POLITICAL NOTES: California Finale

Only in the gashouse districts of U. S. cities was a parallel to be found to the wind-up last week of California’s campaign for Governor. Against Democratic Nominee Upton Sinclair and his EPIC was massed all the fire and fury of a thoroughly frightened conservative electorate (see p. 14).

Ditched by George Creel, whom he defeated in the Democratic primary, and cast adrift by the Roosevelt Administration, Nominee Sinclair could draw little encouragement from a belated speech by California’s Senator McAdoo at Phoenix, Ariz, in which he ambiguously declared: “I am supporting the Democratic party in California as I am supporting the Demo-cratic party in Arizona and the Demo-cratic party in America.” Senator McAdoo’s law partner, William H. Neblett, was voting for Republican Nominee Frank Merriam because “Sinclair’s program is nothing more than a contest of the unemployed against the employed.”

Impressionable Los Angeles was the scene of the most ruthless anti-Sinclair activity. Under what was said to be the guiding hand of Republican State Chairman Louis B. Mayer (MGM), the cinema industry was turning out Stop-Sinclair “news-reels,” had even assessed many of its stars for Merriam campaign funds. A united front against Sinclairism was effected by the three big Los Angeles papers, which simply quit reporting news of EPIC and its sponsor. A flood of news-photographs was released locally and to the nation to prove that EPIC was luring an army of bums to California. Their authenticity became extremely questionable when one Los Angeles newspaper went so far as to print a picture which the cinema-wise claimed to be a “still” from Warner Brothers’ Wild Boys of the Road.

“The Stop Sinclair movement,” wrote Scripps-Howard Newshawk Max Stern, “has become a phobia, lacking humor, fairness and even a sense of reality.” He reported a blizzard of anti-Sinclair pamphlets in Los Angeles. One showed a lurid Russian figure waving a red flag over California. Another was an appeal by a non-existent “Citizens’ Co-operative Relief Committee” for donations of clothing, food, room space and money for the 1,500,000 new citizens expected to arrive in the State because of the Sinclair Utopia. A fake “Young People’s Communist League” leaflet bore the party hammer-&-sickle and an endorsement of Sinclair. In preparation, said Sinclair headquarters, were 1,000,000 pamphlets alleging that Upton Sinclair had once tried to take out Russian citizenship papers in Moscow.

Aimee Semple McPherson was out for Merriam, picturing Upton Sinclair as “a red devil.” Seeress Gene Dennis consulted the stars, predicted that Acting Governor Merriam would win, the election. The Literary Digest poll said the same thing—2½-to-1. The gamblers’ money had switched to Merriam at 5-to-1. Almost as hysterical as his opponents, Sinclair charged that “208 experienced gangsters” had been brought from New York to substitute “stuffed” ballot boxes for the official ones Nov. 6.

Finally, dead beat, the 56-year-old writer denied himself to all save a few visitors. Said he: “I’m anxious to get this campaign over. This campaign has shortened my life.”