TENNESSEE: Crimp in Crump

Unique among U. S. municipal political bosses is white-haired, jaunty Edward Hull Crump of Memphis. Tenn. Boss Crump has controlled all the elective offices in Tennessee’s biggest city for the past 30 years. With some 60,000 votes, more than a quarter of the State’s total, to rely on, he has been able to decide any Tennessee election in which the State was not solidly against him. In over 60 city and State elections, his machine has never been defeated.

Boss Crump’s power in Tennessee was never more convincingly demonstrated than a year ago when his candidate for Governor, Gordon Browning, won the Democratic primary by a 2 to 1 majority, carrying Memphis’ Shelby County by 60,208 to his opponent’s 881. It was never more seriously threatened than it was last week by the same Gordon Browning. In Nashville, a special session of the Legislature passed a bill to put Tennessee primaries on a county-unit basis like Georgia’s whereby each county would have one unit vote for every 100 popular votes cast in the last gubernatorial election, with an absolute maximum of ⅛ of 1% of the population. Object of Governor Browning’s unit plan was to enlarge the voting power of rural districts, put a crimp in the Crump vote by reducing it from approximately 25% of the State total to 13%.

Trouble between Messrs. Browning and Crump has long been brewing. The Crump organization that helped elect Governor Browning last year had previously, in 1934, helped defeat him for the U. S. Senate. Once in the Governor’s seat, Gordon Browning promptly broke with his political benefactor by appointing Boss Crump’s longtime adversary, Lewis S. Pope, special tax investigator. Opening blast in the current squabble between Boss and Governor was fired by Boss Crump. Said he when he first heard about the unit plan: “The Sneak has the insane desire to go to the United States Senate. He would milk his neighbor’s cow through a crack in the fence to accomplish that purpose.”

On his way back from the Paris Inter-parliamentary Union conference, the State’s Senior Senator, square-headed Kenneth D. McKellar, strong Shelby County Democrat, heard about the plan by radio. Arrived in the U. S., he took the first train to Nashville, and in the smoky old Capitol addressed the Legislature with a stirring denunciation of the plan—which incidentally may enable Governor Browning to replace him in the U. S. Senate in 1940. Said he: “I’ve made mistakes but I do not think I deserve this stab in the back.”

To get Governor Browning’s unit plan through the House last week, its supporters had to amend the rules so that instead of a two-thirds majority it needed only a simple majority to pass. When it finally passed, 51 to 44. there still remained a fair chance that the victory would prove a hollow one. Tennessee Courts were promptly asked to rule on a claim that five members of the majority which passed it had no right to their seats because they also held other State offices. Even if the five members are not unseated, thus nullifying the passage of the bill, wily Boss Crump may well be able to best his opponent even when his candidates are beaten in the primaries, by running them as independents in the regular elections.