Red Arrow’s Target

Texas’ youthful Attorney General Gerald Mann announced last week: “If I remain in public life, it will be as Governor of Texas.”

Enthusiastic, rumple-haired Jerry Mann first entered Texas public life as star quarterback of Southern Methodist University’s 1927 football team, when he was known as “Little Red Arrow.” To be Governor, he must unseat incumbent Coke Stevenson, a goat-raising, small-town banker. Governor Stevenson has managed the State pretty well, keeping popular by sniping constantly at New Deal “bureaucracy” but not at Franklin Roosevelt. Stevenson’s popularity was highest when he concentrated on gas rationing, which irks Texans living in sight of gushing oil wells.

Jerry Mann’s quarterback strategy will be all out for Franklin Roosevelt, Administration and all. Texas Democrats in 1944 thus may have a clear-cut chance to endorse or rebuff the national Administration.

A Challenge to Boss Crump?

First into the 1944 race for Tennessee Governor last week went the name of a hillbilly minstrel, Roy Acuff, 40, of Nashville. Fiddler Acuff insisted that his friends had put in his name, that he was still undecided whether to run. He thereupon resumed his fiddling, while his friends hoped that Memphis’ Boss Ed Crump burned.

Boss Ed wants no independent candidate challenging his well-oiled, 34-year-old state machine, particularly anyone like Roy Acuff, whose Grand Ole Opry radio program has an audience of 130 NBC stations. Acuff and his Smoky Mountain Boys are known in every village town hall and crossroads school in Tennessee. Hundreds of admirers flow into Nashville to attend his Saturday-night NBC broadcast ; thousands listen to his nasal singing. And if Acuff can transfer his popularity to politics, he may yet give Crump the Memphis Blues.

Acuff, son of an oldtime fiddler, was a second-string radio singer a few years ago, when Columbia Recording Corp., trying to trace an old English ballad, The Great Speckled Bird, found that Acuff knew it and hundreds more. Columbia signed him up. Since then, he has made four motion pictures (two still unreleased) and barrowfuls of money. Recently he put down $25,000 cash for an old mansion on Nashville’s fashionable Hillsboro Road.

The Democratic primary election is not until Aug. 3 of next year, so Acuff will have time to decide whether he wants to trade a reported $50,000 annual income for a $4,000-a-year Governorship. And Red Snapper Crump will have time to fish up another candidate. His present stooge in the Governorship, dull, nervous little Prentice Cooper, will be finishing a third term and ineligible for reelection. Smart Hillbilly Acuff, whose political ambitions may well hinge on their publicity value to him, said only “I know I’m a good fiddler—but I don’t know that I’d make a good Governor.”

You Never Can Tell

In Columbus, Ohio, Governor John W. Bricker bided his time. His friends, in Indianapolis and elsewhere, wanted to get his Presidential campaign rolling, but the good Governor waited for a popular mandate. He sat modestly expecting the lightning, while friends and observers could see hardly a cloud in the sky.