Republican Keynoter

The keynoter at a national convention is the man who makes the opening speech. His job is to blow a fanfare loud enough to drown out all the sour notes. The man the Republican National Committee picked last week as keynoter for the Philadelphia Convention was 220-lb., 6-ft. 3 in. Governor Harold Edward Stassen of Minnesota. He had one pre-eminent qualification for the job: he was not a Presidential candidate. Only 33 (35 is the minimum for President), he is not old enough.

"Red" Stassen will be old enough some day soon, and may well aspire then to be something solider than a keynoter. Already he is marked as a young man who has come far but should go farther. An ambitious farm boy, he worked his way through University of Minnesota as clerk in a store, "grease boy" in a bakery, sleeping car conductor on the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul. In the R. O. T. C., he was such a dead-shot with a rifle that he was put on as an act in an R. O. T. C. circus, where he shot the brass buttons off a fellow soldier's uniform. Lean and hungry-looking, too big for his clothes, mature beyond his years, Red Stassen confided to friends that some day he would be Governor.

In 1929, with a law-school diploma in his pocket, he set up to practice in South St. Paul, in partnership with his friend Elmer James Ryan. As a result of overwork, he came down with tuberculosis. That slowed him up for only a short while. With the help of Ryan, a Democrat, he got himself elected a Republican county attorney in 1930. He returned the favor by helping Ryan become city attorney, U. S. Congressman in 1934, again in 1936 and '38. (This year Republican Keynoter Stassen will have to decide whether he is going to support Democrat Elmer Ryan for a fourth term.)

When Stassen ran for Governor in 1938, against Farmer-Laborite Elmer Austin Benson, the red hair on his big head had begun to turn sorrel and recede. By that time he had perfected all he had learned about politics in college. To his natural informality was added a slow grin which revealed one snagged, gold-edged front tooth. Backed by Minnesota progressives and a rowdy, pistol-shooting, horse-riding organization from the South St. Paul stockyards, called the "Hook 'Em Cows," he won the election, became the youngest Governor in the U. S.

Up for re-election this year, it is by no means certain that he will win again. Young, liberal Republicans approve his record. He wrote an act to settle labor trouble by requiring a cooling-off period before a strike could be called or a lockout declared. The act worked like a charm: under his administration there has been not one serious industrial strike in Minnesota. Stassen's claims are that he has reduced State expenses, invested Minnesota's government with a new sense of integrity. But old-line politicians grumb that he has not taken care of the faithful.

Stassen was a shrewd choice for keynoter not only because he is young but because he visibly represents the new-found strength of the Republicans. To run the convention as permanent chairman, the National Committee nominated a more experienced politician, well-worn Joe Martin. Minority Leader of the House.

Neither Martin's nor Stassen's job promised to be a sinecure. Even as the committee met last week in Philadelphia, Republicans in the East, like an orchestra whose members were all reading from different scores, raised a cacophonous din. Sour was the note from Maryland, where Robert Alphonso Taft withdrew in pique before the rambunctious invasion of Tom Dewey. Liberal Republicans in the East, to whom the name of Pennsylvania Boss Joseph N. Pew Jr. is pure onomatopoeia, made beckoning sounds to a strayed Democrat, Wendell Willkie.

Loudest caterwauling came from New York, where Tom Dewey and New York County Chairman Kenneth Simpson came within an ace of saying what they thought about one another. A longstanding, bitter, personal enmity came out into the open. Said Deweyman Warren B. Ashmead, Queens County committeeman trying to oust Mr. Simpson as national committeeman: "There had to be a showdown sooner or later." Said Mr. Simpson: "I am now of course relieved from any further favorite-son support of Mr. Dewey."

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