Next in Line

After Fair Dealer Claude Pepper had been thrashed, the next big question in Southern politics was: Will it happen to Fair Dealer Frank Graham in North Carolina, too?

Like Pepper, Graham was accused by his opponents of being too friendly to "socialistic" causes, too soft on Communism and overkindly to Negroes. But the resemblance could be pushed too far. Candidate Graham was no Claude Pepper; he had not gone junketing off to Moscow. He was not even a professional politician: he had been appointed to the Senate 14 months ago to fill out a vacancy. Most North Carolinians knew him better as a small grey man who for 19 years had been the able and respected President of the University of North Carolina. In his first campaign for office, he was taking no chances. Hustling down from Washington, he rolled out his black Ford sedan and set it skimming off across the back roads of North Carolina.

On the Defensive. With his thin hair rumpled in the breeze, his coat slung on the seat beside him, he kept his Ford rolling on--from a V.F.W. meeting in Pink Hill, to the Daniel Boone celebration in Salisbury (accompanied by Vice President Alben Barkley), to a Lions Club meeting in Albemarle. After every meeting he stepped down from the platform to chat with the crowds, often delayed his schedule because he insisted on stopping off for roadside discussions. When he disappeared during the Wallace strawberry festival last week, his supporters knew just where to find Frank Graham: at the market, talking to denim-clad strawberry farmers.

Everywhere, in his plain, unangry way, he did his best to answer the charges leveled against him. He had only pledged support to the Fair Deal "in general," Graham protested. Though he was a member of the President's Civil Rights Committee, he was against any fair employment law based on compulsion, a position shared by many another conscientious Southern legislator. He was opposed to the Brannan Plan. He favored the present agricultural price-support program, said Graham. "In spite of some defects it has proved itself [by] bringing to a more equitable level the income of farmers."

Buncombe Bob. With the primary only a fortnight away, Frank Graham still seemed to be the man to beat. He had little to worry about from one opponent, demagogic Robert ("Buncombe Bob") Reynolds, 65, who was hitting the comeback trail with his same old isolationist line: "I say stop immigration now and lock the gates securely, because I know we have not a friend on earth." But Reynolds seemed to have lost his punch.

Graham's real opposition came from 62-year-old Willis Smith, a Raleigh corporation lawyer and chairman of the Duke University board of trustees who once served as president of the American Bar Association, and was a registered state lobbyist for several manufacturers and wholesalers. Though he was a cold, uninspired speaker, who often talked at his audience as if he were addressing a jury in a utility case, he seemed to be making considerable headway.

Against Smith's conservative and industrial support, Graham could muster the bulk of North Carolina's labor and Negro vote. The one worry of Graham's supporters was that overactive backing, from either the C.I.O. or the Negro organizations would raise the old Southern rallying cry of outside interference. With the warning of Florida fresh in mind, the order went out to them: keep under wraps until primary day.

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