POLITICS: New Shoots in the Old South

Ever since Reconstruction, the Democratic South has been the solidest political rock in the U.S. Crushed beneath the rock, the Southern Republican Party has been little more than a collection of private clubs largely run by hard-shelled political opportunists with one aim in mind: to keep the party small so they could control it and reap the patronage rewards in the years when the G.O.P. was in power in Washington. Last year, the Eisenhower landslide ripped wide cracks in the Democratic rock. The biggest political news in the U.S. this week is that a new kind of Republican Party has taken root in the South, and is sending up hardy shoots through the crevices.

The new Republicanism is in evidence from the Keys of Florida to the mountains of Virginia. In Florida, Republican registration has increased more than 40% since November. In Louisiana, New Orleans Lawyer John Minor Wisdom’s workers are getting Democrats’ signatures on petitions to change Democratic registrations to Republican. In Georgia, State Chairman Elbert Tuttle has established the state’s first full-time G.O.P. headquarters, and new party units are springing up all over the state. In Virginia, the G.O.P. thinks it has the chance of the century to elect a governor. “For the first time since the Civil War,” wired a TIME correspondent last week, “it is respectable to be a Republican in the South.”

Destroy & Create. The South’s new Republicanism really began to grow during the Eisenhower-Taft battle for the nomination last year. The old smalltime party bosses aimed to deliver their delegates for Bob Taft. But a wave of new Republicans, led by men who were interested in building a second party in the South, rose up to defend Eisenhower. After the election, the new Southern G.O.P. leaders got busy cultivating their political gardens with an eye toward the long-range future.

Their task has required two steps: 1) destroy the old G.O.P. cliques and their bad reputations, and 2) build new organizations. A major factor in this process is precisely what the old bosses had been waiting for all these years: patronage. The new Republican National Committee is bypassing the old leaders in most Southern states and is handing out jobs through the new “Eisenhower Republicans.” Moreover, to infiltrate Democratic ranks, the Republicans are giving an important patronage role to the “Democrats-for-Eisenhower.” The G.O.P. hope: that they will become “Republicans-for-Eisenhower.”

The most remarkable sprig of Republicanism is in a state where the G.O.P. was at its worst: South Carolina. For years, the Republican Party there was literally a card-carrying organization. No one could belong unless he had a membership card signed by the party’s state boss, Committeeman Joseph Bates Gerald, a sharp-eyed, silver-maned lumber dealer from Charleston. At the G.O.P. National Convention last year, Gerald was a last-ditch Taftman. Drifting around the convention as an amateur for Eisenhower was a wealthy Myrtle Beach real-estate operator named William Anthony Kimbel. After the convention, Kimbel got authority to organize his state’s independents and dissatisfied Democrats for Ike. His Independent Party gathered in 158,312 votes for Eisenhower, while Gerald’s Republicans-polled only 9,801. Bill Kimbel became the new Republican National Committee’s political ambassador without portfolio in South Carolina.

Since January, G.O.P. National Committee Chairman Len Hall has cleared all South Carolina’s federal appointments through Kimbel. Most of the 129 federal jobs that have been passed out to South Carolinians have gone to independents and Democrats who supported Ike. Gerald, who is still a member of the national committee, has not been consulted, was slapped down hardest when he tried to get himself appointed collector of customs for the Port of Charleston. The job went, instead, to a Kimbel-sponsored Democrat who was active in the Eisenhower movement last year, registered as a Republican the day he was appointed. Said Len Hall to ex-Boss Gerald’s men recently: “Kimbel’s my man. Get with him.”

Hall’s man Kimbel, a pink-cheeked, gray-mustached 65, was a successful New York City architect and interior decorator before he moved to South Carolina in 1941. He was one of the dozen men who helped set up the OSS in World War II, then served with OSS overseas. Since last January, he has been spending full time on the Republican job. While he makes his own decisions, one of his close advisers is South Carolina’s Democratic Governor Jimmy Byrnes, who announced for Dwight Eisenhower last year. Bill Kimbel has built a sound foundation for construction of a Republican Party in South Carolina.

Recognized Potential. Not even the most enthusiastic of the Republican planners claims that the G.O.P. already has a full-grown party in the South. In some states, e.g., Mississippi, where crafty, old (76) National Committeeman Perry Howard has thwarted most of the party-building efforts, progress is slow. The whole effort faces the major handicap of the South’s Democratic tradition, plus such practical difficulties as one-party election laws. Another major handicap: many Southern Democrats in Congress act exactly like Republicans on many issues, e.g., foreign relations, economic policy, states’ rights, and therefore it will be difficult to campaign against them.

But the G.O.P. expects to put up strong candidates for Congress next year in 20 of the 38 districts that Dwight Eisenhower carried in 1952. Republican leaders realize that the conservative South offers a real potential, and the whole G.O.P. national machinery is determined to exploit the opportunities. The Republican Party talked about a two-party South after Herbert Hoover carried five Southern states in 1928, but failed to fellow up with concrete effort. If the G.O.P.’s current efforts continue to be successful, the new shoots in the old South may well grow into the biggest U.S. political development of the century.