No Free Riders

Mr. Crump can go and catch hisself some air.*

Ed Crump, the 73-year-old monarch of Memphis, once boasted: "I've never been beaten in any election I ever took part in, even when it was running for captain of the baseball team in school." Since 1928, when his candidate for governor lost out in the primary, Ed Crump had always made good on his boast. Last week, he was trying to swallow it.

Tennessee voters, casting the biggest primary vote in the state's history, gave the last of the big city bosses a terrific pasting. They gleefully smothered his handpicked candidates and nominated two of his archenemies--Gordon Browning for Governor and Estes Kefauver for U.S. Senator.

Rough Campaign. The boss had strung along with ex-Auctioneer Jim McCord, out to get a third term, for Governor. This time, for the first time in 20 years, Crump's support was a liability: all over Tennessee, people had finally become fed up with one-man rule from Memphis. They were also fed up with McCord, mainly because he had jammed a 2% sales tax through the legislature.

Winner Browning had been elected governor (with Crump backing) in 1936, was overthrown two years later--when Boss Crump found him too "independent." He had piled up an impressive record in World War II and he campaigned aggressively. At week's end Browning's lead was more than 54,000 votes.

For Senator, Crump had dumped servile Tom Stewart, a politician with no great vote-getting appeal, in favor of a man with still less: an obscure, hill-country judge named John A. Mitchell. Stung into independence, Stewart ran anyway. But neither candidate was a match for hardworking, respected Congressman Estes Kefauver.

Even for Tennessee, the campaign was rough. Boss Crump alienated countless voters by his unrestrained use of invective. He spent $18,000 a day for huge newspaper ads to revile Browning and Kefauver. He repeated old slurs on Browning ("Of the 206 bones in his body, there isn't one that is genuine . . . His heart has beaten over two billion times without a sincere beat"). He called Kefauver an "oxblood Red" and "pet coon." Kefauver turned the attack to his own advantage by donning a coonskin cap and invading the boss's own Shelby County (Memphis) five times.

A far better campaigner than either Stewart or Mitchell, Kefauver won large audiences all over the state. Labor supported him for his vote against the Taft-Hartley bill; business and professional men liked his courageous stand against Crump. When the votes were in, Kefauver topped Tom Stewart by 34,000 votes; Crumpet John Mitchell ran a dismal third. Shelby County, which used to roll up 60,000 votes for a Crump candidate, gave him only 37,000.

With the Folks. Two days after the primary, Boss Crump permitted himself to be interviewed by bellowing down answers from his second-floor bedroom window. Would he attempt a comeback?

"Comeback?" said the Boss. "I haven't gone anywhere. When a fellow's still at home, that's with his home folks, that's satisfying. As long as a fellow can go along with the folks that have known him all these years . . . he's not going anywhere. I have been elected 26 times without being defeated. I have assisted others 87 times without defeat. Altogether, 110 times in 45 1/2 years. Why should I come back? Any man who hasn't got enough to take a defeat is a poor man."

Most of Tennessee trooped soberly to the polls. But in Polk County, a Democratic pocket in the Republican southeast area, Southern tempers boiled over. Three men were killed and five wounded. The National Guard had to be rushed in. When the votes were tabulated, a non-partisan Good Government League had swept the ruthless organization of ex-Sheriff Burch Biggs, longtime Crump henchman, out of office.

*From the Memphis Blues (originally called Mr. Crump), written by Blues Writer W. C. Handy in 1909 to popularize Mayoralty Candidate Edward Hull Crump:

Mr. Crump don't 'low no easy riders here,

Mr. Crump won't 'low no easy riders here.

I don't care what Mr. Crump don't 'low,

I'm gonna bar'l-house anyhow.

Mr. Crump can go and catch hisself some air.

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