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Ailing Bob Hannegan was in California, chatting with National Committeeman Ed Pauley and coaxing San Francisco into bidding for the Democratic convention next summer. When reporters tracked him down, he finally confirmed the recurrent rumor that he might resign as Democratic National Chairman.

It all depended on his health, he said. Repeated trips to the hospital and one major operation had failed to cure his chronic high blood pressure. He was headed for another physical checkup on Sept. 1. If the doctor ordered him to give up one of his jobs, he would keep the Cabinet job and let the committee chairmanship go.

The list of possible successors included most of the same old names: ex-Senator Sam Jackson of Indiana; Oklahoma's Governor Bob Kerr; mousy Les Biffle, the Senate Democrats' masterminding policy committee director; New Dealing Judge Sherman ("Shay") Minton, who has been mentioned for every vacancy from the Supreme Court to the War Department. One old name missing from the list this time was Hannegan's young, exuberant executive assistant, Gael Sullivan, who left his chances in a Rhode Island district court last month when he pleaded guilty to a charge of dangerous driving (scaled down from drunken driving).

One new name on the succession list was that of New Mexico's Secretary of Agriculture Clinton Anderson. Like Hannegan, Clint Anderson was not feeling up to snuff. Suffering from diabetes, he had doubled his insulin treatments under pressure of his Cabinet job. His real ambition is to go to the Senate if New Mexico's Carl Hatch decides not to run again next year. But this week Clint Anderson was off for Hawaii, where he will spend the next few weeks resting up and thinking it over with Bob Hannegan at Ed Pauley's fancy Cocoanut Island hideaway.

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