POLITICAL NOTES: Muffled Broadside

Herbert Hoover arrived in Kansas City one day last week loaded, primed and cocked to fire his best-prepared forensic broadside of the season into Franklin Roosevelt. Its powder: a charge of lowering the morals of U. S. public life. Just then Franklin Roosevelt’s second Peace plea was made public (see p. 9), and Mr. Hoover felt obliged to preface his broadside with a non-partisan salute to Mr. Roosevelt’s efforts. Next day, completing Jonah Hoover’s bad political luck, his thunder was muffled in obscure columns of the press as the Munich settlement exploded on every front page in the land.

> On the same ill-chosen evening, Senator Arthur Vandenberg, addressing the Michigan League of Women Voters, clanged an equally unheard tocsin. His theme: glorification of “Yes, but” statesmen, as preservers of democracy’s traditions.

> Last month, Chairman Arthur J. Altmeyer of the Social Security Board threatened to cut off Federal contributions to Ohio’s 112,000 aged pensioners unless Governor Martin Luther Davey ceased playing politics with the pension rolls. The Governor dared him to. Last week after a hot political word war. Chairman Altmeyer took the dare, cut off $2,576,000 of October payments, sternly warned that Governor Davey must clean up and improve his State’s social security administration before November.

> Two weeks after her primary vote, Maryland last week finally succeeded in choosing her Democratic nominee for Governor. When more than two men in a party seek this office, Maryland voters are asked to indicate their second choices on primary ballots. The nomination itself is voted by county delegates, thus instructed, at a State convention. Even after second-choice votes were counted at last week’s convention in Baltimore, neither Mayor Howard W. Jackson of Baltimore nor Attorney General Herbert R. O’Conor had a clear majority. The seven delegates of Prince Georges County broke the deadlock, swung to and nominated Mr. O’Conor on the third ballot.

> Arm in arm into the Secretary of State’s office at Lansing, Mich, marched the Rev. James W. Hailwood and Tunis Johnson, both of Grand Rapids, to decide the outcome of their race for Democratic nomination to the House. Each had received 4-533 votes. The Secretary of State said they must draw lots. Rev. Mr. Hailwood delayed the proceedings while he read a statement to the effect that he disapproved of “gambling,” therefore would not draw a lot himself, would let a proxy do it for him. His proxy then stepped up, drew out of the hat box for Parson Hailwood the slip marked “Elected.”

> Rhode Island Republicans, convening at storm-battered Providence, nominated for Governor the bearer of a name famed in many things save politics—William Henry Vanderbilt, 36, son of Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt who went down with the Lüsitania. Scion Vanderbilt has dabbled in Rhode Island politics since he became a State Senator ten years ago. His mother, Mrs. Paul FitzSimmons of Newport, is Republican National Committeewoman. Accepting the nomination, Politician Vanderbilt promised he would seek neither higher office nor a second term. His opponents: Democratic Governor Robert E. (“Fighting Bob”) Quinn; Walter E. O’Hara, operator of Narragansett Park race track (which Governor Quinn closed last year), running on a “Square Deal” ticket.

> Nominated by petition to run as an independent for Governor of Nebraska was the skull-capped oldster who has held that office thrice: Charles Wayland Bryan, 71, brother of the late William Jennings Bryan. One of his platform planks: the Townsend Plan.

> It was reported last month that the Department of Justice would not goto bat for Socialist Norman Thomas in his complaint under the Lindbergh Law (on kidnapping) against Boss Hague and the police of Jersey City who bum’s-rushed him aboard a Manhattan-bound ferryboat when he tried to speak for civil liberties last spring. Such a storm of indignation rose from Liberals that the Department quickly disclaimed the report, said it was still studying the Thomas case. Last week Attorney General Cummings announced that evidence collected by G-Men would be placed before the Federal Grand Jury at Newark next fortnight—but the New Deal would not name its potent Jersey City ally. Boss Hague, in the proceedings; indictments would be sought only against two policemen.

> Senator Edward R. Burke, Nebraska’s loud non-New Deal Democrat, returned from a trip abroad with plenty to say. Sample: “In the things Hitler actually is doing to bring about the well-being of the entire German people, I think that he is greater than Bismarck. He already has done more than Bismarck did for the masses of people.”

> Also returning from Europe, Lawyer Benjamin Cohen of the White House Janizariat was besieged by newshawks, insisted he had had nothing but vacation. When the newshawks eyed his bulging briefcase he declared its contents: not State papers, but the Cohen pajamas and toothbrush.

> In Farmer “Bot” Smith’s hilltop field at Fort Fairfield, Aroostook County, Maine, with a crowd of 4.000 standing around in the rain to watch, long-armed Republican Governor Lewis O. Barrows of Maine peeled off his coat to engage short-armed Democratic Governor Barzilla W. Clark of Idaho in a five-minute contest at picking potatoes—a prime product of both their States. Governor Clark pitched his spuds forward into his basket; Governor Barrows scrabbled backwards into a basket between his long, straddled legs (see cut). The winner: Maine’s Barrows, 201 lbs. to 197 lbs. He apologized :”I probably had a four-pound rock in there.” Idaho’s Clark explained: “Your potatoes are smaller and more slippery than ours.”

> Having failed to win a coalition backing against Wisconsin’s Progressive Governor Philip La Follette (TIME, Oct. 3), Robert K. Henry withdrew as the Democratic nominee to clear the way for Julius P. Heil, the Republican nominee.