The High & Low Roads

Off for a campaign tour of western Minnesota, Adlai Stevenson left Minneapolis in a Beechcraft Twin-Bonanza, followed by his entourage distributed among an Aero Commander, a Beechcraft Bonanza and a Cessna 180. Two mornings later, a Stratoliner landed at Minneapolis with Estes Kefauver, his right hand black and blue from handshaking in New Hampshire, the Granite State. It was the first time during the young campaign that the two leading candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination have been in the same state at the same time. In their contest for the March 20 Minnesota primary, Stevenson flew high last week; Kefauver never got off the ground.

From the moment Stevenson's little air fleet touched down on a grass strip at Worthington, just north of the Iowa border, his campaign went well. The weather was mostly bright, the small-town audiences attentive, generous (slipping up to $400 a meeting into collection cans labeled "The Ezra Taft Benson Retirement Fund") and unexpectedly large, e.g., Stevenson drew 2,500 in Montevideo (pop: 5,500).

"Only the Hired Hand." Speaking as often as eight times a day, Stevenson bore down hardest on the Eisenhower farm program. Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson, he said, is "only the hired hand," while President Eisenhower is "the owner, the boss." Added Stevenson, sarcastically: "It is curious that all anyone ever says about the owner is that he ought to be re-elected President of the U.S." The real reason Eisenhower is running again, said Stevenson, is that "he can't afford to retire to the farm at Gettysburg while Benson is Secretary of Agriculture."

In his travels, Stevenson shook many a hand, ate many a doughnut, seemed generally folksy despite occasional lapses into such polysyllabic gobbledygook as when, at Fergus Falls, he accused the Administration of "disingenuous dissembling" in its foreign policy.

"Tell 'Em to Go Home." Kefauver's Minnesota excursion, on the other hand, was a sorrowful experience. His advisers, a handful of Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party outcasts, handed him impossible schedules, spent most of their time squabbling among themselves about how their candidate should spend his time. One day the Keef wasted nearly two hours being driven around northwest Minneapolis while his guides looked for the offices of the Anoka Herald, a suburban newspaper. The motorcade headed in one direction, got lost, stopped at a filling station to inquire about the route, doubled back, stopped to ask again, charged off in still another direction. Finally arriving at his destination, Kefauver spent five minutes shaking hands with the editor and half a dozen employees. (The Anoka Herald is supporting Eisenhower for President.)

One night Kefauver was scheduled to speak at St. Mary's College in Winona, 120 miles southeast of Minneapolis. His chartered plane was grounded by bad weather. After long and heated debate among Kefauver's advisers (during which one of them bitterly suggested that they "call Winona and tell 'em to go home and vote for Stevenson"), it was decided that Estes should drive. He was game, but the roads were icy. Two hours later, just as he should have been handclasping his way into the St. Mary's auditorium, Kefauver was barely halfway there. At last he gave up, ordered his car turned around, got to bed about midnight.

At midweek, Kefauver called a press conference to announce that he would have to cancel out the rest of his Minne sota schedule, return to Washington and vote on the farm bill. By that time Adlai Stevenson was on his way back to Chicago, rubbing his hands about Minnesota and preparing a speech for weekend delivery in Detroit.

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