National Affairs: A Hope for Republicans

In the 99 years since the Republican Party was founded, it has never elected a governor of Virginia. For the last 28 of these years, Virginia’s government has been held in the firm grip of U.S. Senator Harry Flood Byrd’s machine. Last week, deep in its effort to elect the eighth governor of its reign, the Byrd organization was in more trouble than ever before.

Dodging Candidate. Part of the trouble came naturally. Like any political organization long in control of a city or a state, the Byrd machine has reaped enemies and resentments year after year. Last year Byrd riled many a conservative old-line Democrat by tacitly backing Ike Eisenhower. This year, when the Byrdmen wanted to make amends by smashing the Republicans, they picked the weakest candidate they have ever had for governor—a wealthy, well-meaning but colorless furniture manufacturer named Thomas B. Stanley. Almost mute on the platform, Stanley has conducted a dodging, ducking campaign that moved one dissident Democrat to call him the candidate of “a know-nothing, say-nothing, do-nothing party.”

Harry Byrd has always been fond of saying that there never has been a hint of scandal or corruption in the Byrd organization or its state government. Less than three weeks before election day, the Byrd machine’s state campaign manager, Sidney S. Kellam of Virginia Beach, and other owners of a taxicab corporation, were indicted for conspiracy to avoid payment of the firm’s income taxes. Kellam resigned from the campaign, then pointed a finger at the new Republican district attorney and cried politics, but the cry did not ring true and did not eliminate the indictment as a campaign issue.

Sputtering Machine. In this year of Byrd weakness, the Republicans have the best candidate for governor they have ever had in Virginia: G.O.P. National Committeeman Theodore Roosevelt Daiton, a drawling country lawyer from Radford (pop. 9,000) who has been elected to three terms in the state legislature from a normally Democratic district. Ted Daiton has been stumping all over Virginia calling for a new road-building program, recommending repeal of the poll tax, and speaking frankly on the issues. He has avoided attacking Harry Byrd personally, partly because they have been friends for 20 years, partly because Dalton knows that many Republican-minded Virginians approved of Byrd’s personal support of Dwight Eisenhower. But he has attacked the machine, and has coined a label for Candidate Stanley: a “popgun” for Byrd and the other big guns in the organization.

Last week Harry Byrd recognized that his machine was sputtering, took to a statewide radio network to speak for Stanley. From the voters, who went (349,000 to 269,000) for Eisenhower and elected three Republican Congressmen last year, there was an ominous silence. Next week, a when Virginians go to the polls, they may not actually ground the Byrdmen, but they may clip the Byrd wings shorter than | ever before.