Blocking the Bloc

Of the 1,521 delegate votes at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles next July, a total of 271, more than a third of the 761 needed to nominate, will come from the 13 Western states. Any candidate able to win the support of the Western states in a bloc will thus have a running start on the field, and last week California's Governor Edmund G. ("Pat") Brown made just such a bid. He failed.

The scene of Brown's effort was the Western Governors' Conference at Idaho's handsome Sun Valley Lodge. Briefed by political scouts back from neighboring statehouses, Brown hustled into Sun Valley, went to work on the other arriving Democratic Governors: Washington's Albert Rosellini, Nevada's Grant Sawyer, New Mexico's John Burroughs and Colorado's Stephen L. R. McNichols. They should, Brown urged, all "zero in" on a regional favorite for President; it was well understood that he had in mind zeroing in on none other than California's Pat Brown. He invited the others to a breakfast where the formal favorable decision was, he hoped, to be made.

On the Apple Tree. But Brown reckoned without another Governor with national ambitions: Colorado's McNichols, 45, who is, like Brown (and Washington's Rosellini), a Roman Catholic. In the minds of some McNichols followers, the presidential candidacy of Massachusetts' Jack Kennedy has so focused attention on the Catholic issue that the Democratic Party, if only to avoid the appearance of religious bias, will at least have to nominate a Catholic for Vice President. And if Kennedy and Brown cut each other up too much in the preconvention campaigning, then the call might go to still another Catholic--say Steve McNichols. Indeed, so well defined has the Brown-McNichols rivalry become that McNichols backers have a favorite song: "Oh, we'll hang Pat Brown to a sour apple tree."

McNichols fought Brown's endorsement plan at heated, late-at-night hotel suite talks, again at Brown's breakfast. The West, McNichols argued, should form a solid Democratic front on regional issues such as reclamation, but not on a candidate. When Brown saw that his bloc would not be a bloc, he backed down, retreated to the position that agreement on issues was all he had wanted anyhow, thereby escaped the public stigma of failure in his effort for endorsement.

On to the Screen. Returning to California, Pat Brown still seemed far from discouraged. His dutiful state party officials announced that an official Brown-for-President organization would be set up some time soon, tagged him "one of the top three of the top ten potential candidates." Said Brown: "I guess that puts me in the winter book. If I entered as a favorite son, I couldn't get on television."

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