The Warren Touch

The voice sounded startlingly like Franklin Roosevelt's. In the space of 16 weeks it had spoken to close to 250,000 people on some 300 California street corners. But it was only Jimmy.

Last week, Democrats had to admit that it would take more than the voice and the Roosevelt name to win the governorship in November. F.D.R.'s eldest son James emerged from California's primary as winner of the Democratic nomination all right, but even in the flush of victory he scarcely looked like a real threat to Republican Governor Earl Warren.

Smiling Earl Warren, a friendly man who never actually stops campaigning, campaigned for the primaries on his record and his carefully nurtured reputation as a bipartisan governor. Warren, as did Jimmy, cross-filed on both Republican and Democratic tickets, under the peculiar rules of the California primaries, which are as mixed up as fruit salad.

Jimmy campaigned valiantly, handicapped by the fact that he could not find anything particularly wrong with Warren. He got only grudging support from the politicos, who mistrust him, and from Democratic Party Chief Harry Truman, who remembers that Jimmy led a Democratic "draft Eisenhower" movement back in 1948.

On the Republican side. Warren swamped Roosevelt by almost 9 to 1, then took more than 40% of the votes cast on the Democratic side. (In 1946, Warren was the first governor in California's history to win both nominations in the primary.) On total votes, Warren polled 1,697,467; Roosevelt, 1,019,419.

In the Senate race, handsome Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas, 49, campaigning by helicopter, captured the Democratic nomination as a hot & heavy Fair Dealer. She beat out dapper, conservative Manchester Boddy, publisher of the Los Angeles Daily News. But winning in November would not be so easy. Her Republican opponent will be Congressman Richard Nixon, 37, a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee, and best known for his bloodhound pursuit of Alger Hiss. On the basis of their total primary votes, Congressman Nixon appeared to be a little out ahead of Congresswoman Douglas.

The inattentiveness of California's voters produced one odd result. Grey-haired, mother-looking Bernadette Doyle, noisy and self-proclaimed Communist who ran on a nonpartisan ticket, gathered in close to 400,000 votes. The state job which Communist Doyle sought but did not get: State Superintendent of Public Instruction.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.