POLITICAL NOTES: Psychology in Suburbia

One night last week, Democratic National Chairman Stephen Mitchell quietly slipped into enemy territory and outlined a plan for psychological warfare. Before 300 well-groomed members of the Democratic Club of Evanston, one of Chicago’s richest suburbs, Mitchell admitted that the party is in trouble in suburbia. While Democratic candidates pile up healthy majorities in such cities as New York, Chicago and Cleveland, they take a real walloping just outside the city limits. Adlai Stevenson’s 161,000-vote margin in Chicago last year was more than erased by a 177,000 majority for Eisenhower in suburban Cook County, and Stevenson lost many a suburb far less prosperous than Evanston.

The really bad omen for the Democrats is that the population of suburbs is growing while that of cities is decreasing. Democrats who move to the suburbs (and particularly the women) are inclined to lose the faith, Mitchell admitted. A fervent Democrat’s wife, he said, may agree with her husband’s views, but she finds that she is not invited to the right places in suburbia if she sounds like a Democrat. Said Mitchell: “Very frequently when she was torn this way, she went along with her neighbors and voted Republican. After all, she had to live with them all day—she saw her husband only a few hours in the evening. And. remember, a new lady in a community may have to work a little to get fully accepted . . . whereas she usually has her husband completely under control. Sometimes she has him controlled so well, in fact, that after the wife is converted, the husband gets converted too.”

Last year, said Mitchell, a suburban woman told him a heart-rending story about how she and another faithful Democrat discovered each other in hushed conversations over the back fence and “sat out the campaign together, listening furtitely to Adlai Stevenson’s speeches and staying away from their neighbors.” From now on, said the chairman, the Democratic Party should get its faithful in suburbia together often enough to provide moral support for all. Said he: “We ought to take a cue from the churches in this matter. They have long made it a practice to visit newcomers and invite them to church. Suburban business houses have a ‘Welcome Wagon.’ But we Democrats have been content to let newcomers arrive with no reception at all—and because they’re left alone, they’ve often joined the other church and started trading at the other store.”