When is a Democrat?

POLITICAL NOTES When is a Democrat?

Much to the surprise of many a regular North Carolina Democrat, the Senate last week confirmed (47-to-11; the appointment of Frank R. McNinch, a 1928 North Carolina Hoovercrat, to be a Democratic member of the reorganized Federal Power Commission. Approved at the same time were the four other commissioners: Chairman George Otis Smith, Ralph B. Williamson, Marcel Garsaud, Claude L. Draper. The McNinch appointment precipitated a great deal of senatorial controversy as to just what constitutes a Democrat. Five Democratic members of the Senate Interstate Commerce Committee disapproved Appointee McNinch's Democracy, voted against recommending his confirmation to the Senate. North Carolina's two Senators and its Senator-elect Josiah W. Bailey went through a characteristic series of molecular reunions and dissolutions on the question. Senator-elect Bailey, a regular Democrat, bitterly opposed the appointment before the Committee: "When the President gives a Democratic appointment to a man who has supported him the conclusion is that the President is using a Democratic appointment to reward a supporter of himself." But Senator Cameron Morrison, likewise a regular Democrat, who was designated to fill the post of late Senator Lee Slater Overman (TIME, Dec. 22), defended his friend and neighbor, McNinch, before the Committee and again in his maiden Senate speech. "I think McNinch is a man mightily and seriously disturbed in his political relations," he admitted, "but nevertheless he is pure and honest." Strangely allied with Senator Morrison was his longtime foe, Senator Furnifold McLendel Simmons, a Hoover Democrat. Almost identical to the McNinch case among the Democrats was last week's repercussion among the Republicans. The Senate Campaigns Fund Committee had discovered that Executive Director Robert Hendry Lucas of the Republican National Committee had sent propaganda into Nebraska in October advocating the defeat of Republican Senator George William Norris. In spite of the fact that Chairman Simeon D. Fess had promised support for all Republican candidates ''without exception," Secretary Lucas testified that--at the behest of Nebraska regulars who have long opposed Insurgent Norris--he had spent $4,000 of his own money in having a cartoon, a circular letter and a pamphlet of anti-Norris editorials disseminated throughout the state. Senator Nye had previously pried out the facts in the printing plant of Charles I. Stengle, onetime Brooklyn Congressman, now editor of the National Farm News. Director Lucas, unrepentant, defended his action by declaring that Senator Norris was not a member of the Republican party, but a Democrat: "He opposed President Coolidge io 1924, although on the ticket with him as a candidate. He opposed Hoover in 1928, supported Governor Smith. That is the last record we had of his participation in any election and if that doesn't make him a Democrat there is not a Democrat in the United States."

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