POLITICAL NOTES: Where’s Estes?

Among the elected delegates conspicuously missing from the Democratic National Convention: Estes Kefauver, 56, two-term Senator from Tennessee, two-time (1952, 1956) presidential hopeful and the convention’s 1956 choice (by 166½ votes over Jack Kennedy) for the vice-presidency. The Keef’s explanation: he is running hard against Circuit Judge Andrew (“Tip”) Taylor for renomination in Tennessee’s Democratic primary, just three weeks hence, and “I’m left with 55 counties [out of 95] yet to visit.” More explicit explanation: “Tip Taylor is a fire-and-brimstone segregationist, and,” says a Kefauver pal in Los Angeles, “all that Estes needs to lose for sure is to be on the record as voting for somebody like Soapy Williams of Michigan for the vice-presidential nomination, and for a red-hot civil rights plank in the platform.”