice, has the blessing of the main body of party leaders, although there are some areas of coolness toward him around the fringes. Gov. John S. Battle of. Virginia claims he doesn't think Sparkman "is well enough known to be of any help" to the Democratic party in his state. Sparkman and the Virginia delegation, of course, were staunch and solid backers of Georgia's Sen. Richard Russell during the long convention fight. There Is a possibility, too, that Sparkman's negative record on civil rights and a fair employment practices law might tend to harm or cancel out Stevenson's known attitude on that issue. Because of the serious civil rights flare-up that disrupted the 1948 Democratic convention Sparkman at that time joined in a demand to name Elsenhower Elsen-hower as the Democratic candidate. if . j (Disregarded Implications It is a fair assumption, however, that the Democrats this year had their eyes open to this fact and knew what they were doing, choosing choos-ing to Ignore the possible implications impli-cations in favor of nominating a vice-presidential candidate who would achieve within the party the North-South unity they need and want so badly. One thing seems certain at this juncture: the presidential campaign cam-paign will be a hard-fought battle and the election will be extremely close. The Democrats, however, have an edge over the Republicans In that the Integral structure of their party organization has not been so severely damaged. The Republican Old Guard, represented by the defeated de-feated Taft forces, remains bitter over Elsenhower's nomination and has not yet been teen jumping over any fences to give its full support sup-port to the GOP nominee. Although the Democratic convention con-vention was furious political melee, the party succeeded in maintaining a working cohesion, which was at least partly the result re-sult of Sen. Estes Kefauver'i graceful grace-ful acceptance of his defeat. I Kefauver, who started out the Convention w.m luc iuoji ... support and the greatest number of delegates known to be pledged to any of the candidates, played the. role of the stag at bay during the whole proceedings'. He was besieged be-sieged at every turn by a growing force of Stevenson, and in the final analysis could not cope - with the tremendous influence wielded by the Illinois and New York delegations. delega-tions. ' . ' - Two Costly Errors In addition, the Tennessee senator sen-ator made two tactical errors during dur-ing the convention which didn't help his cause a bit: (1) He appeared ap-peared In the convention hall Wednesday afternoon, in direct violation, of I. longstanding tradi- ADLAI STEVENSON had been pretty well bridged. Stevenson's Ste-venson's choice of Sparkman as the vice-presidential candidate was intended in-tended to. cap the effort towards Nofth-South unity,' - although " some dissonant voices still were being heard. Stevenson himself, in a somewhat off-the-cuff manner, had contributed a little to the impending disunity by his attitude of total reluctance toward the whole idea of running for president. Hit behavior during the weeks preceding the convention, and indeed in-deed almost up until the day of his nomination, probaby Will be recorded rec-orded as a kind of political classic. He made no deals; he rejected all overt offers of support. He repeated again and again that all he wanted was to be governor of Illinois. He did everything, in fact, except make an incontrovertible statement that he would not accept the nomination. nomi-nation. Yet, in the end, bereft of his indecision in-decision after the convention had made the decision for him, Adlai Stevenson revealed himself as a shrewd, energetic, and willing candidate, can-didate, ready to go to bat in the best Interests' of the nation during the campaign between now and November. No-vember. Acceptance Speech "1 accept your nomination and your program," he said in his speech to the clamorous and satisfied satis-fied delegates who had chosen him. "And now that you have made your decision I will fight to win that office of-fice with all my heart and soul. With your help, I have no doubt that we will win." Stevenson, now 52 years old, has held appointive government positions posi-tions since the early days of the New Deal. At one time he was special spe-cial assistant to Secretary of State James F. Byrnes. It was Byrnes, incidentally, who started him on his elective political career by urging Jacob Arvey, Illinois Democratic boss, to draft him to run for governor gov-ernor In 1948. Stevenson is on record with regard re-gard to all or most of the issues that will arise in the election campaign. cam-paign. He favors limited social welfare wel-fare programs to assist those who through "unavoidable circumstances circum-stances have not been able to maintain main-tain a decent standard of living." i n JOHN SPARKMAN tion which says that no avowed presidential candidate should appear ap-pear before the delegates before the nominations have been completed. com-pleted. Although he received a noisy ovation, he created much resentment among the delegates at the same time. (2) In the rough-and-tumble floor fight over the seating of the Virginia delegation, -the Tennessee delegation voted against it. That, in all likelihood, cost Kefauver whatever chance he might have had of getting the support sup-port of the southern states. ' But when Kefauver appeared on the platform Friday night after Stevenson's nomination he was smiling and courageous as he formally for-mally withdrew his name from the running and promised to lend hit complete support to the Stevenson I cause. It was another demonstration of the will-o-the-wlsp sense of unity that came and went periodically during the convention and' which at the end, the Democrats say, finally arrived to stay. For while, anyway. Wants FEPC Law He says he will seek a fair employment em-ployment practices law "with powers pow-ers of enforcement." That, as a matter of fact, was one of the provisions pro-visions he made before he would even begin to talk about accepting the Democratic nomination. He insisted in-sisted that the party write into its 1052 platform a strong and bold civil rights plank." The civil rights plank, as it turned out, fell a little short of what he had asked, but he had made his point. He is against socialized medicine, against doles and subsidies, against "McCarthyism" and against loyalty loy-alty Investigations, which he calls the trappings of a police state. On the Taft-Hartley law he has taken a middle-of-the-road stand, saying that some of its more than 100 aectionj art good, others bad. |