What Kind of Party?

Sometimes harmony is an overrated political virtue, and this was one of the times, thought Pennsylvania's bluff, able Republican Governor James H. Duff. Said Big Jim: "We might as well get this fight over with and see what kind of party this is going to be."

Redheaded, 67-year-old Jim Duff was locked in a rousing fight with the moss-grown, reactionary forces of bright-eyed, apple-cheeked, 87-year-old Joe Grundy. The battleground was the May primaries, when Duff will run for the Senate nomination against John C. Kunkel, a faithful, colorless Grundyman now serving his sixth lackluster term in Congress. More than any platform or pronouncements, the outcome might well determine, the course and fate of the Republican Party in 1952.

Service & Sewers. Jim Duff had explained what kind of party he wanted in a telegram to the G.O.P. committee drafting the new Republican "platform"(TiME, Feb. 20). It was a party that is "broad and not exclusive, a party of service and not of privilege, a party that is progressive and not backsliding, a party that is constructive and not petty." That was not Joe Grundy's party.

But Jim Duff was used to twisting the tail of Joe Grundy's powerful Pennsylvania Manufacturers' Association. He had taken on the P.M.A. as soon as he became governor in 1946, had licked them to a standstill ever since. He had outraged Grundymen by insisting that manufacturers purify or divert their wastes from the state's polluted rivers and streams, by forcing mine operators to reforest the huge scars made by strip mining, by establishing public recreation areas and raising unemployment insurance. He had tangled with Joe Grundy again at the 1948 convention when he refused to clamber aboard the Dewey bandwagon. Now both sides recognized that the struggle was at a crucial stage.

Baited Harmony. For months there had been more private talk and public acrimony than Pennsylvania had heard for years. Not even the staunchest Grundyman believed there was much chance of defeating Duff as the senatorial nominee. Instead, Grundy forces concentrated their fire on the governorship, which carries with it -the most potent patronage--disposal of 40,000 state jobs. They produced a "harmony candidate"--Colonel Jay Cooke, a retired Philadelphia investment banker and a Purple Heart veteran of both world wars. Cooke was not a completely orthodox Grundyite; he had been one of Harold Stassen's key men in 1948.

Big Jim Duff, no man for compromise when the battle is going, refused the bait. If Jay Cooke had Grundy's support, he said flatly, then Cooke was not for Duff. Last week Duff summoned the more sympathetic of the state's 67 county chairmen to Hershey to pick a slate. Fifty-one of them or their representatives showed up. But many of them, more interested in patronage than principle, obviously preferred Cooke to bitter intraparty strife.

Time for Decision. One by one, Duff-men called in the waverers and turned on the heat for Duff's own candidate for governor, Superior Court Judge John S. Fine of Nanticoke. "This is the time for decision," Duff told them. "If the Republicans of Pennsylvania don't want to go ahead, then I'm not the guy to represent them." When the showdown came, Duff had won the endorsement for Senator by acclamation and Judge Fine had been picked for governor by a thumping majority of 42 to 5.

Duff's victory made it almost certain that the fight would carry over into the May primary itself. There was no sign of a truce. Grundymen pointedly noted that the county chairmen supporting Fine represented less than half of the Republican vote. They hinted darkly that if they lost the primary, they would undercut Duff at election time when he would run against Fair Dealing Senator Francis Myers. Duff accepted the challenge. Said he: "We will defeat Grundyism in the primary or the Democrats will defeat it in November."

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