Warfare on the Wabash

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At the "crossroads of America," as Indianans call their state, political collisions are frequent and violent. Says one veteran U.S. Representative from the Hoosier state, describing conditions back home: "Hell, we play it rough in Indiana. There's always blood on the floor, and the guy whose blood it isn't just happens to be on top--temporarily." Last week the Wabash River was running bank-full of political blood, and the man on top in a statewide political brawl was a swift-footed, swashbuckling lawyer-politician named George North Craig.

Indiana's Governor Craig has been praised by Dwight Eisenhower as one of the younger (he's 45) Republican officeholders who should be pushed upward and forward in the Eisenhower-led G.O.P. In pointing to men like Craig as the coming leaders of the party, the President has recognized a key fact of political life in the U.S.: much of the government and most of the politics sprout and grow in the states; what happens in the 48 capitals has a determining effect on the caliber of men who appear in national politics and on the quality of government they produce.

Indiana's political main event in 1955 is a bitter factional struggle within the Republican Party. Reflected in a raw fight for state political power are divisions of national significance. On one side is George Craig, who is aligned with the new, progressive force of Dwight Eisenhower's brand of Republicanism. On the other side is U.S. Senator William Ezra Jenner, who stands in the core of the G.O.P. element that opposed Eisenhower before the Republican Convention in 1952, and still opposes him much of the time. Somewhere in between is U.S. Senator Homer Capehart, who has been on the Jenner team but appears to be edging toward the middle.

Question: Why Not? Until George Craig came along in 1952, Bill Jenner was the kingpin in the Indiana Republican Party for nearly eight years. To get and hold control, Jenner had spent more than 20 years shouting and shoving his way upward, through the state senate, into the state chairmanship of his party and on to the U.S. Senate. Then Craig burst upon the Jenner forces as a past national commander (1949-50) of the American Legion, and slipped past the old G.O.P. powers to win the Republican nomination for governor. Elected in a landslide in 1952, he set out to 1) make a good record as governor, and 2) get control of the G.O.P. organization. Jenner forces dug in to thwart him on both counts.

Having vaulted into the governor's office in a hurry, George Craig landed running, has been in a hurry ever since. An administrator by instinct, he proposed sweeping reorganization: a new department of health, a new department of corrections, a cabinet to centralize authority in the governor's office. Many of his recommendations would have abolished old local political boards.

Old hands in the state legislature were horrified. "Dictator," they cried. Said Senate Majority Leader John Van Ness, a Jenner man: "What the governor had in mind was a plan that appealed primarily to the executive or the industrialist. He had a government graph here which would have been excellent for a big corporation. Now, you know, you don't change state government overnight to fit a graph." Craig's answer: "Why not?"

Saved: Lives & Minds. As a result of this fundamental difference in philosophy of government, there has been a compromise, e.g., the legislature gave the governor his two new departments, but refused to centralize authority in the cabinet. Now, with his term at the halfway mark, George Craig appears to be on the way toward a record of accomplishment as governor.

His administration has started building a toll road across the northern end of the state from Ohio to Illinois, and has won Federal Government pledges to build an Indiana port on Lake Michigan (a longtime Indiana dream). Under the new corrections department, the administration of state institutions has improved materially. Craig has proposed (and will probably get legislative approval for) higher pay for teachers and more funds for schoolrooms. His most spectacular progress, attested to even by some of his foes, has been in the fields of highway safety and mental health.

To run the state's highway-safety program, Craig lured Professor Joseph L. Lingo, one of the nation's top highway-safety experts (who helped reopen West Germany's postwar highway system), away from Purdue University. Under Professor Lingo, the state police force has been increased, patrolmen have been freed from housekeeping duties so that they can spend more time on patrol, and enforcement and education have been stepped up. Results during 1954: a 58% increase in moving traffic arrests, 8,000 fewer traffic accidents and 204 fewer deaths. From this improved record, highway users have saved $22 million in accident losses and $10 million a year in auto insurance rates.

Under the new Mental Health Division, headed by Psychiatrist Margaret Morgan, Indiana's progress has attracted nationwide attention (TIME, Oct. 18). Stressing recovery and rehabilitation, the new program has increased discharges from the institutions by 59%, convalescent leaves by 33% and leaves of absence by 100%.

"Political Steers." Hardly any of these accomplishments came about in an air of easy cooperation and harmony. There was a fight, of one kind or another, almost every step of the way. In Indiana politicians and citizens alike take clear sides on almost every public issue. Hoosiers have a scornful label for the men who try to be neutral in a good political fight: "Political steers."

The side-taking began even before Craig was inaugurated. When the Jenner-blessed Republican state chairman called a Republican caucus to elect a Jenner man as speaker of the state house of representatives, the Craig forces countered with an earlier call for a caucus, and elected their own man. They nudged out the Jennerite state chairman, and transferred the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, a juicy patronage plum in Indiana, out of the hands of the Jenner-aligned secretary of state.* By that time Bill Jenner, with clenched fist, was telling reporters: "George Craig is only going to push me so far."

"So far" inevitably came, and Jenner quietly passed the word that his forces would try to seize control of the state committee at what was scheduled to be a routine meeting. While Craig was out of town on a speaking trip, Jenner slipped into Indianapolis and set to work. At the moment that Craig's state chairman was telling reporters that the chairmanship would probably not even be discussed at the meeting, Jenner men were lining up enough votes to throw him out. Hoosier politicians have high regard for that kind of political maneuver. When it is over, they clap the loser on the back and roar amid guffaws: "Well, we sure shot ya settin'!"

"The Loyal Order of Ilk." The Craig men were determined not to be caught sitting again. They promptly formed their own state committee, labeled it the "Indiana Committee for Republican Victory," and made it plain that state employees would now make their regular political contributions (usually about 2% of salary) to that organization. Then they laid plans to regain control of the regular committee.

Their chance came when precinct, county, district and state committeemen were elected a few months later. From the precinct up, the contest was so close that every committeeman's vote counted. When Craig intelligence men reported that a state employee had taken a day off to vote for a Jenner man at a district meeting, Craig's patronage secretary telephoned the employee and told her she would be fired unless she got back on the job immediately. She got in her car and started hurrying from Fort Wayne, the site of the meeting, to Indianapolis, where she worked. When Jenner's "G2" men learned that she was fleeing, they looked up her license number, telephoned ahead, had a Jenner man flag her down on the highway. He had her sign a proxy form, chartered an airplane to get it back to Fort Wayne before the meeting began. Jenner's candidate was elected district chairman by one vote.

But in the end the Craig forces won the state committee chairmanship by one vote. The margin of victory came from the Second Congressional District, where Craig's staunch friend, veteran U.S. Representative Charles Halleck, is in charge. The Jenner forces lost hard. One of their number went to state committee headquarters, ripped out the drawers of party Addressograph plates and dumped them on the floor. Jenner drafted a raging statement charging the Craig forces with "corruption, bribery, threats, coercion and intimidation," and bequeathing the party's "wreckage" to Craig, his supporters and "men of their ilk." Craig men, in answer to the Jenner statement, announced that they were going to organize their own "Loyal Order of Ilk."

Advice, If Asked. This year the Craig and Jenner factions have collided on toll roads. Indiana has been planning to build toll roads for several years, but the Jenner forces came to a bitter realization when George Craig's administration issued $280 million worth of revenue bonds for the first one. Here was a powerful, new patronage weapon in the hands of the enemy.

So far as state jobs are concerned, the Toll Road Commission, with only 93 employees, has comparatively little to offer. But there are other possibilities of succulent plums. A contractor who wins an award to build a section of the road probably will, in due time, get a call from Executive Director Albert J. Wedeking of the Toll Road Commission. After passing the time of day, Wedeking will say that "a good friend of mine" would like to come over. When the good friend arrives, he politely asks whether the contractor would like to make a contribution to the Republican Party (Craig division) campaign fund. To such a cause, the contractor is happy to contribute.

Another vein of patronage runs through the contractors' performance bonds (guaranteeing satisfactory work on public projects). To be sure that the state has recourse in its own courts, the bonding company must have an agent who lives in Indiana. Most knowing contractors will ask the Toll Road Commission for advice on selecting the agent. Says Director Wedeking with Indiana frankness "If they ask our advice, we give it--and if somebody has been running around the state condemning the governor, we forget he's in business." One big commission went to Linn Kidd, an insurance man who was one of George Craig's first political backers. A wise politician, Kidd decided to let others share the largess. Among the men that he selected was Republican State Senator Wesley Malone, a Clinton insurance man, one of the two original sponsors of the toll road plan. Said Malone, who got a $1,600 check as his share of the commission: "I don't feel like I was bought. I feel all right about it."

Delay & Deal. Like Senator Malone, most politicians in Indiana feel all right about this process. But if they are at odds with the state administration, they feel just terrible about who is getting the benefit. When Jenner & Co. saw that more toll roads projected for the future would give the Craig organization a potent long-range weapon, they decided to set up some roadblocks.

On the sixth day of the 1955 session of the legislature last January, Jenner men introduced in the state senate a bill that would have effectually blocked construction of Craig's next proposed toll road. Their public argument: the legislature, and not the governor, should control the activities of the Toll Road Commission.

The moment the Jenner bill fell into the hopper, the Craig forces' strategy was clear: delay. Enough delay might produce, one of two desirable results: 1) suffocate the bill, or 2) hold it in the legislature so long that Craig could veto it after the legislators had reached their 61-day constitutional deadline, and had gone home.

In charge of delay for the Craig forces was a round, rollicking state senator named Roy Conrad of Monticello, who raises purebred Aberdeen Angus cattle. An expert in state political matters, Conrad put the slowdown on everywhere. He even changed his personal gait. From his seat near the back of the senate chamber to the microphone at the front, Conrad began to move at the pace of a tired Angus on a summer evening. Conrad was not tired; he had merely made a deal with Craig to block the Jennerite bill.

When the Jenner forces tried to rush the bill out of the Roads Committee, Conrad demanded a public hearing. Later, he asked for a second hearing before the whole senate ("The public has a right to know"), and proposed that New York financial experts be called to testify. When Jenner men moved to hold that hearing immediately, he had the New York experts tipped off to be unavailable for a while.

While delays piled one legislative day on top of another, Strategist Conrad was at work in other fields. He asked for and got the governor's assurance that, while the fight was on, favors for senators would be cleared through him. Thus, when a small town asked the State Highway Commission for permission to park its new fire truck in the state garage, the request was referred to Roy Conrad. When the puzzled state senator representing that district asked Conrad to approve the request, he got a question for an answer. How was he going to vote on the toll-road bill?

Eventually, the Craig forces had to let a toll-road restriction bill pass the senate. But it was watered down to a thinness almost acceptable to the Craig administration. Lieutenant Governor Harold W. Handley, the key Jenner lieutenant, complaining that his forces should have been rougher in the fight, cracked: "But, you know how it is; there are always a few boys who don't really know the score, and so they want to be fair."

Faithful Judy B. In the house the situation was somewhat different: the speaker, George Diener, is a Craig man. He promptly assigned the bill to committee, but not to the Roads Committee. It went to the Judiciary B Committee, known around the Statehouse as "Judy B." Why assign the bill to Judy B ? Said Craig Floor Leader John Feighner: "This is more than a road problem. There are a lot of legal problems involved. And there are some clear-thinking men on that committee." Hardly anyone in the Statehouse missed the point: the Roads Committee was evenly divided between Craig men and Jenner men; but among the members of Judy B, the Craig forces had a comfortable majority.

Last week, only ten days before the legislature's deadline, faithful Judy B was still sitting tight on the toll-road bill. The clear-thinking men had called in experts, held hearings, discussed at length, and had reached a "hopeless impasse." A clear majority wholeheartedly agreed that it was a very bad bill, but they just could not figure out how to amend it. A motion on the floor of the house to "blast" the bill out of committee and place it before the whole membership failed by one vote. The Craig forces were winning the fight by suffocation.

"I Know How It Tastes." While his men executed the maneuvers in the legislature, George Craig was in the thick of the fight behind the scenes. Craig knows how to fight, and loves a good one. The descendant of Scotch-Irishmen who came to Indiana from Virginia about 1815, he grew up in the tough, coal-mining atmosphere of Brazil (rhymes with Hazel). His father, Bernard Craig, 75, is still practicing law there. A Jeffersonian Democrat (the last Democratic presidential candidate he voted for: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in 1932), Bernard Craig was a fierce foe of the Ku Klux Klan in the days when it was dominating the state government of Indiana.

On the basis of knowledge he picked up on Sunday walks with his father, George Craig figures that he is one of the few governors in the U.S. who can identify edible mushrooms. ("The spring kind's the best--morels. Sponge type, brown on top.") He has another bit of information that probably is unique among U.S. governors. One day, hunting with schoolmates, he reached into a rabbit hole, pulled out an animal. He found himself holding an angry skunk in front of his face. Says Craig: "I know how it tastes--kinda sweet; I know how it feels in your eyes--goddam, it nearly kills you."

During summers, between his years at high school, Craig went to Culver Military Academy, an experience that has left him with a cadet's brace posture. Because he wanted to see some of the country, he spent his first two college years at the University of Arizona, where he joined the forbidden drinking fraternity, Kappa Beta Phi, which was the reverse of Phi Beta Kappa in more than title. "I took liberal arts," says Craig. "Damn liberal, too, I'll tell you."

After two raucous years at Arizona, Craig went back home and applied for admission to the Indiana University Law School. At first it appeared that he would be turned down, but the dean of the school, who may have been appreciating a kindred spirit, looked him over and decided to let him in. The dean: Paul Vories McNutt, who had been national commander of the American Legion, and was soon to be governor of Indiana.

In law school Craig settled down and studied hard for the first time in his life, and was a better-than-average student. He became president of his two fraternities (Delta Chi, Delta Theta Phi), acquired the maximum number of cauliflower ears as a member of the university's wrestling team. In his last year of law school, he married his high-school sweetheart, Kathryn Heiliger (they have a son and a daughter), and graduated with a bachelor of law degree in 1932. A big campus politician in the same graduating class, but not a close friend of Craig's: Bill Jenner.

Passport to Prominence. In the depth of the Depression, George Craig went to Brazil to practice law with his father, and took whatever he could get--potatoes, meat, eggs and, once, three runt pigs--in lieu of cash fees. He became G.O.P. Chairman of Clay County, tried to get the nomination for lieutenant governor, and then got his passport to political success: in 1942 the U.S. Army Reserve called R.O.T.C. Lieutenant Craig to active duty in World War II.

Earning his passport, Craig served well as a divisional staff officer (G3) with the 80th Infantry Division, which landed on Utah Beach and was in combat for 239 days in Europe in 1944-45. With the 80th Craig picked up administrative experience under heavy pressure, learned to shave with toilet soap (which he still uses instead of shaving cream), and made an important acquaintance. One day, when General Dwight Eisenhower visited the division's headquarters in the basement of a brick school building in the Saar, Major Craig was assigned to brief the general on the division's operations. The general "asked a million questions," and left behind a political as well as a military devotee. Says Craig: "He gave the people around him and those meeting him for the first time a great feeling of confidence."

Craig came out of the Army in 1945 a lieutenant colonel, marched double time into American Legion politics. As a member of his local post, he went to Indianapolis for the state convention in 1946, and was picked by the Indiana Legion kingmakers, notably Indianapolis Publicity Man Elmer ("Little Doc") Sherwood, to be state vice commander. From that level Craig rocketed to the peak of Legion politics.

The "Team Player." Through Tile Manufacturer John A. Stelle, an old friend from Brazil, Craig met one of the national Legion's kingmakers: Stelle's father, onetime (1940-41) Democratic Governor John H. Stelle of Illinois. The elder Stelle immediately liked Craig, took him to see the chief crown bearer of the Legion kingmakers, Chicago Utilities Engineer James P. Ringley. Before long, Ringley & Co. picked Craig as the first World War II veteran to be the Legion's national commander. Says Ringley: "I saw that he was a team player to start with. He's a very rational, reasonable person."

In his year hard-working George Craig compiled a record of accomplishment, as Legion commanders' records go. He launched the Legion's "Tide for Toys" campaign for shipping toys to children in foreign lands, inaugurated the organization's national "Divine Guidance" program, helped to prod several mental health organizations into forming the National Mental Health Association, and got more than 50 national organizations to join the Legion in an "All American Conference" to fight Communism. Says Craig: "I was in this before it was popular to do it . . . I was fighting Communists long before Bill Jenner thought about it."

When Craig moved his Legion strength into Indiana politics, he took quite a few of his friends along, e.g., John A. Stelle is now vice chairman of the Toll Road Commission, and Doc Sherwood is one of the governor's close advisers. The Legion is a powerful force in Indiana, where the state, with tax funds, built both state and national headquarters buildings for the organization. Craig shrugs off his enemies' charges that he is still a puppet of the Legion kingmakers. Says he: "I think the American Legion is the best political avenue for expression of ideas relating to national security, anti-Communism and many other things."

Craig's foes have been vocal about a number of his appointments--both Legion and-non-Legion men. A constant target has been Doxie Moore, 43, a Legionnaire and onetime professional basketball player, coach and supervisor of officials for the National Basketball Association, who is now Craig's loyal, hardhitting administrative assistant. Critics have hung a label on Moore: "Double-Dribble Doxie." As if to accommodate them, Doxie at times double-dribbles. A fortnight ago, without consulting Craig, he sent out a flurry of telegrams, over the governor's name, taking the wrong side on the President's world trade program. Complained Doxie later: "It was more involved than I thought." Said Craig: "I'm with the Administration on this as on all other matters."

The Doer. Some of the criticism that is aimed directly at Craig has come from the fact that he is still not a polished politician. Although he is an effusive greeter, a vigorous handshaker and an. expert at the Indiana political massage,* he has a tendency toward bluntness. He neglects many of the politician's chores, e.g., he passes up fairs and conventions at which an appearance by the governor is expected. At times his failure to observe the political amenities angers even his important allies.

George Craig is a doer, a manager. He is not a philosopher, not even a philosophizer. But he has a philosophy of politics and government that gives him a clear line of difference between himself and Senator Jenner. While Jenner considers Craig an interloper, Craig sees Jenner as a reactionary. Says Craig: "After 20 years out of power, we have a chance to differentiate between those who can think in positive terms and those who can't."

If Craig makes a good record and can hold control of Indiana's G.O.P. machinery, he will have a good chance to name his successor in 1956 (Indiana law bars a governor from succeeding himself). He has said he will not run against Homer Capehart in 1956, but he has not said what he intends to do in 1958, when Jenner's present term ends. With firm power Craig might be able to control both senatorial nominations. On the other hand, if Jenner can stop Craig from consolidating his strength, Jenner will stand a good chance of seating his own man in the governor's chair in 1956 and clearing the 1958 road for himself.

In this toe-to-toe political struggle, George Craig clearly has the good wishes and the help, whenever possible, of the President of the U.S. As it did in the basement in the Saar, the presence of General Eisenhower in his camp gives Major Craig a great feeling of confidence.

* Under Indiana law, auto license plates, drivers' licenses and some other motor vehicle certificates are issued by private citizens designated by the state administration, usually politicians who set up the agencies in their own places of business. For each license issued, the agent gets a 25-c- fee, generally kicks in 1-c- to the party's state political fund and another penny to its county fund, and pockets the rest. Gross annual take for agents: about $1.5 million. Net to individual agents in a few populous areas runs up to $50,000 a year. * Grasping and re-grasping a friend's right arm with left hand, while shaking hands.

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