DEMOCRATS: Operation Reverse Coattails

As control of Congress switched back and forth by the narrowest of margins over the last decade, political managers turned increasingly to the study of state and district elections as a possible key to national hopes. One of those who pored over the state election ledgers was James Finnegan of Pennsylvania, onetime accounting student, now Adlai Stevenson’s campaign manager. The result of Finnegan’s studies: a Democratic campaign strategy that has been dubbed “Operation Reverse Coattails.”

In the 1952 elections, Finnegan found some statistics that especially fascinated him. In state after state, Stevenson had run behind the Democratic candidates for the Senate and House. Ten Democratic Senators were elected in states carried by Ike. In 32 Northern states, Stevenson carried 61 congressional districts while the Democratic House candidates carried 92. In six border states, Adlai won 18 districts, and the House candidates took 30. The ratio in ten Southern states was 59 to 92. To Jim Finnegan’s close-calculating mind, the 1956 answer was obvious: Stevenson must associate his campaign more closely with those of the state candidates and attract voters to himself through their local popularity.

Help for a Turncoat. Finnegan therefore insisted that Stevenson invite Florida’s smooth George Smathers, chairman of the Senate Democratic* Campaign Committee, and Ohio’s rough ex-Coal Miner Mike Kirwan, chairman of the House Campaign Committee, along on last week’s conference tour (see below), which was the opening phase of Operation Reverse Coattails. In that operation, Smathers and Kirwan figure to play a key role.

As put into action by Smathers and Kirwan, the operation is by no means one-sided. They think that Stevenson can give help to the state candidates as well as receive it from them. In Oregon, ex-Republican Senator Wayne Morse is in trouble against former U.S. Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay. Said Smathers: “Six years ago the Democrats were fighting Morse in Oregon. Now he’s trying to get their vote, and some think he’s just a turncoat. What better way to get them with him than to identify himself with the national ticket?”

As between themselves, Nominees Stevenson and Estes Kefauver planned some mutual coattail-grabbing. Stevenson, for instance, should help make up for Kefauver’s lack of popularity among Southern leaders. And, promised George Smathers in a stopover in Sioux City, “we’ll keep Kefauver in the farm areas. Take here in Iowa, Kefauver has been a lot more in demand than Stevenson. People come up to me all the time and say, ‘Just send Kefauver in, and we can carry the state for Kefauver and Stevenson.’ Get that?

They put Kefauver first.”

Help from an Old Coat. While most of the top Democrats were out on the road, some organizational problems were still unsettled. Open in Washington were separate offices for Paul Butler’s national committee, Jim Finnegan’s campaign headquarters and Archibald Alexander’s Volunteers for Stevenson-Kefauver. Jurisdictional boundaries among the three had not been decided, and Paul Butler did not help by claiming that his organization would handle “about nine-tenths of the campaign work.” Finnegan’s role, said Butler, would be simply that of “personal aide to Governor Stevenson in handling the traveling activities.” Jim Finnegan held his peace, although he had no intention of becoming a mere travel agent. He will, when and if jurisdictional responsibilities are ironed out, boss Adlai Stevenson’s 1956 campaign and go right ahead with Operation Coattails, reverse or otherwise.

And, as is traditional in an election year, no coattail will be ignored. At week’s end Harry S. Truman poured a little of his hellfire into the farm country of Iowa, and the Democratic National Committee announced that he would campaign (two or three speeches a week) “in his inimitable way.”

* At last month’s Republican National Convention, orators usually called the opposition the “Democrat” Party. Last week the G.O.P. National Committee explained that the shortened adjective will be official Republican campaign usage because the “party of the Pender-gasts or Tammany Hall” cannot be considered a democratic party. After a brief flare-up by Democratic National Chairman Paul Butler (“They have no right to change our name”), Democrats cracked that they could not think of any name worse than Republican. At his news conference President Eisenhower treated the subject with all the gravity it deserved. Laughed Ike: “If they want to be known as the Democratic Party, it’s all right with me.”