New Tracks

THE CONGRESS New Tracks For years, California politicos have assumed that Governor Earl Warren was grooming State Comptroller Thomas Henry Kuchel (pronounced Kee-kul) to succeed him as governor. Kuchel, a slight, friendly man, is one of the governor's closest political and personal friends, received his present post six years ago through Warren's largess, and has not only gone down the line politically for his benefactor, but has done an outstanding job as bursar of California's billion-dollar budget. Last week, however, the governor switched his protege to a new track, appointed him to the U.S. Senate to succeed Vice President-elect Richard Nixon.

The new Senator, now 42, was born in Anaheim (pop. 15,000), Calif., son of the pioneer publisher of the Anaheim Gazette, a daily newspaper still operated as a family enterprise. He worked as a printer's devil when he was a boy, went to the University of Southern California, where he ran as a sprinter on the track team and studied law. He got into politics in 1936, served two terms as a state legislator, two as a state senator. At 30, he was chairman of the California Republican Central Committee--the youngest in state history.

His appointment last week was made amid a general atmosphere of financial sacrifice. Nixon dated his resignation Jan.

i to give Kuchel seniority over other freshmen Senators, who will take office on Jan. 3. In so doing, Nixon is cutting his term of congressional service just short of six years, and abandoning chances of drawing a congressional pension. Kuchel is accepting a salary cut--from $16,000 a year to $12,500--to take his new post in the Senate. Without diluting his loyalty to Governor Warren, Kuchel is also accepting new political fealty. "I am now," he said last week, "a middle-of-the-road Eisenhower Republican."

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