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Regional Oral History Office University of California

The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California

Governmental History Documentation Project
Goodwin Knight/Edmund Brown, Sr . , Era

Roger Kent

BUILDING THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY IN CALIFORNIA,
1954-1966

Interviews Conducted by

Anne H. Brower, Amelia R. Fry

1976 and 1977

This manuscript is open for research purposes.
All literary rights in the manuscript, including the
right to publish, are reserved to The Bancroft Library
of the University of California at Berkeley. No part
of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without
the written permission of the Director of The Bancroft
Library of the University of California at Berkeley.

Requests for permission to quote for publication
should be addressed to the Regional Oral History Office,
486 Library, and should include identification of the
specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the
passages, and identification of the user.

It is recommended that the oral history be cited
as follows:

Roger Kent, "Building the Democratic Party in
California, 1954-1966," an oral history conducted
in 1976 and 1977 by Anne H. Brower and Amelia R.
Fry, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft
Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1981.

Copy No .

Roger Kent at the podium at a meeting
of the Commonwealth Club, San Francisco, 1965

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

PREFACE ±

INTRODUCTION by G. Stanleigh Arnold viii

"THE 'OLD PRO' OF DEMOCRATIC POLITICS"

The Chico Enterprise-Record editorial of September 5, 1964,
reprinted with correspondence on October 19, 1966.

INTERVIEW HISTORY xii
BRIEF BIOGRAPHY xviii

I FRIENDSHIP AND FRICTION WITH CLAIR ENGLE 1

Department of Defense Days — 1952 and 1953 3

Attempt to Seize the Steel Industry 5

Fallbrook Dam Controversy 7

Engle's Active Duty in Korea 8

The 1956 Presidential Campaign 9

Engle's 1958 Senate Race 11

Delegate Selection 15

Engle's Fatal Illness 16

The Tragic Telephone Address 17

}

II BUILDING THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY ORGANIZATION 18

Ensuring Brown's Control of the Party 18

Marin Democratic Assembly 20

Phillip Burton and Intraparty Politics 21

The Anti-cross-filing Movement 22

Anti-cross-filing Republicans 25

Anti-cross-filing on the Ballot 26

The Burton-Maloney Race 28

The 212 Gang 29

Fund Raising 30

212 Gang Members 31

Dollars for Democrats 43

Allocating Funds 44

III WASHINGTON DAYS AND THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE 45

Local Defense Spending Is Campaign Issue 45

Voting Rights Restored to "Deserter" 46

Publicity Seeking by General MacArthur 47

Defense Secretary Wilson: Penchants and Peccancies

War Criminal Pardons and Parole Board

Defense Contract Bidding Practices under Wilson 54

Flying Saucers

"Q" Clearance in Jeopardy

Joseph McCarthy versus the Department of Defense 58

Social Life in Washington 62

IV THE 1954 CAMPAIGN IN CALIFORNIA 64

Heading the Northern California Graves Campaign 65

CDC Endorsing Convention 66

Labor Support for Graves 68
Campaign Tricks

Impact of Party Labeling 70
A Winning Strategy Forged

V ELIZABETH GATOV AND NATIONAL PARTY POLITICS 74

Managing Kent's Congressional Campaign 74

Treasurer of the United States 76
Party Personalities and Powers

Imminent Problems in the Department of Defense 86

VI FORCES SHAPING THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY: THE NORTH,

THE SOUTH, THE CDC 91

Campaign Financing 91

Southern California Factions 92

Ideological Differences 94

Women's Division 95

Relations with the CDC 98

The CDC Endorsing Convention 102

Minority Participation 104

Operational Differences 105

VII CAMPAIGN ANECDOTES AND INSIGHTS 112

John Kennedy's 1956 Fund Raiser Is a "Poor Show" 112

Maneuvers by Bill Malone 113

Preprimary Campaigning for Stevenson 119

Balloting for Vice-President at the 1956 Convention 121

Sam Yorty's Exit from the CDC 125

What It Takes to Elect a Candidate 126

Reflections on the "Big Switch" 129
Seating the "Freedom Delegation": Unruh Is Hoist with

His Own Petard 130

Civil Rights Plank Controversy at the 1956 Democratic Convention 132

Barnstorming for Stevenson 134

VIII STEVENSON'S 1956 CAMPAIGN AND CALIFORNIA'S 1958 CAMPAIGN 137

The 1956 Campaign Issues 137

Statewide Campaign Organization 138

Stevenson Campaign Strategy 139

Impact of 1950 Redistricting 140

Maneuvering among California Candidates in 1958 141

Democratic Primary Election Sweep 144

Fund Raising and Key Contributors 146

Selecting Candidates for Statewide Office 147

Propositions Get Out the Vote in 1958 150

Campaign Strategies: Republican and Democratic 151

Role of the Democratic State Central Committee 153

IX THE 1960 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 157

Fund-Raising Salute to Alaska and Hawaii 157

Political Donors in Business and the Professions 158

Stevenson versus Kennedy: The Agonizing Choice 159

The Kennedy-Nixon Debate 165

The Anti-Catholic Vote 167

Selecting a Balanced Delegation 168

The 1960 Convention Ticket Controversy 172

Why Ziffren Lost the National Committee Post 173

Preprimary Maneuvering 175

Democratic National Committee Rivalries 177

Delegate Balloting at the Convention 182

Kennedy's Early Try to Enter the California Primary 184

Stevenson's Unlikely Supporters 186

Fund Raising for Kennedy 187

Election Fraud Reports 189

Democratic Party Factional Disputes 190

X THE 1962 CALIFORNIA CAMPAIGNS 194

The Nixon-Brown Gubernatorial Race 194

The Post Card Fraud — Harbinger of Watergate 196

The Cropped Photograph 202

How the Post Card Came to Light 204

Press Reaction 207

Judgment and Damages 209

Problems in Timing 210

The Hughes Tool Company Loan

Polling for Propaganda 213

Brown's "Indecisive" Image 214

Rafferty versus Richardson for Superintendent of
Public Instruction

The Controller's Race

The Treasurer's Race 218

Registering Dollars or Democrats

Impact of Reapportionment

Press Coverage 223

XI THE 1964 CAMPAIGN 224

The Senate Race — Clair Engle's Last Campaign 224

Rivalries among Engle's Political Heirs 225
Unruh's Network of Influence

Resisting the Inevitable 229

Mosk's Temporary Eclipse 230

Salinger's Promising Entry 233

Cranston's Enemies 233

Brown's Support for Cranston and then Salinger 235

Mrs. Engle's Role in the Campaign 237

The Democratic National Convention 238

Seating the Mississippi Freedom Delegation 238

Unruh's Move to Defeat the Compromise 240

Pat Brown's Role 242

Democratic National Committee Elections 243

Put It in Writing 246

Role of the National Committeeman 247

Chain of Deaths 248

Kent Considers Congressional Seat 249

Kent Resigns as Party Chairman 250

Successor Bob Coate Faces Big Debt 252

Libby Gatov Resigns National Committee Post 254

Haldeman Deposition Barred From Watergate Hearing 255

XII PROBLEMS AND ISSUES OF THE 1966 CAMPAIGN 256

Vietnam Splits the CDC 256

Alanson-Warschaw Rivalry 260

Brown-Yorty-Unruh Conflict 263

Brown's Political Weak Spots 265

Reagan's Strengths 267

Brown's Campaign Organization 267

Garnering Funds and Support 270

Warren-Warschaw Contest for State Party Chairman 272

Glenn Anderson's Campaign 274

Democratic Registration Effort 276

Two-Party Fund-Raising Experiment 278

Festering Campaign Issues 279

Friction among Campaign Leaders 282

Kent's Peripheral Role in Strategy Making 287

New Campaign Techniques 288

Throwing the Rascals Out ?gg

Role of the Democratic Party from the Fifties to the Seventies 290

Cracks in Party Unity After 1958 292

Success-Breeds-Failure Syndrome 295

Public Financing for Political Campaigns 297

Private Fund-Raising Techniques 299

Selecting Delegates for the Presidential Conventions 302

Family Responsibilities and Political Life 308

Oil Conservation Proposition of 1956 3^0

Power Play Following Clem Miller's Death 311
Looking Back to the Equal Time Debate

XIII THE THIRTIES TO THE FIFTIES: SEC WORK, WAR YEARS, LAW PRACTICE 319

Accord with Eccles on Japanese Surrender 319

Naval Air Combat Intellignece 32i

Prewar Securities and Exchange Commission Work 322

Navy Intelligence Work 328

Diving for Sunken Intelligence Materials 333

Mining the Shimonoseki Straits 334

End-of-the-War Wager 335

The Atomic Bomb Decision 337

SEC versus the Bank of America 338

The Atomic Cannon Development of the 1950s 341

Hawaii Statehood Effort 343

Law Practice 348

XIV RECENT POLITICAL AND CIVIC INVOLVEMENT 354

Helping Launch Muskie's Candidacy 354

Membership in the ACLU 358

Role in the Commonwealth Club 361

American Cancer Society 363

National Maritime Museum 363

Planned Parenthood 365

Japanese Prisoner Probation and Parole 367

North Pacific Fisheries Commission 368

PG&E's Atomic Plant for Bodega Head 370

XV FOREBEARS AND FAMILY LIFE 372

Parents 372

Birth of Siblings 374

Father's Campaign for Congress in 1920 376

Living in Washington, D.C. 378

Evolution of the Big House 379

William Kent's Shooting Feats 381

Schooling and Sports in Washington, D.C. 383

First World War 385

Armistice Day 386

The Senior Rents' Independent Political Courses 387

Short-legged Walks with Mother 389

Trading Plants with John McLaren 390

Grape Festival at Kentfield 390

Mother's Political Involvement 392

Family Vacations 394

Mother's Putting Family First 398

Parental Authority 399

The Prohibition Issue 400

Family Decision Making 401

Siblings and In-laws 402

FDR Wins Mother's Allegiance 402

Life at Kentfield 404

High Schooling 404

Living Off the Land 404

Notable Guests 406

Christmas Party for the Help 407

Hunting Wild Cats 408

Train Hopping, Music Lessons, and Amusements 410

Horseback Trips 411

William Kent: Public Lands for Public Use 411

Family Trips Abroad 413

Roger Kent's Record at Thacher School 415

Religious Background 416

British Columbia Trip 418

More on the Hospital Bond Effort 445

Father's Friends and Mentors 446

Parents' Involvement with Women's Suffrage 449

TAPE GUIDE 454

APPENDICES

I "The 'Old Pro' is still having fun" by Alice Yarish, San

Francisco Examiner, February 28, 1979 455

II "Roger Kent Dies at 73" by George Murphy, San Francisco

Chronicle, May 17, 1980 457

III "Undisputed leader of the Democrats" by Elizabeth Gatov,

Pacific Sun, May 23, 1980 453

IV Excerpt from an Interview with Alice Paul, November 1972,

by Robert Gallagher 460

INDEX 461

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Roger Kent's leadership of the Democratic State Central Committee from
1954 to 1965 made him a logical candidate for an oral history documenting
the Goodwin Knight-Pat Brown years for the Governmental Eras Documentation
Project of the Regional Oral History Office. However, Kent was heir to a
family tradition of significant public involvement from his conservationist-
congressman father and his suffragist mother. And Kent's own service for the
Securities and Exchange Commission, in tha navy during World War II, for the
Department of Defense, in the practice of law, and on national commissions
extended beyond the period of focus for the project.

Because these topics could not be covered under project funding, many
of Kent's friends and family contributed money and time so that the memoir
could be expanded to document Kent's other significant contributions and
experiences. The Regional Oral History Office wishes to thank the following
people for their generous donations:

Mary Walsh Abbott

Heath Angelo

G. Stanleigh Arnold

Hon. Stanley Arnold

Ray G. Bacon

Jean Black

Mr. and Mrs. Jim Boyd, III

Don L. Bradley

Judson L. Brown

Hon. Ronald Cameron

Tom Carvey , Jr .

Hon. Mr. and Mrs. Winslow Christian

Hon. Alan Cranston

Madlyn and Curtis Day

Van A. and Elizabeth S. Dempsey

Hon. John Dunlap

Ann W. Eliaser

Eleanor C. and John M. Fowle

Virginia T. Franklin

David and Edith Freidenrich

Richard W. Gaetjen

Walter and Margaret Gaetjen

Harold Galloway

A.W. and Elizabeth Gatov

Mr . and Mrs . Richard P . Graves

Mr. and Mrs. Donald M. Gregory

Alfred E. Heller

Mrs. Edward H. Heller

George Hellyer

Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Hoppe

Joseph C. Houghteling

Anne M. Huff

Martin Huff

William M. Hume

Phelps Stokes Hunter

Hon. Phillip L. and Marilyn Y. Isenberg

Lenore Jacobson

Howard H. and Nancy M. Jewel

Virginia S. and James P. Keene, Jr.

Anne Thompson Kent

Sherman Kent

Mr. and Mrs. William Kent, III

Hon. John Knox

Jean and Karl Kortum

Raymond H. Lapin

Mr. and Mrs. Eugene C. Lee

Dudley C. Lewis

Kathleen S. Loucheim

Gerald D. Marcus

Mr. and Mrs. Harold McGrath

Jeanne Miller

Jack and Jane Morrison

Hon. William H. Orrick, Jr.

Alan Parker

Hon. Robert F. Peckham

Zita Remley

Louise Ringwalt

Joan and William Roth

Madeleine H. Russell

Augusta Samuel

Mary Kent Schardt

Vera L. Schultz

Nancy Sloss

John G. Sobieski

Harold J. Sperbeck

Mrs. Carl W. Stern

Mrs. Harley C. Stevens

Nancy and Samuel Swadesh

Harriet P. Thacher

James F. Thacher

Jack and Vicki Tomlinson

J. Leonard Towns end

Hon. Joseph A. and Mickey Wapner

Harold B. Watkin

Rebecca Wood Watkin

Hon. A.J. Zirpoli

PREFACE

Covering the years 1953 to 1966, the Goodwin Knight -Edmund G. "Pat"
Brown, Sr., Oral History Series is the second phase of the Governmental
History Documentation Project begun by the Regional Oral History Office
in 1969. That year inaugurated the Earl Warren Era Oral History Project,
which produced interviews with Earl Warren and other persons prominent in
politics, criminal justice, government administration, and legislation
during Warren's California era, 1925 to 1953.

The Knight-Brown series of interviews carries forward the earlier
inquiry into the general topics of: the nature of the governor's office,
its relationships with the legislature and with its own executive depart
ments, biographical data about Governors Knight and Brown and other
leaders of the period, and methods of coping with the rapid social and
economic changes of the state. Key issues documented for 1953-1966 were:
the rise and decline of the Democratic party, the impact of the California
Water Plan, the upheaval of the Vietnam War escalation, the capital punish
ment controversy, election law changes, new political techniques forced by
television and increased activism, reorganization of the executive branch,
the growth of federal programs in California, and the rising awareness of
minority groups. From a wider view across the twentieth century, the
Knight-Brown period marks the final era of California's Progressive
period, which was ushered in by Governor Hiram Johnson in 1910 and which
provided for both parties the determining outlines of government organiza
tion and political strategy until 1966.

The Warren Era political files, which interviewers had developed
cooperatively to provide a systematic background for questions, were
updated by the staff to the year 1966 with only a handful of new topics
added to the original ninety-one. An effort was made to record in greater
detail those more significant events and trends by selecting key partici
pants who represent diverse points of view. Most were queried on a
limited number of topics with which they were personally connected; a few
narrators who possessed unusual breadth of experience were asked to discuss
a multiplicity of subjects. Although the time frame of the series ends
at the November 1966 election, when possible the interviews trace events
on through that date in order to provide a logical baseline for continuing
study of succeeding administrations. Similarly, some narrators whose exper
ience includes the Warren years were questioned on that earlier era as well
as the Knight-Brown period.

The present series has been financed by grants from the California State
Legislature through the California Heritage Preservation Commission and the
office of the Secretary of State, and by some individual donations. Portions
of several memoirs were funded partly by the California Women in Politics
Project under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, in
cluding a matching grant from the Rockefeller Foundation; the two projects
were produced concurrently in this office, a joint effort made feasible by
overlap of narrators, topics, and staff expertise.

The Regional Oral History Office was established to tape record autobio
graphical interviews with persons significant in the history of California
and the West. The Office is under the administrative direction of James D.
Hart, Director of The Bancroft Library, and Willa Baum, head of the Office.

Amelia R. Fry, Project Director
Gabrielle Morris, Project Coordinator

iii

GOVERNMENTAL HISTORY DOCUMENTATION PROJECT

Advisory Council

Don A. Allen
James Bassett
Walton E. Bean*
Peter Behr
William E. Bicker
Paul Bullock
Lou Cannon
Edmond Costantini
William N. Davis
A. I. Dickman
Harold E. Geiogue
Carl Greenberg
Michael Harris
Phil Kerby
Virginia Knight
Frank Lanterman*
Mary Ellen Leary
Eugene C. Lee

James R. W. Leiby
Albert Lepawsky
Dean McHenry
Frank Mesple'*
James R. Mills
Edgar J. Patterson
Cecil F. Poole
A. Alan Post
Robert H. Power
Bruce J. Poyer
Albert S. Rodda
Richard Rodda
Ed Salzman

Mortimer D. Schwartz
Verne Scoggins
David Snyder
Caspar Weinberger

Project Interviewers

Malca Chall
Amelia R. Fry
Gabrielle Morris
James Rowland
Sarah Sharp
Julie Shearer

Special Interviewers

Eleanor Glaser
Harriet Nathan
Suzanne Riess
Miriam Feingold Stein
Ruth Teiser

*Deceased during the term of the project.

GOODWIN KNIGHT-EDMUND BROWN, SR. ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

(California, 1953-1966)

Interviews Completed and In Process, March 1981

Single Interview Volumes

Bradley, Don, Managing Democratic Campaigns, 1954-1966, In process.

Brown, Edmund G., Sr., "Pat", Years of Growth, 1939-1966; Lou Enforcement,
Politics, and the Governor's Office. In process.

Champion, Hale, Communication and Problem-Solving: A Journalist in State
Government. 1981.

Davis, Pauline. In process.

Dutton, Frederick G., Democratic Campaigns and Controversies, 1954-1966. 1981.

Hills , Edgar , boyhood Friend, Independent Critic, and Campaign Manager of
Pat Brown. In process.

Hotchkis, Preston, Sr., One Man's Dynamic Role in California Politics and Water
Development, and World Affairs. 1980.

Kent, Roger, Building the Democratic Party in California, 1954-1966. 1981.
Knight, Virginia (Mrs. Goodwin). In process.

Leary, Mary Ellen, A Journalist's Perspective: Government and Politics in
California and the Bay Area. 1981.

Lynch, Thomas, A Career in Politics and the Attorney General's Office. In process.

Simpson, Roy E. , California Department of Education, with an Introduction by
Wilson Riles, Sr. 1978.

Yorty, Sam. In process.

Multi-Interview Volumes

PAT BROWN: FRIENDS AND CAMPAIGNERS. In process .
Burch, Meredith
Carter, Judy Royer
Elkington, Norman
Guggenheim, Charles
Sloss, Nancy

BROWN FAMILI PORTRAITS. In process.

Brown, Bernice Layne, Life in the Governor's Mansion

Brown, Frank M. , Edmund G. Brown's Commitment to Lessen Social Ills:

View from a lounger Brother

Brown, Hero Id C. , A Lifelong Republican for Edmund G. Brown
Carlson, Constance Brown, My Brothers -Edmund, Harold,and Frank

CALIFORNIA CONSTITUTIONAL OFFICERS. 1980.

Button, A. Ronald, California Republican Party Official and State

Treasurer of California, 1956-1958.
Gibson, Phil, Recollections of a Chief Justice of the California Supreme

Court.

Mosk, Stanley, Attorney General's Office and Political Campaigns, 1958-1966.
Powers, Harold J., On Prominent Issues, the Republican Party, and Political

Campaigns: A Veteran Republican Views the Goodwin Knight Era.

EDUCATION ISSUES AND PLANNING, 1953-1966. 1980.

Doyle, Donald, An Assemblyman Views Education, Mental Health, and Legis
lative and Republican Politics.

McKay, Robert, Robert McKay and the California Teacher's Association.

Sexton, Keith, Legislating Higher Education: A Consultant's View of the
Master Plan for Higher Education.

Sherriffs, Alex, The University of California and the Free Speech Movement:
Perspectives from a Faculty Member and Administrator.

THE GOVERNOR'S OFFICE UNDER^ EDMUND G. BROWN, SR. 1981.

Becker, William, Working for Civil Rights: With Unions, the Legislature,
and Governor Pat Brown.

Christopher, Warren, Special Counsel to the Governor: Recalling the
Pat Brown lears.

Davis, May Layne Bonnell, An Appointment Secretary Reminisces.

Kline, Richard, Governor Brown's Faithful Advisor.

Mesple, Frank, From Clovis to the Capitol: Building a Career as a Legis
lative Liaison.

Poole, Cecil, Executive Clemency and the Chessman Case.

THE GOVERNOR'S OFFICE UNDER GOODWIN KNIGHT. 1980.

Barrett, Douglas, Goodwin Knight's Governor's Office, 1953-1958, and the

Jouth Authority, 1958-1965.

Bright, Tom M. , The Governor's Office of Goodwin J. Knight, 1953-1958.
Groves, Sadie Perlin, A Career as Private Secretary to Goodwin Knight,

1952-1958.

Lemmon, Maryalice, Working in the Governor's Office, 1950-1959.
Mason, Paul, Covering the Legislature for Governor Goodwin J. Knight.

GOODWIN KNIGHT: AIDES, ADVISERS, AND APPOINTEES. 1981.

Bell, Dorothy Hewes , Reminiscences of Goodwin Knight.

Finks, Harry, California Labor and Goodwin Knight, the 1950s.

Hill, John Lamar II, First Minority Member of the' State Board of

Funeral Examiners.

Polland, Milton, Political and Personal- -Friend of Earl Warren, Goodwin
Knight, and Hubert Humphrey.

ISSUES AND INNOVATIONS IN THE 1966 REPUBLICAN GUBERNATORIAL CAMPAIGN. 1980.
Nofziger, Franklyn, Press Secretary for Ronald Reagan, 1966.
Parkinson, Gaylord, California Republican Party Official, 1962-1967.
Roberts, William, Professional Campaign Management and the Candidate,

1960-1966.
Spencer, Stuart, Developing a Campaign Management Organization.

CALIFORNIA LEGISLATIVE LEADERS, VOLUME I. 1980.

Caldecott, Thomas W. , Legislative Strategies, Relations with the Governor's

Office, 1947-1957.

Fisher, Hugo, California Democratic Politics, 1958-1965.
Lanterman, Frank, California Assembly, 1949-1978: Water, Mental Health,

and Education Issues.
Richards, Richard, Senate Campaigns and Procedures, California Water Plan.

CALIFORNIA LEGISLATIVE LEADERS, VOLUME II. 1981.

Burns, Hugh, Legislative and Political Concerns of the Senate Pro Tern,

1957-1970.

Lincoln, Luther, loung Turk to Speaker of the California Assembly, 1948-1958.
Rattigan, Joseph, A Judicial Look at Civil Rights, Education, and Reappor-

tionment in the State Senate, 1959-1966.
Sumner, Bruce, California State Assemblyman and Chairman of the Constitution

Revision Commission, 1964-1970.
Allen, Bruce F., California Oil and Water, and the Politics of Reform,

1952-1960.

ONE MAN-ONE VOTE AND SENATE REAPPORTIONMENT., 1964-1966. 1980.

Teale, Stephen, The Impact of One Man-One Vote on the Senate: Senator

Teale Reviews Reapportionment and Other Issues, 1952-1966.
Allen, Don A., A Los Angeles Assemblyman Recalls the Reapportionment Struggle.

PERSPECTIVES ON DEPARTMENT ADMINISTRATION, CALIFORNIA 1953-1966. 1980.
Peirce, John, California State Department of Finance, 1952-1958.
Levit, Bert W. , State Finance and Innovations in Government Organization,

1944-1959.

Tieburg, Albert B., California State Department of Employment, 1945-1966.
Wedemeyer, John, California State Department of Social Welfare, 1959-1966.
Lowry, James, California State Department of Mental Hygiene, 1960s.

vii

POLITICAL ADVOCACY AND LOYALTY. 1981.

Blease, Coleman, A Lobbyist Views the Knight-Brawn Era.

Coffey, Bertram, Reflections on George Miller, Jr., Governors Pat and

Jerry Broun, and the Democratic Party.

Engle, Lucretia, Clair Engle as Campaigner and Statesman.
Nelson, Helen, California's First Consumer Counsel.

Salinger, Pierre, A Journalist as Democratic Campaigner and U.S. Senator.
REMEMBERING WILLIAM KNOWLAND. 1981.

Jewett, Emelyn Knowland , My Father's Political Philosophy and Colleagues.
Johnson, Estelle Knowland, My Father as Senator, Campaigner, and Civic Leader.
Manolis, Paul, A Friend and Aide Reminisces.

REPORTING FROM SACRAMENTO. 1981.

Behrens, Earl C., Gubernatorial Campaigns and Party Issues: A Political

Reporter's View, 1948-1966.
Bergholz, Richard, Reporting on California Government and Politics,

1953-1966.
Kossen, Sydney, Covering Goodwin Knight and the Legislature for the

San Francisco News, 1956-1958.

SAN FRANCISCO REPUBLICANS. 1980.

Christopher, George, Mayor of San Francisco and Republican Party Candidate.
Weinberger, Caspar W. , California Assembly, Republican State Central
Committee, and Elections, 1953-1966.

CALIFORNIA WATER ISSUES, 1950-1966. 1981.

Brown, Edmund G. , Sr. , The California Water Project: Personal Interest

and Involvement in the Legislation, Public Support, and Construction,

1950-1966.

Goldberg, B. Abbott, Water Policy Issues in the Courts, 1950-1966.
Brody, Ralph M. , Devising Legislation and Building Public Support for the

California Water Project, 1959-1960; Brief History of the Westlands

Water District.
Warne, William E., Administration of the Department of Water Resources,

1961-1966.
Bonderson, Paul R. , Executive Officer, Regional and State Water Pollution

and Water Quality Control Boards, 1950-1966.

viii

INTRODUCTION

There were as many Roger Kents as there are people here* — and many,
many more.

There was Grappa, the grandfather of one granddaughter and six grand
sons ("one more, and we'll have our baseball team"), all of whom he treated
as the equals he felt them to be.

There was Roger, the husband, too much his own man, too vitally
concerned with other things to be domesticated — and blessed with a wife
who did not want to domesticate him, who understood that he had to do
things his way, in his own time, just as she did.

And there was Roger, the father, loved by his daughters and his son.

There was Roger, the astute and aggressive lawyer; Roger, "Our Glorious
Leader" of the Democratic party in California; Roger, the good friend of the
great, of Stevenson, Warren, Humphrey, and Douglas; Roger, the hated foe of
the Nixons and Joe McCarthys of our time; Roger, the concerned landlord
and keeper of the family fortunes; Roger, the fisherman and the hunter.

Each man different but all with those deeply etched traits of character
that made him unique among men.

In a time of timidity, deceit, and manipulation, he was indomitable,
straightforward, totally incorruptible. No one ever had to guess where he
stood on an issue, or what he thought of a person. If you didn't know,
you could ask — and you would always find out, with no hedges.

Loyalty he had in high degree. One of his children recalls with awe
the tempest she accidentally created by mildly criticizing another family
member. In his career as a politician, it was a quality that brought
together all manner of disparate temperaments and goals and ambitions into
a powerful Democratic force.

Humor was his and generosity. But what all the Rogers had and what
perhaps we loved and admired most was that quality of living life to the
fullest possible measure. He loved its challenges. The worst adversities
he met head on. He seemed incapable of self-pity.

*This tribute by G. Stanleigh Arnold, nephew of Roger Kent, was read at his
memorial recpetion at the Kent family home on May 22, 1980.

He never cared about money or its trappings. He drove an old car,
wore old clothes, lived in the kitchen and the bedroom of his house.

Politically and sartorially he cut an odd figure at the Pacific Union
Club. But such was his stature and his character that even there, in a
castle inhabited by many of his ideological foes, he was loved and
respected (and, on occasion, when goaded beyond endurance by reactionary
talk, feared) .

We have all been lucky to have savored such a man — that is our good
fortune that can never be taken from us. Our loss is that even the youngest
of us will never know anyone remotely like him again.

One last note. This writer's favorite Roger was the hunter and this
is the scene I'll remember. It's at Butte Lodge. The morning is dark and
dawn still an hour or more away. We are heading out in a little boat,
laden with decoys, down a long black strip of a canal. Roger is in the
stern tending the outboard. In the bow, leaning forward so far that he is
in perpetual. danger of toppling overboard, is Roger's massive golden
retriever whom he called "the great dog Tag."

All the way out to the blind, Tag's deep excited barking sounds across
the marsh.

It's Tag's barking, true, but the excitement, that intense joy of the
moment, that was Roger's as well.

G. Stanleigh Arnold

20 May 1980
Kentfield, California

Enterprise-Record Tuesday, October 18, 1968

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Newspaper

A. W. BRAMWELL, Editor and Publisher

Bill Lee, Executive Editor
Milan Murray, Managing Editor Eddie Booth, City Editor

Garey Weibel, Advertising Director

Roben Carlile, National Adv. Mgr. Frank Mang, Retail Adv. Mgr.
Les Earle, Circulation Manager

A Letter From the 'Old Pro'

Dear Editor—

I am still more pleased with
your editorial about me as an
"Old Pro" than anything that's
been written about me. You
said I was "tough as a rusty
nail and twice as nasty." I'm
not expected to be objective.

I find your October 7 edito
rial of apology for Reagan
"soft and understanding" far
beyond your obligations to your
readers and your indictment of
the "torpedomen of the metro
politan press" unfair and inac
curate.

You concede in the editorial
that Reagan is "naive and
gullible" and that "he let him
self be harassed into contra
dictions on the one hand and
fuzzy generalities on the oth
er." You blame the metropoli
tan press for that situation. I
blame Reagan. If by some
"miracle" as you suggest, or
. catastrophe as I suggest, Rea
gan should be elected gover
nor, you and he will learn that
there are no "retakes" if he's
the real governor. You both
will learn that the governor
must make hard, cold deci
sions and that a mind broad
casting "contradictions" and
"fuzzy generalities" is not the
equipment that a governor
needs.

You state that questions by
local reporters were shunted
aside. My understanding is
that one of the local questions
about the Yuba River was one
of the most embarrassing
things that happened to Rea
gan while he was in Chico.
Earlier he missed the locations
of Clear Lake and the Eel Riv

er. Hasn't it occurred to you
that his ignorance about North
ern California perhaps exhibits
his contempt for your meagre
voting strength? Will he pay
more or less attention to you
if he no longer is asking for
your help?

You say that the metropoli
tan press is out to "get" Rea
gan. I've always found all the
press ready to "get" anyone
who doesn't know what he's
talking about, by reporting
what he said and did, and I've
also found them willing to ac
curately report the man who
had something to say and
knows what he's talking about.

The fault lies, not with the
press, but with the nice but
ignorant man seeking to be
governor of the first state in
the union with no knowledge
or experience of what's requir
ed. You people in Chico had
the perfect example of what
we are talking about. Tired or
no. a man who knows what;
the problems are and what he/
intends to do about them would_
never earn the "torpedoes" sc*
richly deserved by R o n a 1 c<
Reagan. ...

Why elect a man governor o=
California whose utterance
are "contradictions on the on
hand and fuzzy generalities o
the other"?

Thanks again for that editc
rial of some years back. Bes~
regards. ;

ROGER KENT

Co-Ch airman
Committee to Re-elect
Governor Brown
San Francisco, Calif,

After reading Roger Kent's letter to us, we de
cided to look back in the files and re-read the editorial
of 1964 which he still remembers so fondly. After re
reading it, we decided to reprint it.

The 'Old Pro' of Democratic Politics

(Enterprise-Record, Sept. 5, 1964)

Newsmen who know California politics affectionately refer
to Roger Kent, present Democratic State Chairman, as "the
Old Pro."

And that is just what Roger Kent amounts to; except that—
in most aspects, including the financial aspect— it is a matter
of Kent supporting the party rather man the party supporting
Kent

Although ordinarily on opposite sides of the political and
philosophical fence, the relationship of The Enterprise-Record
with Roger Kent has indeed been a pleasant one — mutually
pleasant, we hope.

Kent first poked his nose into Mid-Valley and Coastal poli
tics some 16 years ago, about the time when Harry Truman
was on the verge of upsetting the pollsters with his 1948 victory
over confident Tom Dewey.

In 1950, Kent took his first — and last — fling at personal
politics as a candidate for Congress in the old First District, of
which Butte County then was a part (prior to the 1951 reappor-
tiooment which put us into Clair Engle's Second District).

Kent didn't win the congressional seat, but that campaign
provided him with the initial contacts by which he eventually
became the recognized party expert on the "political tempera
ture," as it were, of this big area of California stretching from
Sacramento to the Oregon line.

A tireless worker and a persuasive fence-mender, Kent
eventually proved so valuable to the party that he was called
upon to serve several terms as Northern California Vice Chair
man of the party. It was a foregone conclusion that, eventually,
he would lead the party for the entire state, the position he now
occupies.

Although he is as tough as a rusty nail — and twice as nasty,
If nastiness is called for in either an intra-party squabble or a
name-calling battle with the opposition — the incongruous yet
real sentimentality of his makeup, which sometimes brings an
unwanted mist into his eyes, has endeared him to party workers
throughout the state.

Roger Kent is the guy Democrats seek out when they get
into trouble. Although it surely is not a part of any official
record, we believe we could prove, if we had to, that even Don
Bradley, generally accepted as the most proficient campaign
manager of them all, on a number of occasions has resorted to
the "What does Roger say?" cushion when the going has been
rough.

In a sense, Roger Kent is the personification of the unex-
plainable characteristic which has made the American system
work as well as it does. He is a competent attorney in his own
right, independently wealthy, and he really has "nothing to gain"
from his work for the party. He is not a New Dealer, not a
New Frontiersman, not an outspoken advocate of the latest
Democratic gimmick, the Great Society. He describes himself
only as "a Democrat."

Yet that one-word label, "Democrat," is to him more noble
and inspiring than could have been any coat-of-arms on the
shield of. a knight-in-armor.

Roger Kent is never at a loss for words. He can always
come forth with a statement.

Honesty compels us to admit that his statements often are
hard for the back page of the E-R to swallow — and we have
ripped him savagely at times, as he has ripped us. He has
viewed us as great and wise fellows when we have supported
his Democratic candidates; and considered us not-quite-bright
hucksters when we have supported the opposition.

And yet, better than most, we realize that politics— Amer
ican style— would be much the less without its Roger Rents. . .

Mistake us not; we do not endorse Roger Kent An orade
of the whole truth, a pathfinder to propriety— he is not.

But as a Democrat, he is the "Old Pro"— and he has no
counterpart.

We decided to reprint that old editorial in the hope
that it will explain to readers why we simply do not
have the heart to take strong issue with Eoger at thia

^ ^Even though we and Roger have disagreed

'more often than we have agreed over the years, and
Wen though we still don't consider him an "oracle of
the whole truth," we still very affectionately consider
him the "Old Pro" of Democratic politics and we have
not the heart to take him apart. •

Rather, our feelings toward Roger in this year of
1966 lie more in the realm of sympathy than opposi
tion. We know that Roger's entire dedication at this
time in his life is directed to the effort to keep an old
and leaking ship afloat. And we know that more of
feis worries are caused by the frailties of his ship than
by the shells being fired at it by the opposition.

We know that Roger Kent is too wise to be worried
about what Ronald Reagan might do to Gov. Brown
and the Democratic Party. Rather, HIS worries center
upon what Gov. Brown and the Democratic Party
hierarchy are doing to themselves.

- For example, because of ineptitude ranging all
the way from the governor's mansion down to the
party basement, California's present Democratic ad
ministration is less efficient and more cumbersome,
less thrifty and more costly and less trustworthy and
more widely distrusted than any prior administration
—of either party — in California history.

The degree of public disenchantment with the
administration was aptly demonstrated in the June
primary when more than a million Democrats, mind
you, voted against a third term for Gov. Brown. Since
then, for the first time since the 1920s, Republican
voter registration gains have exceeded those of the
Democratic Party.

Those are big, big worries to Roger Kent.

Internal worries are perhaps even more painful.
Carmen Warschaw, the veteran Southern California
Democratic leader, has all but left the party because
of her spat with Gov. Brown. The governor's veteran
campaign manager, the excellent Don Bradley, still
is fuming over the fact that Brown (or some advisor)
frantically imported expatriate Frederick Dutton from
Washington to share the campaign's reins of leader
ship. To say that Bradley and Dutton do not get along
is to put it far too mildly. Speaker Jesse Unruh, one
of the party's most powerful and potent campaigners,
has been strangely silent and of practically no aid
whatever to the party's statewide campaign. Veteran
Democrat Sam Yorty, who collected some 900,000 anti-
Brown votes in the primary, is going to be "out of
the state" during the campaign's critical late weeks
rather than work for the administration. These aU are
big worries for Roger Kent.

In addition, Roger knows now that the decision to
employ the completely un-democratic "guilt by as
sociation" strategy of trying to link Reagan with the
so-called "subversive" John Birch Society has. back
fired on Brown and his aides. The people simply have
not bought it.

But mostly, Roger seems to know that the Demo
cratic effort to paint Gov. Brown as a know-everything,
answer-to-all-problems, tower-of-strength — and to
paint Reagan as a bumbling stranger to California —
has failed dismally. Brown's own reputation as a vac
illating humbler makes Reagan's pale and fresh by
comparison.

Roger knows that the people little care whether
Reagan knows the exact location of this or that river,
or this or that dam. After all, the people do not expect
their governor to dig canals or carry rocks to dams — •
they expect him to appoint efficient and honest and
knowledgeable executives to handle those tasks.

Roger knows that what the people want from a
governor is strong, honest and fearless leadership to
ward efficient, economic and equitable government.

Nay, Roger Kent already has too many worries for
n« to add to them by engaging him in verbal fisticuffs.

The _ pity of it is that Roger would not be in the
spot he is in now — trying to keep an old and leaking
ship afloat — if more of his Democratic shipmates were
like Roger Kent instead of as they are.

But in the end, Roger will survive that inept and
wrangling crew. And for that we will b« grateful. To
us, Eoger Kent still ia th« "Old Pro,"

xii

INTERVIEW HISTORY

Roger Kent's memorial reception on May 22, 1980, was an open-hearted
celebration of the man by his friends, political comrades, law colleagues,
relatives, and admirers spanning the generations. They gathered at the
Kent family home on the brick porch around large collages of photographs of
Roger Kent in life — the dove hunter with his favorite dog, the congressman's
son in short pants, the campaigner introducing Adlai Stevenson, the grand
father playing with his grandchildren, the Democratic party chairman cooking
up campaign strategy with Pat Brown and Dick Tuck, and the groom dressed in
summer whites and draped with leis with his bride, the former Alice Cooke
of Hawaii, as they started on their honeymoon from San Francisco.

The crowd was not hushed. It seemed that people felt at ease with each
other. And with Kent so strong and matter-of-factly optimistic a presence,
it was possible to forget for the moment that he was gone. Later, when the
eulogists recalled him, there were nods of agreement and, amid the tears,
some smiles at much-savored memories: the man born to wealth who, nonethe
less, was an ingrained lower-case democrat; the friend and trusted advisor
to presidents; the man in the rumpled suit carrying a well-worn satchel
bulging with precinct lists — and .a supply of booze; the man who didn't mince
words — "you always knew where you stood with Roger and how he stood on an
issue"; the "originator of the letter bomb — the words exploded out of the
envelope before it was opened"; the "Glorious Leader" of the 212 gang; the
man whose confidence, optimism, and hard work inspired those around him to
do their best.

Roger Kent became head of the northern California Democrats when he
became vice chairman of the Democratic State Central Committee (DSCC) in
1954. He became statewide head in 1956 when he assumed chairmanship of the
Democratic State Central Committee. For eleven years he alternated in these
positions, a feat that perplexes many political analysts who contrast Kent's
lengthy tenure with the fissions and fusions of southern California Democrats

The job did not mean much in 1954. Although Democrats were in the
majority in terms of registration, the party had been out of power since
1942, largely due to the practice of cross-filing by which candidates could
legally run in both primaries without any identifying party label. There
was also the popularity of "nonpartisan" Republican Governor Earl Warren,
whose programs and charisma had so long appealed to Democrats that a whole
generation had grown less attentive to party platform than to the competence
and moral fiber of the highly popular Republican.

Roger Kent, whose family name had meant liberal-progressive Republican
politics in Marin County for most of a century, had lost two races for
Congress as a Democrat from the First Congressional District as a result of

xiii

cross-filing. The lesson was not lost on him. He took an active public role
against cross-filing and, as Democratic Central Committee chairman, involved
himself with the nuts and bolts of politics — building the party organization
of volunteers, strengthening county committees, tirelessly fund raising and
skillfully delegating, maintaining a year-round staff at party headquarters
at 212 Sutter Street, San Francisco, and carefully apportioning money and
time to special election races that could be won.

With this groundwork carefully laid, Kent was prepared to act on political
opportunities: the Republicans lost their kingpin Earl Warren to the United
States Supreme Court in 1953. Party labeling became a reality in 1954. And
Adlai Stevenson's 1952 campaign had stirred Democratic grassroots in every
community in California, and a host of California Democratic Clubs (CDC)
were forming. Combining the organization of the Democratic party and the
human resources of the CDC was the organizational feat that gave the Democrats
the manpower to take advantage of the coming GOP apocalypse — the "Big Switch."
This shifted popular second-string Republican Governor Goodwin Knight from
his planned gubernatorial candidacy to becoming a candidate for the U.S.
Senate, in order to permit California's senior Senator William Knowland to
run for governor. With the Republican party split, the field was open for
Edmund G. Brown, Senior, and a Democratic sweep in 1958 that placed Democrats
in every elective state office except secretary of state.

This series of interviews was designed to capture the insights of a
pivotal figure in the era of the Goodwin Knight and Pat Brown administrations
as part of the Govermental Eras Documentation Project. The sessions were
designed to show how Roger Kent accepted the challenge to rebuild the
Democratic party and what he and others of both parties did during the
years of Kent's most active involvement. A half-dozen interviews originally
were planned to cover Kent's political activities. The outline expanded at
every topic and period to include the history of his family (a crucial chapter
in California's conservation history and political past), his work in -World
War II, and his dealings with Senator Joseph McCarthy and other national
figures. The six sessions stretched to twenty-one. These additional inter
views were made possible by the generosity of a group of Kent's friends
and family and, particularly, Jean Black, Elizabeth Gatov, and Raymond Lapin,
who carried out fund-raising activities.

The Interviewing

Three interviewers worked with Roger Kent over a period of nineteen
months (from March 7, 1976 to September 22, 1977). Regional Oral History
Office interviewer Amelia R. Fry (then the director of the Governmental
Eras Documentation Project) conducted most of the sessions focussing on
politics (one through fifteen and twenty-one). Ms. Fry is known as Chita
to her friends and is referred to by Kent this way in the transcript. The

use of first names and the open cordiality this practice implies marked the
relationship of Roger Kent with all his interviewers and with the editor.

XIV

The late Walton E. Bean, professor of history at the University of
California, Berkeley, conducted an interview on May 15, 1976, for use with
his university classes. The video tape of that interview, produced through
the facilities of the UC Television Office, was copied on audio tape,
transcribed, and included in the memoir as interview nine (chapter ten).
Regional Oral History Office staff interviewer Anne Hus Brower continued
the interviewing after Ms. Fry left for Washington, D.C., and conducted
interviews sixteen through twenty, which dealt largely with family background
and life at Kentfield.

Amelia Fry's interviews were conducted at Kent's law office, Crimmins ,
Kent, Draper, and Bradley in San Francisco, and in the family home in
Kentfield. When the interviewing began, Kent already was plagued with
failing health and, as the interviews progressed through the twenty-first
session, failing eyesight. Several friends were alarmed at the toll of
Kent's disease, and so taping began with a focus on his political life
before cutting back to personal history.

Ms. Fry's interview notes record her impression that Kent seemed most
comfortable when the taping took place at the breakfast table in the enormous
family kitchen with its hanging pots, venerable restaurant-sized gas range,
and comfortable well-used chairs. Occasionally they retreated to Kent's
personal office behind the kitchen. The room was cluttered with stacks of
papers and mementos of war service (a Japanese flag given him by the relatives
of the young soldiers whose flag Roger had retrieved from a sunken submarine
and which he returned to the family) , of politics (a canvas liquor case and
photographs of famous and not so famous faces in political life) and of
hunting and boyhood. Here, in his "home within a home," it seemed to her
that Roger, even with his struggle against advancing emphysema, breathed
easier.

Interviews were strictly limited to an hour — as strictly as he would
allow. After each session a copy of the interviewer's notes and the outline
of that session were sent to him so that they could be sure of what they had
covered. Kent also received a list of topics for the next session, with
copies of relevant material from his papers from The Bancroft Library. He
faithfully reviewed these and, in the course of the interviews, uncovered
more sources which he transferred to The Bancroft when he retired from his
law office on August 31, 1977.

During the course of these interviews, several delicious lunches were
recorded in Fry's interview notes. It was on these occasions that Kent's
wife, Alice, joined them — either in the large paneled dining room or outside
on the broad expanse of elm-studded lawn. Fry notes that Mrs. Kent's support
was evident for the oral history project that had captured Kent's interest.

After the conclusion of Fry's politically focussed interviews in 1976
and Fry had begun her work in Washington, D.C., she and Kent maintained
correspondence, exchanging bits of history and commentary of current events.
She recalls that one of Kent's last letters to her bewailed the continuing
power of lobbying associations: "'I've been preaching for many years that
the only conceivable way you'd get tax reform would be if the government
paid all the permissable expenses of legislators in the United States Congress,
he wrote, and I could see the forelock flip down over his forehead and hear
his hand hit the table for emphasis. That was Roger. Friend or foe, you
always knew what he thought. That is what makes his interview a major
contribution to the stuff of history."

In the spring of 1977, Anne Brower interviewed Roger Kent on five
occasions in his law offices at 155 Montgomery Street. In response to
the direction of her questions, Kent talked about his boyhood — idyllic in
its time and place — and about his siblings and the family life at Kentfield.
He described life in Washington, B.C., as a congressman's son, elaborating
on the portrait of his feminine and feminist mother, whose husband patiently
bailed her out of jail when her suffragist efforts fell afoul of the law.
He also discussed his various civic involvements, his government service,
and World War II experiences .

Mrs. Brower 's interview notes record her impression that "in answering
all my questions, he was uniformly courteous and charming, but I felt his
heart was not altogether in the interviews, that he was happiest when he was
reliving old political coalitions and campaigns, an area not within my pur
view. Despite this, he gave a lively picture of family life in Marin at the
beginning of the century, humorous and informative glimpses of the Securities
and Exchange Commission and Department of Defense, and marginal notes (some
amusing, some poignant) on the war in the Pacific. My impression was of a
friendly, humorous, predominantly political man."

The Editing

By the time the editing process commenced in summer of 1978, Kent was
blind. Editor Julie Shearer sent the edited transcripts to him in segments,
which were read to Kent by his daughter Alice Kent Stephens and his nephew
G. Stanleigh Arnold. Arnold also made a practice of arising at 5 a.m. to
record the morning paper so that a cassette of daily news would be in Kent's
hand by breakfast time.

*Kent to Fry, October 6, 1979.

XVI

Editing was fairly extensive for several reasons. Roger Kent had been
at the core of the Democratic party — was the core — in its growing years. He
was hard working (which means he did just about any job when it was necessary)
And he was accessible (that is, he knew everybody and was consulted on just
about everything). Therefore, he had a firsthand view of or direct part in
nearly every party issue during the eleven years he alternated as vice-
chairman or statewide chairman of the Democratic State Central Committee.
His political interviewer, thoroughly grounded in the political history of
the Knight-Brown years, was aware of this. She was equally aware of the toll
taken on her narrator's strength and breath from his chronic emphysema.
Rather than interrupt the flow of recollection and expend his precious time
and strength filling in names and figures during the interview, the gaps
were left to the editing phase.

Steeped in the issues of the era of his political involvement and with
his opportunities for current political action limited by his health and
visual disability, Kent relished the job of fleshing out fragmentary sentences
and adding clarifying material to the transcript. He even hired a San Rafael
secretarial firm to record and transcribe several pages of additions to the
first two chapters "to save you guys at The Bancroft some money." When the
agency reported that the tape had been lost, he re-recorded the entire seg
ment. Characteristically, the segment is largely devoted to naming and
thanking the people inside and out of the 212 gang who helped to build the
Democratic party organization.

Bouts of flu, intensified by his emphysema, interrupted the process of
reviewing the edited transcript as did convalescence following two corneal
transplant operations — January of 1979 and January of 1980. Kent was not
willing to let his sight go without a fight, and both operations were
successful in restoring his ability to read.

Kent's last note to the editor, dated March 14, 1980, exulted, "I've
done it; that is, I've edited all you sent me," and proposed a lunch meeting
to go over the next segment — chapter eight. Sadly, Roger's triumphant note
was accompanied by one from his daughter Alice, reporting that Roger had
"taken a big dive and is back in the hospital in critical condition." For
two months Roger's health and strength ebbed and flowed. He was closely
attended by his daughters Alice and Mary Kent Schardt, son Clarence, his
brother Sherman, and his wife, Alice, whose twice daily visits kept him
company until his death on May 16.

Then it was up to others to carry the memoir to completion. Friends
Don Bradley, Madlyn Day, and Elizabeth Gatov graciously answered the many
questions that the editor would have addressed to Roger. They verified
places, dates, identity of people, and spelling of names beginning with
chapter eight (interviews six through fifteen and interview twenty-one).
Substantial clarifying additions supplied by Bradley, Day, or Gatov were
inserted into the text in brackets along with the name of the source.

xvii

Supporting materials and original documents too lengthy to include in
the memoir are on deposit with the Roger Kent papers in The Bancroft Library.
(The papers of William Kent, Elizabeth Thacher Kent, and Sherman Kent are on
deposit at Yale University.) Anne T. Kent and Carlotta Ehat recorded an
interview with Roger Kent on February 15, 1978, on Kent's family background
and the early days at Kentfield. The Moya Library Oral History Program and
the Marin County Public Library cooperated to make available this tape (and
the ROHO recording of Roger Kent's memorial reception on May 22, 1980) at
the library at Marin County Civic Center, San Rafael, California.*

Roger Kent's family was unfailingly helpful in completing the memoir.
His daughter Alice, his wife Alice, and nephew Stanleigh Arnold patiently
answered the editor's questions on family history. Mrs. Kent willingly
sorted through dozens of photographs to choose the appropriate illustrations
for the memoir. It was she who thought to include the reluctantly admiring
editorial from the Republican Chico-Enterprise-Record , which described
Kent as "the old pro. . .tough as a rusty nail and twice as nasty. . .a
competent lawyer in his own right. . .the most proficient campaign manager
of them all." It was a description of himself that Kent particularly relished,
The respect of your opponent is to be cherished as well as the love of your
friends .

Roger Kent devoted considerable financial resources, his valuable time,
his effective leadership, his political savvy, his patient ear, and his
persuasive voice to electing good Democrats to political office. He put his
faith in that all too human institution — the political process. It was an
act of faith that was tested at every ballot and in every back room conference.
The testimony of his eulogists and the pages of this memoir and the evidence
of a thriving party organization make clear that his faith was unwavering.

Amelia R. Fry
Washington, B.C.

Anne Hus Brower
Julie Gordon Shearer

8 July 1981

Regional Oral History Office

University of California at Berkeley

*Copies of these tapes also are placed in The Bancroft Library donated tapes
collection.

xviii

BRIEF BIOGRAPHY

Roger Kent:
Parents:

Spouse :
Children:

Education:

Professional
Experience :

Military
Service:

Political
Activities :

June 8, 1906, Chicago, Illinois, to May 16, 1980, Kentfield,
California.

William Kent (member of Congress, 1908-1916, First District,
California, and member of Tariff Commission, 1916-1920) and
Elizabeth Thacher Kent.

Alice Cooke Kent (married August 26, 1930, in Honolulu, Hawaii).

Clarence Cooke Kent (1934), Mary Kent (Mrs. Max) Schardt (1936),
Alice Kent Stephens (1938).

Sidwell Friends School, Washington, D.C.; Tamalpais Union High
School, Mill Valley, California; Thacher School, Ojai, California;
Yale University (Ph.D. 1928, LL.B. 1931).

Attorney with Chickering and Gregory, 1931-1936; attorney for
San Francisco Regional Office of the Securities and Exchange
Commission (with enforcement responsibility including the Japanese
Bond Injunction Case of 1938), 1936-1942; general counsel to U.S.
Department of Defense, 1952-1953; founding partner in the law firm
Crimmins, Kent, Draper, and Bradley, 1946-August 31, 1977; member
of the California Bar Association admitted to practice before
the District Court of Appeal (California and Hawaii), U.S. Court
of Appeals for Ninth Circuit and U.S. Supreme Court.

Commissioned first lieutenant , USNR, February 1942; attended Air
Combat Intelligence School, Quonset Point, Rhode Island, 1942;
served in South Pacific from August 1942-June 1943; received the
Silver Star for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action
during service at Guadalcanal in 1942 and 1943; served as intel
ligence officer for the commander of aircraft in the Central
Pacific, October 1943-October 1944, receiving Commendation for
Service; promoted to lieutenant commander in April 1944 and
assistant to the air plans officer on the staff of the commander
in chief, U.S. Fleet, Washington, D.C.

Candidate for Congress from California's First Congressional
District, 1948, 1950; alternated two-year terms as Democratic
State Central Committee chairman (northern California) and state
chairman, beginning as vice-chairman in 1954 and continuing until
his resignation as state chairman in 1965; northern California
chairman of Edmund G. Brown, Sr.'s campaign for governor in 1966;
northern California chairman of John Tunney campaign for U.S.
Senate, 1970.

xix

Boards and

Commissions: National Stamp Advisory Board under Kennedy and Johnson

administrations; Northern Pacific Fisheries Commission under

Kennedy and Johnson administrations.

Organizations: American Civil Liberties Union, American Cancer Society,

American Legion, Commonwealth Club, Ducks Unlimited, National
Maritime Museum, Pacific Union Club, Planned Parenthood,
Save the Redwoods League, University Club.

I FRIENDSHIP AND FRICTION WITH GLAIR ENGLE
[Interview 1: March 7, 1976]##

Fry: Do you want to start there with the late Senator Glair Engle?

Kent: I think so. He was so important to the California Democratic party.
I met him, I'm quite sure, in 1948. I may have met him earlier.
I talked with him during my campaigns to become congressman in the
first district in '48 and in 1950. He was even then a senior
congressman in the second district, which of course adjoins the
first district in many, many places.

Fry: Yes, and if you'd been elected to Congress, you would have worked
right with him.

Kent: Oh, yes. We became very good friends. We had some real good brawls,
which I'll tell about, as well as our many friendly contacts. In
1950, the plan to build the Trinity Dam was a hot issue, and the
people in Humboldt County and on the coast generally didn't favor
the idea of exporting the Klamath and Trinity water to outside of
their area. They said, "Why don't we use the water here, in the
paper mill?" or this, that and the other thing. But it made so much
sense to take the Trinity water and pour it through a hole through
the mountains, drop it, create a lot of electricity, and put some
water into the Sacramento Valley that needed it badly.

I wrote Engle when I was running for Congress the second time>
in '50, and said I was about to come out in favor of the Trinity
Dam program. I got back a typical Engle wire. He was such a salty
guy that he was a pleasure to do business with. He said, "Don't be
a statesman!" [laughter] He knew that I would arouse antagonism
from the voters who were presumably going to be my constituency.

##This symbol indicates that a tape or tape segment has begun or
ended. For a guide to the tapes see page 454.

Kent: I also tangled with him in 1949. I started to support for federal

judge a fellow named Sam Finley , who had been the judge in Del Norte
County and was a tremendously capable judge, who was assigned all
over the state to sit on tough cases, and to sit on the appellate
court because of course there wasn't an awful lot of legal business
going on in Del Norte County. Sam Finley had the support of most
of the good lawyers that I knew.

Well, all of a sudden I found that I was running head on into
Engle, who wanted the appointment for Monroe Friedman. I started in
then to make a real campaign of it with President Truman and the
Department of Justice, both politically and legally; I also got
endorsements from most of the bar associations in northern California
and from a great many of the Democratic county committees.

Engle didn't like that at all, because Finley wasn't his
candidate. Monroe Friedman was an Alameda County Democratic Central
Committee chairman. As far as anybody knew, Monroe Friedman's
qualifications were that he had been for many years a Democratic
county chairman and he had been helpful to the Democratic party.
It later turned out that he did get a court appointment, that he was
a damn good judge, and many of us had wronged him in saying that he
didn't have the qualifications to be a federal judge.

Anyway, Engle kept giving me reasons why he was not going to
support Finley. He would say, "Well, Finley came out of the same
office as Jesse Carter," who was then on the California Supreme Court,
and from Redding, and that this would be unfair and so on. I finally
made him so mad that he told me the truth of the matter, which was
that there were four Democratic congressmen from northern California —
himself, and George P. Miller from Alameda County. At that time,
Franck Havenner and Jack Shelley had just been elected in San Francisco,
in '49 in a special election. Engle and Miller had decided that if
they didn't stick together, that they were going to get run over like
a tank in the matter of patronage influence. He had given Miller
his word that he would back Friedman for this appointment, and he
would not go back on it.

As I said, it took many, many meetings and many arguments before
we got to the truth of the matter, as to why he would not go for
Sam Finley. [laughter]

Fry: How did you happen to go to the Department of Defense?

Department of Defense Days — 1952 and 1953

Kent: In 1951, after I had lost the '50 race for Congress, I went East, and
I saw my brother Sherman. One of his closest friends, and also a
very close friend of mine, was a fellow named James Cooley, who was
on the Board of National Estimates of the CIA [Central Intelligence
Agency] of which my brother Sherman was the chairman. Cooley was
married to a gal who had been about my sister's closest friend in
college and later in Paris. They were very good friends of mine.

At a party Cooley told me about Charles Coolidge, a wonderful
man from Boston, appointed the assistant secretary of defense, legal
and legislative. That was at a time when the Defense Department was
organized with three assistant secretaries. (Coolidge was legal and
legislative, Anna Rosenberg was labor, and W.J. McNeil was finance.
I think they must have thirty there now.) There was formerly a
fellow there as a general counsel to the Department of Defense. He
had quit, and Coolidge said he was going to be his own general
counsel, because he was a most capable lawyer from a very big,
prestigious firm in Boston. He tried that out for five or six months
but finally he decided that he wanted to get a general counsel. So
Jim Cooley happened to mention that I was a San Francisco lawyer of
considerable prominence, and that I was in town, and he might like
to see me.

Coolidge said, "By all means, send him over to see me." This is
one of the things that I have noted in politics: if you have a
reasonably good guy — we'll assume that I was a reasonably good guy —
and he's going about his business, practically nobody ever hears of
him. He takes a run for office and doesn't make an ass of himself
and all of a sudden he gains a great deal of stature. It's just a
silly thing, but it seems to me I've seen this happen on a number of
occasions .

Well, I knew of no reason in the world why he would pick me out,
instead of any one of a thousand lawyers in San Francisco, to be asked
to be general counsel to defense. So I didn't go around to see
Coolidge.

By this time, in '51, I had decided that my political endeavor
was going to be to get into the abolish-cross-filing movement. I had
been down to Los Angeles, and I had talked to J.B. Elliott, and I had
talked with some of the others, and I was to be the vice-chairman or
cochairman of the initiative to abolish cross-filing. That was in '51.

Fry: That's another story I hope we can go into.

Kent: Well, sure. Of course, ultimately I dropped it, because of this

Defense Department thing. But, as I say, that had been my plan. So
I didn't go over and see Coolidge the next day. I saw Cooley the
next day, and he said, "You didn't go see Coolidge! Why not?"

I said, "Well, there's no sense in my seeing Coolidge. I'm not
interested. I've got things to do in California, and I'm just
wasting his time and my time in going over and talking with him."

He said, "You'll never waste your time in talking to a guy as
good as Coolidge." He couldn't have said anything truer, because
Coolidge — well, he was a Harvard trustee then, and he had a big
position in the Boston area and in the legal profession. So I went
over and talked to him, and he was just a charming guy. We've got
a picture of him here.

Fry: How do you spell his name? Is it Coolidge?
Kent: Coolidge, just like Calvin.

He was a marvelous guy. So he started talking to me about this
job. I shook my head and said, "Look, you've got this thing all
wrong. What you should be looking at is the fact that I know very
little about your statutes on the military. I know nothing about
your regulations on the military. I have never run a big law office,
and I don't think I have the qualifications for this job in any way."

Well, I went back and I told my brother Sherman what I had told
Coolidge [laughs], and he said, "If you wanted the job, you couldn't
possibly have told the man anything that was more likely to get you
the job!"

Fry: You had run for office and lost, and then you told him you were
unqualified for the job.

Kent: Well, I was unqualified for the job of being general counsel for the
Department of Defense. [laughter] As I said, I told him I didn't
know his statutes and I didn't know his regulations and I had not run a
big law office. (Well, it turned out that I did have some competence
in running an office. I had a lot of fun when I did it.) But what
happened then was that he called me back again. He said he wanted
me to meet Bill Foster. This was the Foster who was deputy secretary
of defense, and later was the number-one guy in the disarmament thing.
So I met Foster, and Foster was another most impressive man.

Then Coolidge told me, "Well, I'd give you the job, except that

we have an offer out to one man, but he doesn't know whether his firm

will let him take it or not. He will not leave his firm if his firm
tells him not to.

Kent: I said, "Well, I'm off to California the day after tomorrow. Let me know."

So he let me know. 1 think he called me and said, "The fellow's
going to take the job." I said, "Fine, it's been a great pleasure to
meet you, and I'm delighted, and I hope to see you when I come back to
Washington some other time." I went back to work, and about two weeks
later he called me and said, "This guy's firm has changed its mind,
and he can't take the job. We want you to take the job. When can you
get here?" (Of course, they wanted me right then.)

Well, at that time, I felt that I had some cards. I said, "I'll
take a month or six weeks to clean up what I'm doing in San Francisco in
my firm." So I did. I got back there, I think around February of '52.

A couple of things happened right then. One was that Coolidge's
daughter was killed in an automobile accident, returning from a skiing
thing. He, of course, took some time off. The poor guy was just
devastated.

Attempt to Seize the Steel Industry

Kent: And right about the same time the Department of Defense decided to
seize the steel industry. The Korean War was going on, and the
steelworkers were trying to call a strike.

We went to a conference at the White House with the Department
of Justice lawyers. It got to the point where, in the Korean War,
they were beginning to run short of steel for ammunition, and certain
kinds of steel for jet engine parts. The question came up — could they
constitutionally seize the steel industry?

Coolidge and I said, "We think you can do it selectively; if you
can seize the plants that are required to fight a war, the Commander
in Chief would constitutionally have that power."

We talked to a guy named Jack Small, who was the chairman of the
Munitions Board, and who was not a big man at all. But he had done
something that made sense, except in an emergency of this kind. That
is, he had spread the orders for critical steel all across the steel
industry, so that every plant was making critical steel and was also
making nuts and bolts. He said you could not selectively seize plants
that would keep your war machine going, that you had to seize the
whole business. Both Coolidge and I shook our heads. We said, "We
don't know, but we think that if it really is as serious as the military
people tell us, on shortages, that we should go ahead with the seizure."

Kent: Well, the Defense Department went ahead with the complaint, and the

Department of Justice handled most of the work. I went and heard the
argument. It was the first time that I had seen or heard Arthur
Goldberg. He was just tremendously impressive. He was there — this
was the United States against the steel industry — as amicus, for the
Steelworkers ' Union. He was making the point — and he did it
eloquently and persuasively — that the Taft-Hartley Act could no
longer be invoked because every step of the Taft-Hartley delay that
could have been invoked by the president at all h.ad been invoked
in practice. The president and the steel companies and everybody else
had had all of the time that they were really entitled to under
Taft-Hartley.

Anyway, of course that case was lost in the Supreme Court. I
think the vote was six to three. The president was held not to have
the power to seize the steel industry.

Let's see — you asked me about the Department of Defense, and
I've gone much too far on it.

Fry: That's all right. I want to ask one follow-up question about that.
What was the defense of the steel mills in this, and how did you
deal with that?

Kent: What happened was the steel industry took the position that it was

unconstitutional for the federal government to seize the steel mills.
See, when they go to seize an industry like that, it's kind of a
farce. The government sends a clerk in there, who says, "I represent
the federal government and I'm seizing this mill. You guys — management-
are working for me, and you — the workers — are working for the federal
government. You're not working for yourselves individually, the way
you used to."

A corner grocery store you could run yourself. But the only way
you could seize a large industry is on paper. That's the way it would
be done.

The steel industry — and they had a big time Wall Street lawyer,
John W. Davis — argued the case in the Supreme Court for the steel
companies, that the seizure was unconstitutional. The solicitor
general's office presented the government's case. Goldberg was
amicus, saying, "I don't care what you guys do about this, but we
think it's unconstitutional, and you can't invoke Taft-Hartley on us."

Fry: Which steel mills do you think were most effective in production?
Or did they all cooperate?

Kent: Well, the government wanted to seize them all. The companies would
all agree to fill orders, but what was going to happen was that the
union was going to strike; then everything was going to cease. The
government was not going to be able to get the critical war supplies.
I mean, that was the theory on which the seizure was made.

Fry: Did you see the seizure as an antiunion move?

Kent: No, no. I don't think anybody regarded it as really an antiunion

move. Well, they might have, they might have. They knew Truman and,
by God, Truman was going to fight the war and he was not going to be
hampered by anybody, in doing what he thought was necessary.

Fry: Did you at any time doubt that the government and Truman really
intended to take over the steel mills?

Kent: I don't think that anybody thought it was going to be a permanent
takeover, only that the seizure was going to keep things humming
and was going to keep the necessary steel flowing to the armed forces,
and that, sooner or later, the unions and the management were going
to get back together again, and the government was going to be out of
the picture.

Fry: Let's see — were Glair Engle or any of the other congressmen trying
to influence you in any of this?

Kent: They didn't take any real position in this that I can recall. I

mean, I think they were very happy to wash their hands of it and say,
"This is an executive decision and has nothing to do with me as a
congressman. I don't have to say yes or no."

Fallbrook Dam Controversy

Kent: Now there were two other encounters with Engle. The one we got into
a real fight over was Fallbrook Dam and water down in San Diego —
water which supplied, very largely, Camp Pendleton. The navy, acting
for the marines, had condemned the riparian rights to the Fallbrook
River to be used for domestic purposes at Camp Pendleton Marine base.
Engle and others, or some smart guys, got an idea that there was some
surplus water that flowed down in the wintertime, which could be
(like the surplus water in northern California) appropriated by the
federal government and resold.

If the government built a dam, it could impound some of the surplus
water, and then let the Fallbrook Irrigation District — which had, at
one time, used some of this water and had been paid for it when the
government acquired the right to the water — be able to move in again
and buy back the surplus water cheaply.

Kent: Well, it was a steal. There wasn't any question in my mind that this
group, having sold their water and been paid for it, had got up a
scheme whereby they would get their water back.

Fry: That was the irrigation district?

Kent: This was the Fallbrook Irrigation District. But it was all the big
shot landowners in San Diego. Like the Westlands irrigation group
near Fresno now. The Fallbrook members were big capitalists. They
were going to have the government build this dam: The water from the
Fallbrook River would go to the marines, and the surplus would go to
the Fallbrook group. I've forgotten whether it was at no cost or a
piddling cost.

The navy chief legal officer — judge advocate general — was a
fellow named Ira Nunn, an admiral. He was a very good lawyer in
charge of a federal suit (which was the only way to handle this
thing) to have a judge determine who owned that water, and whether
the Fallbrook Irrigation District had any right to this water.

So what did Engle and his friends do but put a rider on an
appropriation bill to the effect that no money that was appropriated
to the navy for any purpose could be used in any litigation involving
Fallbrook water! This so offended me that when Ira Nunn came to me
about this and said, "Some of us are getting together a pot of money,
we feel so strongly about this" (personal money!) "to finish this
appeal," I said, [laughs] "Count me in for a hundred!"

Engle found out because I'm sure I told him that I actually
contributed to the government's case because it seemed to me such an
absolute rank business. Well, naturally he was damned mad at me
about that, but we got over that because we had many other things on
which we agreed.

Engle's Active Duty in Korea

Kent: Then one came up where I really took care of him. That is, he had not
served in World War II, and he had been of an age where it would have
been quite appropriate that he would have, but he had not. So he got
himself a reserve commission in the air force after the war. I think
he went on a couple of expeditions with the air force. Then he wanted
to be called to duty and go to Korea!

The air force generals, two or three of them, came around to see
me as general counsel of the Defense Department. They said, "Look,
Engle's a good friend of yours. Talk him out of wanting to go on
active duty and go to Korea."

Kent: I said, "The hell with you! You gave him a commission, and he has to
go on active duty."

They said, "Well, someone his age will make a hell of a lot of
trouble."

I said, "This guy won't make any trouble for you. He's just as
tough as nails. He won't need any cotton batting to take care of
him. He'll get along with your people just the way that anyone younger
will. "

I told Engle what was I doing, and the generals finally allowed
him to go to Korea. He went to Korea and had -a. great experience, and
was very happy that he had gone.

Now, we come to '54 and the Richard Graves campaign for governor.
Sam Yorty was a perfect disgrace in that campaign. He got the COPE
[Committee on Political Education of the California Federation of Labor]
endorsement and Graves didn't, and so Yorty not only didn't support
Graves, but positively opposed him! Engle was very helpful with
Graves, although I don't have too clear a recollection of everything
he did.

The 1956 Presidential Campaign

Kent: Then in '55 — and I don't remember who started this. I could have, or
Engle himself. But anyway, Carmine De Sapio was coming to San
Francisco in the fall of 1955. He of course was booming Averell
Harriman for president. I think that Paul Ziffren might have called
me about this, and said, "We've got to be nice to De Sapio — but make
sure that California Democrats know that we are not backing
Harriman."

A wire went out. I didn't have Ziffren up here, but I think
Ziffren was on it. The wire went out from Engle, Alan Cranston,
Ellie Heller, Libby Gatov, myself, and I think Ziffren, saying that
we were urging Adlai Stevenson to enter the California primary, and
that we were promising him our full support. We sent that to the
president of every Democratic club, and we sent it to the chairman
of every Democratic committee. We sent it to another thousand people.
I think we had about five hundred dollars in telegraph bills.

This was the wrong thing for party functionaries, particularly
those who hold party offices, to do — that is, to take a position in
the primary. If there were any other occasions I can't remember
them, but this was the only occasion that I can pick up where I did
take a very strong preprimary position. This is really a very unfair

Kent: thing to do, because Democrats of all stripes support your office,
and then all of a sudden one who was an Estes Kefauver supporter
and put up fifty dollars for your office expenses finds that you
are supporting somebody else.

But we did it, and Engle was as aware of the fact that we had
our necks out as far as anybody else. Again, he used colorful
language. He said, "We better win this one. If we don't — " he said,
"I don't know what you're going to do, but as for me, I'm going to
paint my ass white and go up to Lassen County and run with the
antelopes!" [laughter]

Fry: I'm really sorry we can't interview him! That would be one colorful
interview.

Kent: He was the saltiest guy you ever heard.

I remember another crack. After we sent this wire out, we had
a press conference to show the broad support for Stevenson's candidacy.
The press wanted to talk to. us all. This was one crack that I saw in
advance. I was sure that someone was going to ask me about De Sapio's
crack that morning, which was that November 1955 was much too early
to be considering who you were going to have for your candidate in
1956.

So I said, "Pardon me, I do believe that probably Mr. De Sapio
has also decided who his candidate was!" They all laughed, and let
that pass off.

Also, in '56 Engle was talking about the possibility he might
run for attorney general. I'm sure that this was a cloud of smoke —
he always used to deal in that. He was concealing the fact that
he had decided to run for the Senate. I'm sure he wanted to run for
the Senate and intended to run for the Senate.

Fry: Explain this to me. Why would he say "attorney general"?

Kent: It was just to kind of cloud the issue. Not to have everybody focus
in on him adversely on a possible Senate race early on. Also, his
big opportunity didn't come until Bill Knowland decided on that ploy
that destroyed the Republican party, which was to push Goodwin Knight
out of the governorship and abandon his own job as majority leader in
the Senate. I don't think that Engle would have tried to run against
Knowland as Republican majority leader, but when Knowland forced
Knight out, and Engle didn't know whether Knight was going to be his
opponent or somebody else — then he had a very good shot at running for
the Senate.

Engle's 1958 Senate Race

Fry: Do you think that Engle was seriously considering the Senate as early
as '56? Knowland didn't switch until '57.

Kent: Engle was thinking of moving out of Congress. These were rather vague
and general thoughts, I think, that we're going on. There's one really
rather charming story. He used to get well over a majority of the
Republican vote in that second district. He had some techniques of
running that were just extraordinary. Not many people cared what
party he belonged to. Among his very close friends was a guy named
Husky Beresford, a Republican, who ran a ski resort on Mount Lassen.
Beresford got hold of Engle — Engle told me this story with great
glee — and said, "Say, Glair, why don't you get going on this Senate
thing?"

Of course, Engle told him, "The first thing I've got to do, I've
got to get Democratic votes. I've got to get the nomination." Engle
went on, "Beresford then said to me, 'Say, I belong to a duck club
with a guy named Kent. He's a hell of a Democrat! I'll invite you to
come up and shoot and you can meet him!" [laughter] This was after
Engle and I had had ten years of friendship. [laughs]

Of course, the problem was that we had to win at the CDC
[California Democratic Council] convention. That was coming up. I
think that was February or March of '58. I would have been chairman
of the party, so I was there. I think CDC was probably at its peak
there in '58, when Alan Cranston was its chairman. We had quite a
team. The team that Engle had was Don Bradley and George Miller, Jr.,
and Libby Smith Gatov and I think Gene Lee was in it. I think we
had John Sobieski in the south, and we had Andy Hatcher — a charming
black guy who later became Kennedy's deputy press secretary. Andy
Hatcher was in charge of spontaneous applause. [laughter] All of
us, and others, worked all the local caucuses of CDC to get endorsements.
Then we had some others. Van Dempsey was a guy who worked in our
campaign office and was a tremendously skilled guy at the nuts and
bolts of politics. He just got along like ham and eggs with all of
the country people and the mining people.

Fry: And his position was with the party?

Kent: I think he took a leave of absence from the auto workers' union. He
had been with the party but he was not with them then. The CDC voting
formula was, of course, one voting delegate for every ten members of
the club at that time. Each club selected who was to be a delegate.
That, of course, represented the majority of the voting power, but
people tended to ignore the fact that also every county chairman and

Kent: one other delegate from every county committee could also be a voting
delegate to the CDC Convention. I think that some people forgot
that there were something like twenty-two counties in Engle' s second
district. So that made forty- four more delegates to the CDC Convention.
We — Van Dempsey primarily — just saw that every person that was
qualified to cast a vote in the second district, and other districts
where we had similar friendly party people, were lined up for Engle.
When they called the role and the second district said, "One hundred
and eight votes for Engle," it was practically all over at that time,
[laughter] He got the endorsement.

Of course, [University of California Professor] Peter Odegard
made a very foolish challenge to Engle. I accused him of being
irresponsible by running at that point, in December. There was also
that Los Angeles supervisor, Kenny Hahn, who thought he was just
going to run over Engle. He said, "What's a cow county congressman
going to do to a man who represents three million people, like me?"
Of course, he got nowhere. So Engle got the endorsement.

Fry: What happened to Odegard?

Kent: Odegard got very few votes. I don't remember how many votes. He
had some loyal guys over there in Berkeley and that was almost the
size of it.

Fry: So you feel that Odegard should not have entered?

Kent: Well, I was mad at Odegard. We were all trying to get Odegard to run
in 1954, against Yorty in the primary of the election against Senator
Thomas Kuchel, who had been appointed to the Senate in '52 by Earl
Warren. (Kuchel had to run in 1954, the first election following his
appointment and then again, at the end of his prescribed term — 1956.)
The first time Kuchel ran against Yorty was in 1954 and that's when I
urged Peter Odegard to run against Yorty, and he wouldn't do it. But
when we came up with a guy that had the political muscle of Engle,
by this time I was savvy enough politically to realize the difference
between a nice fellow who was a professor and a guy who had real
political muscle. Engle had that.

Fry: Why do you think Odegard backed out?

Kent: The first time? I think that he assessed the situation. He may not
have talked with anybody in the University as to what his job status
would be. I don't know — I'm just supposing.

Fry: Somewhere, someone else has told us that it may have been because
Odegard thought that he couldn't get the funds to run.

Kent: Well, that was for sure. That was true in 1954, and that was going to
be true the next time in 1956, and it was going to be true every time.

Fry: So '56 wasn't any different from '54 in this regard?

Kent: It was just ^errible to try to get funds back in that time. For
instance in '54, I think we ran the entire Graves campaign for
governor — primary and general — for $175,000. That was all the
money there was. Even then, that couldn't even make a dent on
California. Odegard couldn't have raised that. He could have
gotten, probably, fifty thousand dollars. That's probably all he
could get. Engle was able to get more, and I can tell you that story.

When Engle was running in '58, I went back to Washington, and
I went to these associations, the corporate trade associations — [Fry
exclaims, Kent laughs] I'm neither proud nor ashamed of it. I went
in, and I said to them, "Here are the figures on the primary," in
which Engle had just run over Knight. I said, "There's going to be
a new Senator from California, and his name is going to be Glair
Engle, and we're going to need some help."

It was a very cozy kind of an arrangement; these guys did not
say, "Here, Roger — here's a thousand dollars." If they were extremely
candid, they would say, "We agree with you. We think you're right. We
think Engle 's going to win. We will pass the word to our people in
California that we think that they should give Engle some support,
because after all, it's that same old business — if we have a problem,
we want to be welcomed when we telephone and ask for an interview.
Not that we expect anything unreasonable, unlawful or anything of the
kind, but we just want to have a friend."

Of course, you can imagine Engle's gratitude to me. That's the
only time that I ever did that. Engle was just wonderful. My hip was
still bum at that time from osteoarthritis, and Engle was just so
pleasant. Later he was telling this guy, "And there was old Kent.
He was going up and down those corridors until his hip was just
a-smoking!" [laughter] So we did get some money. I think that it
was only around $600,000 that Engle won that race with. There was
one very interesting one on Engle.

A guy named Lionel Steinberg was the vice-chairman of the Democratic
State Central Committee. He was based in Fresno. He saw a way in
which he thought he could make some money for the campaign. That was to take
Engle on a tour up in the Sacramento [-San Joaquin] Valley with the four
incumbent Democratic congressmen. There was Harlan Hagen from
Bakersfield and Bernie Sisk from Fresno, and Johnny McFall from
Modesto, and John Moss from Sacramento. It was Bizz Johnson who was
running to replace Engle in the second district.

It turned out to be an absolutely perfect political gambit,
because what happened was that four of these incumbent congressmen
went up the valley. I was on the tour a couple of days. Each one

Kent: stood up in front of his own audience and said how pleased and how
proud he was to be there, and to have his friend Clair Engle there,
and he wanted all of them to know that this was just one of the
greatest legislators that there had ever been, and that he had been
a great friend of this particular district, and he'd done this and
done that, and wanted all to support Engle.

This was done in each one's congressional district. Engle was
with them, and I was along on most of it, and Don Bradley was along
on some of it. The consolidating of the candidate's strength at the
start of a campaign is an important step. This was going to be
Engle's strength — the mountains and the valley, anyway; he had these
friends who were the congressmen representing those districts. When
he got through with this tour, he had that valley just locked up!
He practically never bothered to go back, except on what he called a
"prop stop."

The "prop stop" technique was one of the most economical — if
you'd done your homework, such as he had done. You would just get
in an airplane, and you'd stop in ten cities up and down the valley.
You'd tell the radio stations and the television stations and the
newspapers that you would be there at 10:10, and your friends would
come out to the airport and you'd have an interview and go on the air
and go on TV, and put on your hat and get in the airplane and go on
to the next place.

About all Engle did was put in two or three more days in the
whole valley. The rest of the time he spent in Los Angeles and the
East Bay and up and down the coast.

Fry: Can you tell me if all of these congressmen were Democrats, or were
some anti-Knight Republicans?

Kent: The congressmen? They were all Democrats.

Finally, we did have the duck shoot that we'd been talking about,
[laughs] He came up to see me — I'll never forget this — andheand I
shot together one day. It was kind of rough weather, but it was a
very good shoot. And then the next day was about the most howling
rain and windstorm I've ever seen. I'll be damned if Engle didn't go
out, he and Husky Beresford. Engle was smoking a cigar, which I'm
sure went out in about five minutes in that storm, and he went out and
had a very good time. [laughs]

Delegate Selection//?'/

Kent: I was talking about the process for selecting delegates to the
national conventions.

Fry: Yes.

Kent: I sat on that selection committee, which was usually around ten people,

three times — '56, '60, and '64. Have I told you about the most over

qualified delegate there ever was? That was Kimi Fujii [Kimiko Fuj ii
Kitayama]. You know who she is?

Fry: Isn't she in Alameda County?

Kent: Yes, she's the wife of a nurseryman. She's the president of AC Transit
now. She's just as pretty as she can be, bright as a button. The
criteria that we wanted to meet on our delegation were: to have enough
women, enough minorities, enough party people, and enough contributors.
She was the vice-chairman of a county committee, she always contributed
money, she was of Japanese origin, and she was a highly competent and
qualified woman. She could have had the first place on the delegation
any time. [laughs]

We had some problems with some drunken congressmen in '64. One
came down to sit on the selection committee and wanted to insist that
such and such be done. We had a lot of problems with him.

Fry: Do you mean at your selection committee meetings?

Kent: Yes. Both of them that were so objectionable are gone. One was

defeated; one quit and then died. Usually, we'd have a pretty good
working group that would have plenty of arguments.

Fry: And the reforms of 1967 would have abolished this then?

Kent: Well, they changed it completely. I have never studied exactly what
was done with this reform of the delegation business. At one stage,
they went in for the most absurd procedure, which was that the
delegates were to be selected by caucuses in the congressional districts.
It's so easy to go get votes to stack a caucus and vote as a bloc, you
know — to bring another hundred people and elect somebody who's totally
unqualified, who takes a trip to the convention and comes back and
drops dead politically. You never hear from them again; they don't do
anything. Delegates have got to have qualities that make them valuable
for a campaign, in terms of experience and commitment. I felt that
we had a system that had that qualification built in.

Kent: But anyway, Engle was the chairman of the '60 delegation to the

Democratic Convention in Los Angeles. He sat next to the flag, and
I sat next to him, and sometimes he would get up and leave. I would
have dreams of glory of getting to be the one who stood up and said,
"The California delegation votes such and such," when I knew damn
well he'd be back before we ever got to a vote. [laughs]

Engle' s Fatal Illness

Kent: Engle and a lot of the congressmen flew out when Clem Miller was
killed in 1962 in that airplane accident up here. Clem was the
congressman from the first district, and a very fine guy, and a very
good congressman. I went back to the airport at Hamilton Field. I
remember saying goodbye to Engle, as well as to the other congressmen
who came out. I don't think I saw him again until after he was
stricken with that brain tumor in '63.

There were all those stories about what his condition was, and
whether he was going to be able to run or not. But I had access to
Dan Kimball, who was the secretary of the navy. He had been, and was,
a very good friend. We found out very, very rapidly that there was no
chance that he would recover, that he would get up on a plateau and
he'd get a little better, and then he would dip down and die.

With the '64 elections coming up, we were faced with the dismal
'prospect of telling Engle that he couldn't be a candidate, and that
we were going to have to back away from him and hold an endorsing
convention, and see who was endorsed, and then run a primary.

Fry: Was this after he already had been endorsed?

Kent: No, no. It was before anyone was endorsed. We had this tragic

meeting — Libby Smith, and Gene Wyman and I and Lu, Glair's wife. We
knew what the hospital records said, and yet Engle and his people —
particularly his wife — were putting out these optimistic stories
that he was going to recover, and he was going to run, and that nothing
was wrong with him that time wasn't going to cure.

Fry: Did they not know the diagnosis?

Kent: I'm pretty sure that they knew it. What I did was I told him, "Here's
the story. We cannot persuade the people of California that you are
going to be qualified to run for the Senate and serve as a Senator,
unless you agree that these Bethesda [U.S. Naval Medical Center,
Bethesda, Maryland] medical records can be made available to two or
three of the leading neurologists of the country (certainly they
shouldn't be made public, or anything like that) and that an expert
medical opinion be given."

Kent: Clair was really quite pathetic. He would get up, and he would go
over and ask what you wanted in the way of a drink, and he'd go and
get you a drink. But it was so clear that he was just not himself.
His wife, of course, was a real good wifely tiger. I mean, she was
just going to shoot us all and run us out of the house. But we told
him, "That's the way it's going to have to be. If you can't do that — "
We knew that that would murder him. It was a dirty trick, but it was
as polite a way as we could find of telling him to get out.

The Tragic Telephone Address

Kent: So we came back and organized a CDC endorsing convention. I think Tom
Carvey was chairman or president of CDC at that time. Engle had made
a tape which he wanted to use for addressing the convention. This was
really, really reminiscent of the Nixon tapes, in a way, because this
tape had quite obviously been put together and patched up.

Fry: Pieced together?

Kent: It was pieced together. A guy who knew tapes told us that there was

no question but that this was pieced together. It was pieced together
out of about twelve pieces. So Tom Carvey told Engle, "You have got to
address the convention by telephone, if you want to be seriously
considered as a candidate." So they had this conversation, which
just about made everybody weep. Carvey asked him, "Will you be out
before the primary?" and Engle said, "That is proba — probababa —
probableblematical. " [mimics stutter] Carvey said, "Well, we certainly
would hope to see you," and Engle repeated this stumbling word of
"problematical." As I say, all these friends were just about weeping.

Jimmy Roosevelt got into the thing at the last minute as another
candidate. Cranston, I'm pretty sure, got the CDC endorsement. And
then Kennedy's press secretary, Pierre Salinger jumped into the race.

Fry: What happened with this tape? What was the purpose of the tape?

Kent: Well, the tape that was pieced together was one in which he was trying
to make it appear on the media that he was in perfect control of his
powers .

Fry: Was it designed as an address for the endorsing convention?

Kent: No, no. It was made before that to play on radio stations and to tell

the people of California that he was qualified to run for the Senate and
to serve as a Senator. Really, his sickness and his death — well, it just
ended the twelve years of great success in the Democratic party.

II BUILDING THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY ORGANIZATION

Kent: You asked how Adlai Stevenson's '52 candidacy led to the formation

of the CDC at Asilomar in 1953. That was when I was back as general
counsel to defense. So I did not participate in that. Of course, I
didn't know there was a guy as wonderful as Stevenson until I heard
him one night in '52, and then I sent money to everybody who had
asked me for money for him and was of course terribly disappointed
that he didn't win. I think I told you and your friend the other day
about the fact that I wrote him after the campaign, and said that if
he answered my letter, would he mention my daughter Alice, who was
then about eleven or twelve. He wrote her a personal letter.

Fry: Oh, yes. Several pages.

Kent: Several pages. It was just wonderful.

Ensuring Brown's Control of the Party

Kent: In '64, we ran the Johnson campaign. Anybody , of course, could have
won the Johnson campaign. But through some chicanery by Mr. George
Killion, funds which normally were used in campaigns out here were
diverted and given personally to Johnson; we wound up the '64
campaign with a deficit that was a horrible legacy for Democratic
State chairman Bob Coate. I stayed on as chairman in '64, and into
'65.

Then — I might as well say it there — this is very funny. I had
lunch with Libby, and she said, "Pat says that you want to resign as
chairman." I looked kind of blank, and all of a sudden it seemed to
me that maybe that would be a pretty good idea. I said, "I haven't
really thought about it, but I think that is a damn good idea.
Maybe it's time to get the hell out." I said, "How would we do it
so that the Brown element of the party would retain the chairmanship?"
Of course, by this time, Jesse Unruh had his knife out for Brown.
He just was really cutting him up in any way that he could.

Kent: We decided that we would not have the resignation and my replacement
made at a Democratic State Central Committee meeting, because that
would be too easy for Unruh to stack and get his man in. But if we
had an executive committee meeting in northern California, that was
very easy for _us to stack [laughs] and we could elect one that we
wanted to elect.

At that time, the executive committee was made up not only of
the congressional district cochairmen (that would be a man and a
woman elected by the delegates to the state convention in caucuses
at the state convention) but also it included the county chairmen.

Well, what did we have? We had fifty- two out of fifty-eight
county chairmen in northern California, and believe me, when we
wanted to win a vote, we had them there. Pat Brown, Fred Button,
Don Bradley, El lie Heller, and I all talked to a number of the
candidates, including Bob Coate. We found Bob an exceedingly
effective politician, so we said okay, we'll take Bob Coate.

I had one of these absurd exchanges of letters with Brown, saying,
yes, indeed, I would accept his kind offer to be his chairman for
the '66 campaign. This I did in the summer of '65 — wrote that I
would be his chairman for governor in '66. But, I told him that the
heavy duties of this position would not permit me to continue as
state chairman, and I therefore was resigning as state chairman,
effective such-and-such a time.

Meanwhile, we called a meeting of the executive committee, and
Unruh didn't even try to do anything [laughs], because he could see
that we had the votes, and Bob was elected in the fall of '65.

My period of leadership in the Democratic party spanned from '54,
after I got back from the East, to '65. This is maybe out of place,
but when I ran for Congress in '48 and in '50, there was absolutely
no Democratic organization whatsoever in the first district — there
were two or three counties that didn't have any county committees at
all. There were a couple of committees — Humboldt and Sonoma — that
were controlled by actual Communists, and I don't use that word
lightly! I mean, one committee official's brother was the northern
California Communist organizer.

There's a very good memo from you, summing up what you call "the
problems of your party" in your papers.

Kent: Oh, is there?

Fry: Yes, and I have some notes on it. You are talking about Robert L.
Condon?

Kent: Condon — I've made a comment there. Just let me finish this. In '50,
I was able to generate some interest in party organization. But
when I came back in '53, after the Stevenson campaign, it turned out
that everybody — the whole new group, of course — had decided that
Stevenson was a great man, and they wanted to elect him president.
They looked around for the Democratic party, and there wasn't any
Democratic party! (This is probably in my papers, so I've said it to
you before. )

So they organized, first, Stevenson Clubs, and then they began
to move into the Democratic party. I used to go to party meetings
here in Marin County. There 'd be about ten or twelve people who
would come to the meeting, and most of them were sixty-five to
eighty years old.

Fry: This was the Democratic party?
Kent: Yes, back in '48 and '59.

Marin Democratic Assembly

Kent: In 1953 I was invited to a meeting of what was to become the Marin
Democratic Assembly to tell what I'd seen as general counsel to the
Department of Defense, and what was going on in Washington. The
meeting was at the women's club in Kentfield. There were 175 people
there. The chairman was Ray Bacon, a very good guy. He said, "All
right now, we're going to put to a vote whether we want to open a
headquarters and have a year-long Democratic headquarters." He said,
"Before you cast your vote, here's the best estimate that we can make
of what this is going to cost, using mostly as much volunteers as we
can. For rent and telephone and such professional help as we need,
it's going to cost us at least $5,000. Please do not vote yes unless
you intend to support the project. All right, let's have a vote.
You will find on the chair alongside of you a pledge card and an
envelope. You can put money in the envelope if you want to, and leave
it at the door. You can sign the pledge card for a monthly donation."

We took those cards and money up to Becky Watkin's house up here,
after the meeting. There were pledges of about ten thousand dollars,
and most of it was collected. The reason it was collected was that
she and her friends got out a monthly bill to everybody who said that
he would give that amount of money. It went on the first of the month,
and the guy got it along with the rest of his bills, and he paid it!

This Marin Democratic Assembly became really a very strong
political entity. Even though we were for many, many years one of
the two or three counties that had a Republican majority in registration,

Kent: we had far and away the biggest Democratic loyalty factor of any
county in the state. That is, the Democratic vote for, say, the
candidate for governor would be a much higher percentage of the
registered Democrats than in any other county. If, at that time,
you had gotten out of Alameda County the loyalty factor you got out
of Marin [laughs], why, there wouldn't have been a Republican elected
anywhere.

You asked about what I was doing in '49 and '50. In '49, I did
a lot of work to support Sam Finley for judge. Then in '50, of
course, I ran for Congress again. After the election, I probably
went off hunting for a while, and took a little time to get back into
my law office. And shortly afterwards, in '51, was when I went back
East and met with Coolidge, and then in '52, went East to the Defense
Department .

Phillip Burton and Intraparty Politics

Kent: Now when did Phil Burton run? You asked me a question about Phil
Burton.

Fry: I did?

Kent: At one point, [you] said, "What about him?" Burton is a strange one,
in a way. I think damn near a psychopath some times. But he's a
tremendously smart politician. He doesn't think or breathe or eat or
sleep anything but politics, twenty- four hours a day, and hasn't for
twenty years. In about '52, I think it was, he ran for the assembly
in a district — there was still, of course, cross-filing — and his
opponent died. And he was defeated by a dead man in the primary! The
dead man got more Democratic votes than Phil Burton.

Burton's defeat could have been '52 or '54. It probably was '52,
because shortly after that, he moved out of that district, and he
moved into a district represented by Tommy Maloney. Now, Tommy
Maloney was one of these vanishing breed — and Burton was one that
helped make it a vanishing breed — who was registered as a Republican
in a strong Democratic district, and voted very largely Democratic,
except on key votes. Maloney also did the regular campaigning on the
order of The Last Hurrah and attended every wake that ever took place
in the district.

Tommy Maloney was a registered Republican in this very strong
Democratic district. Burton came to me, and he said, "Look, Maloney
has never had to face a Democrat in the primary, when the Democrat is
identified as a Democrat." He said, "I am going to break my pick to

Kent: get the Democratic nomination." This was in '56. So he set to work,

and for two years, I think, he saw everybody that was in that district.
Even so, he only won the Democratic nomination by a few hundred votes
over Maloney.

Well, Maloney was a friend of the Democratic labor leaders of
San Francisco. They, in turn, controlled the San Francisco county
committee. They, in turn, said, "To hell with Burton. We refuse to
endorse him." They didn't endorse his opponent, but they refused to
endorse him. Burton kind of reluctantly admits that Libby Smith and I
said, "To hell with it. This guy is the nominee of the Democratic
party. Of course, we endorse him."

We had this big rally for Stevenson in that park out in North
Beach [San Francisco], and it was a great affair. These same guys, the
county committee people, said that Burton was not to sit on the
speakers' stand! By that time — that was '56 — I was vice-chairman of
the northern division of the California State Democratic party. Maybe
I'd even been elected chairman. I said, "To hell with it! Burton is
the nominee of the party; he sits on the platform." As I say, Burton
reluctantly but gratefully acknowledges the fact that Libby and I did
stay with him.

I think I said that in '51, I went to Los Angeles and saw J.B.
Elliott about cross- filing.

Fry: There's a lot in your papers about cross-filing. I have some notes
on it here, which consisted of the campaign that apparently you took
part in until you did go to the Department of Defense.

The An ti- cross- filing Movement

Fry: I wondered who brought you into this work for the anti-cross-filing
proposition?

Kent: Well, I had to have pretty strong feelings on my own experience in my
two losing races for Congress. [laughter] It became very apparent to
me. I made a speech before a section of the Commonwealth Club ,
representing the anti-cross-filing. (Jimmy Roosevelt was defending the
position of party regularity, and the fact that parties are much more
important than men, and so forth and so on. I was enough of a
Californian that I hadn't quite bought that.) But the thing that I
bought was that cross-filing, instead of opening up opportunities for
the voters to choose between candidates, had, by necessity, closed them.
The Republicans had, for years, gotten together on preprimary endorsement
and come up with one candidate. The Democrats emulated that with CDC,

Kent: and with these endorsing conventions that we held all over the state

to bring it down to one, so that cross-filing had resulted in limiting
the choices of the voters.

Then, of course, as a Democrat it was so poisonous, because if
you were running against a Republican incumbent, he would have the
number-one spot on a Democratic ballot, with no designation that he was
a Republican. Of course it was just insane, and so obviously unfair.
What you had to do, if you wanted to get into the game, you had to
spend the entire primary [laughs] proving to a rather nonpartisan,
if not Republican, group that you were an avid Democrat, and entitled
to have a fellow Democrat vote for you. By that very act, you assured
your defeat in November! It was a horrible system.

If cross-filing had been abolished when I ran, there's no question,
if I weren't dead, that I would be a very senior congressman by this
time; because in 1948, there were four candidates that ran, and all
four cross-filed.

Fry: This was in your race?

Kent: In my race. And I lost the Democratic nomination by about 500 votes
to Sterling Norgard. Rolland Webb was a little judge in Petaluma.
All his friends were my friends. They all said, "Oh, hell, we're
going to give Roily a vote in the primary, and we'll vote for you in
fall." If Webb hadn't been in the race I would have been able to run
as a moderate against Norgard, who was on the left side, and not be
bothered with Hubert Scudder on my right. I think I had a much more
interesting career than being a congressman, but anyway I realized
that this happened all the time.

[The following written comments were supplied by Roger Kent on
August 18, 1978: Besides the votes that Rolland Webb took on the
Democratic side (he being a registered Republican) , it seems almost
certain that I would have gotten the great majority of Democratic votes
in the primary that went to Scudder, and there were well over ten
thousand of those. California voters show a decided preference for a
moderate, a guy in the middle, and that's where I would have been,
with Sterling Norgard on the left. He had cross-filed in the Independent
Progressive Party. After they had their convention in July (following
the California primary) , it became apparent that their party was not
one of the normal American radical third parties. Norman Thomas, the
Socialist candidate for presidency, on many occasions, was quoted as
saying that he recognized something like twenty-five out of twenty-
eight of the members of the platform committee of the IPP as Communists.
Scudder, of course, used that and defeated Norgard very easily while
Truman was pulling out that great victory over Dewey. Again, it seems
highly probable that I would have been the moderate, middle-of-the-road
candidate running against Scudder. He was a real, honest conservative
and that is not the way the first district had voted or continued to
vote in the future.

Kent: Both he and I had been questioned by representatives of the labor

counsel of Marin and Sonoma and so had Norgard. As I recall, Norgard
got a split endorsement and there were votes for me. One of the
questions that they asked us was how did we feel about the anti-lynch
law. Of course, Norgard and I said we would favor one. Scudder
refused to say that he would favor such a law and added they could
be sure that he would "not vote for any law that would encourage
lynching" (that I got from one of the labor guys who was at that
question session) .

Under cross-filing something like 80 percent of assemblymen and
90 percent of state senators were elected in the primary by getting
both nominations. Very few Democrats survived the primary. This was,
perhaps, the most important factor in getting control of the state
committee to Bill Malone or whoever might be the state chairman with
offices in San Francisco. It would only cost a few hundred dollars and
that was usually a worthwhile investment for many businesses and
individuals.

The way it works is that at that time the law provided that if the
Democrats did not nominate a Democrat in the primary (and that was the
case in most of the districts) , then the county committee would meet
and select a man (or woman) who would, for purposes of the state
committee organization, be considered as the nominee. This person
would attend the convention and also add three appointments to the
state committee, one of his or her sex and two of the opposite sex.
The state chairman would make it very clear to the county chairman
that the four persons named to the state committee would vote as
requested by him. To assure that this was done, in many cases proxies
were obtained from the four persons or most of them for the use of the
chairman or his agents, who would then attend the state committee
meeting and perhaps vote as many as thirty or forty times by voting
these proxies.

The money required usually took the form of twenty-five dollar
tickets to the traditional Jeff erson- Jackson Day dinners. Two to
four tickets from the central committee to the county chairman were
usually welcome. Often just a bit of recognition would be enough to
assure the full cooperation of the county chairman in supplying
proxies. Malone would normally be sure that whomever he recommended
for, say, postmaster, would be approved by the chairman and passed on.

It was also customary that the two females appointees would name
their husbands as their proxies if the husbands wished to attend the
state committee meeting, so that the intention of the legislature that
the committee should be equally divided between men and women was
totally defeated.]

Kent: You know, there were times — there were two or three times in California
history where the Democrat got the Republican nomination, and the
Republican got the Democratic nomination, and both of them disqualified!

Fry: Because they hadn't won their own party's nomination?

Kent: Because they hadn't won their own!

Fry: Was it '48 when you ran that you had the most votes —

Kent: The most total votes.

Fry: — of both Democrats and Republicans.

Kent: That's right.

Fry: But you didn't get your own nomination.

Kent: I didn't get the Democratic nomination by about five hundred votes.

Fry: There are a couple of things I don't understand about the people who

were for and against the anti-cross-filing proposition. First of all,
it looks like Jimmy Roosevelt, after his dismal experience by not
cross-filing in 1950, when he lost the election, logically would
have been for abolishing it.

Kent: He was, I'm quite sure. [A woman enters and greets Kent.] This is my
daughter Alice Stephens. [Alice joins the interview. Tape turned
off and restarted.]

Fry: So did Roosevelt want to abolish cross- filing?

Kent: He spoke against cross-filing at the Commonwealth Club, at the same

section meeting that I did. But he took a different tack from what I
did. I mean, I took the tack that cross-filing actually narrowed the
choice of the populace. He took the tack that what we should have is
party regularity, and that every Democrat should be for every Democrat.
I don't remember exactly what it was.

An ti- cross- filing Republicans

Fry: The other thing that amazed me so was that there were a lot of

Republicans who wanted to abolish cross-filing, and it looked to me
that they owed all of their long success to cross-filing.

Kent: That is true. There weren't too many Republicans opposing cross-
filing but there were some very vocal ones.

Fry: Can I read in some of the names here? Let me see. Edward H. Tickle
was head of a thing called Calif ornians For Responsible Party
Government, which meant anti-cross-filing. There was Henry G. Bodkin,
head of the Republican committee to abolish cross-filing. Then in
the legislature — apparently George [J.] Hatfield was the one who
appears to have rescued cross-filing by putting in a compromise bill
that, instead of abolishing cross-filing, would create a referendum
for requiring party designation, which is what eventually happened.

Can you explain this attitude on the part of the Republicans?

Kent: Well, there were some Republicans. There was a guy who was a very
strong Republican — I think he was a chairman of the Republican San
Francisco committee — and he was just a thoroughly honest guy that
firmly believed that the strength of the party was dissipated by
cross-filing. He believed that the party would be able to control
the policies of the state a lot better if it did not have that incubus
of having to play to the Democrats. I think he was wrong, but he
believed it.

Fry: There was a group of anti-Earl Warren Republicans at this time, who
were trying very much to get the party to be superior to the man,
because [laughs] Earl Warren pretty well had it sewn up on a non-
partisan basis.

Kent: Sure. Of course, the only way that Knight could get two people

together, or to listen to him, was when he was tearing up Warren.
That's when Knight was way over on the right.

Fry: What was Knight's attitude on this cross-filing? Do you know?

Kent: I don't. I don't recall what it was in the early stages. I'm sure
that he liked it later on.

Fry: He did like cross-filing?

Kent: He liked it, because he benefited. He'd get an awful lot of Democratic
votes.

An ti- cross-filing on the Ballot

Fry: The other question about this whole thing — why was it made a ballot
proposition, when it could have been just a simple bill in the
legislature? Do you know?

Kent: I know that they couldn't get the anti-cross-filing bill through the
legislature. I have forgotten the ramifications of this, but
apparently they made it a ballot proposition because the law said that
if you got about six hundred thousand signatures, you had a real
initiative and that was it. People voted aye or nay on it. If you
got much less signatures than that, say, three hundred thousand, you
could force the legislature to either pass it, or put an alternative
on the ballot. These laws have changed, I think, but at that time, the
anti-cross-filing forces made it a ballot proposition, with the
legislature being forced to either pass it or give an alternative.

Fry: And they gave an alternative?

Kent: The legislature gave as an alternative Proposition 7 in 1952, requiring
candidates to list party affiliation on the ballot. Then there was a
strange one. (You ought to get to some legal guy to study the
legalities of it.) The alternative and the an ti- cross- filing initiative
appeared on the ballot. But only the party label measure passed.
Eventually, cross-filing was abolished. Now, you better get into that.

But it didn't really become dead until '59, is that it?

Well, '54 was the first general election with designation on the
ballot. In '59 cross-filing was dead.

Fry: Three years after this. I haven't gone back over old headlines on
this, so what you just told me is new to me. You mean that in '52
that both the legislative referendum and the ballot proposition won
a place on the ballot?

Kent: That's my best recollection.

Fry: Well, I'll look into that. That's kind of interesting. [laughs]
But anyway, the Democrats didn't get their way until '59.

Kent: Right, right.

Fry: With this Commonwealth speech and article against cross-filing in your
papers (in carton one, we should so note), is an opposing article by
Mildred Prince, who I believe was very high up in the Republican party
at that time.

Kent: Yes, yes.

Fry: So there was a Republican who really opposed it.

Kent: Right.

Fry: And who else opposed? There's some note from the Argonaut on August
10, 1951, that said the chamber of commerce was gathering its
artillery to oppose. Did you have the sense of a lot of money behind
this from these persons?

Kent: Oh, yes, yes. Anybody who had any sense knew that this cross-filing

had evolved into an instrument which gave control of California to the
lobbyists, because all you needed at that time to win a June primary
was maybe twenty-five hundred dollars. Of course, assemblymen were
paid only a hundred dollars a month, then later a little more, so
that if a lobbyist had a Republican assemblyman in his pocket, all he
had to do was give that guy twenty- five hundred dollars to send a
postcard to every Democrat in that district, in which the guy would
not admit that he was a Republican but would ask the Democrats to vote
for him. He would tell them that he represented them in the assembly
or the state senate, and the guy would be reelected in the primary.
It got to the point where 70 percent of the assembly was elected in
the primary and 80 percent of the senate was elected in the primary.

The Burton-Maloney Race

Kent: I don't think I quite finished on this Phil Burton business. In his
election in '56, he had correctly diagnosed Maloney's strength — and
this ties right into cross-filing — as being based on deception of the
Democratic voter that Maloney was a Democrat, because he was so
listed on every primary ballot and had been for twenty years.

Phil had it figured out that if he got the Democratic nomination
and went to the mat with Maloney, on a ballot that said, "Tommy
Maloney is a Republican, and I, Phil Burton, am a Democrat," that
he would beat him even though Maloney had had this vast seniority in
the assembly. Burton turned out, of course, to be exactly right. He
didn't win it by much, but he won it.

One time, after Johnny Burton got in the assembly, we had a
party up in Sacramento that Don Bradley put on for me and the old 212
gang crowd. I coined the jingle, "Burton, Burton, we got Burton.
We got enough, and that's for certain." [laughter] That one was put
in the Sacramento paper, and I got some adverse comment from the
Burtons .

Fry: When was that, about?

Kent: This was when Johnny was just starting to go, to run. Johnny is
really pretty nice, personally, not a bad guy. Phil is really
almost impossible. He can be so mean and so paranoid; his eyes just

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Kent: bug out like this, you know. But he knows more about welfare, and he
knows more about election techniques than anybody in Congress. I have
to give him a great credit for it. Of course, he certainly has moved
up very, very fast. I don't know whether this will be a meteor or
not, but I mean the position he holds in Congress at the moment is
really something — much bigger than I ever thought.

The "212 Gang"

Fry: What is the "212 gang?"

Kent: Burton named it. After I became vice-chairman in '54, Bill Roth came
to me. He came to my law office and we sat down, and he said, "How
the hell are we going to run this affair?"

Don Bradley was there and said, "Where are we going to get any
money to run an office?"

So Bill Roth said, "Well, I'll talk to Ed Heller, and we'll talk
to his secretary. And if we get word to his secretary, and Ed tells
his secretary, that's all right. Then we won't ever have to worry
again, because his secretary will send us $250 a month every month."

So then Bill put up $25 a month, and I put up $25 a month. Then
we planned that we would raise money some other way. The party was
absolutely, totally bust. We had a walkup on Market Street as an
office. One lame-brained girl in there with a broken finger [laughs]
was typing. There was a guy — his name slips me now — who found space
at 212 Sutter — the corner of Kearney and Sutter. It had an unpredictable
elevator. After Pat Brown was in the governor's office and we owned
the director of industrial safety, we had the elevators fixed so that
nobody ever had to open the top and climb out through the top of the
elevator. [laughter]

That cost us a $125 a month. It had quite a lot of space in it.
It had one, two, three, four — about four offices that were adequate,
and then a big packing-mailing space. Then, of course, we had our
problems raising money to do this. We set up a three-way deal. We
first said, at a meeting of the northern division [of the California
Democratic party], "All right, you guys have been bitching about Bill
Malone having run the party for twenty- five years, and the reason
that he ran it was because he put up all the money that was put up,
and you guys never put up any money, and he just ran it, and that
was it. The guy who puts up the money's going to run it.

"What we want is for you guys to raise a hundred dollars a month
apiece from each congressional district." As a result of that, we
used to get in maybe seven hundred dollars [a month].

Fund Raising////

Kent: We were just talking about raising money. I told these guys, "Hell,
if you want to have anything to say about it, you come up with some
money."

We had a very good executive committee in the north — the man and
woman congressional district cochairmen and the county chairmen. They
varied from district to district. One fellow, Stan Felix down in San
Mateo, established "The Committee of 99." He got ninety-nine guys who
would put up a dollar a month. One group had a rummage sale. One
group had an event. One group had regular dues. So we'd get that.

At that time, Dollars for Democrats was good.
Fry: That was in southern California, is that right?
Kent: No, no, no.
Fry: Or was that all over?

Kent: It was all over. We ran it here very successfully.
Fry: Oh, I'm thinking of a different one.

Kent: Oh, you're thinking of that damn Dime a Day for Democracy. [laughter]
Oh, that was a fraud.

We would pick up a few thousand dollars from — [tape turned off
and restarted] We made quite a lot of money on Dime a Day. Then, we
would go on having the Jeff erson- Jackson Day dinner, which had been
$25 a plate. Then Matt McCloskey became treasurer of the Democratic
party, and he came out here and started talking about a hundred-dollar
dinner, and I thought everyone would fall off their chairs when anybody
said a hundred dollars. But they didn't. Finally, in the Graves
campaign for governor, we used a formula which is an excellent
formula for certain kinds of campaigns and certain kinds of events.
That is, that you have an expensive dinner or cocktail party, and
then a great big rally for a dollar or five dollars, so the general
folk can get in.

That first hundred-dollar dinner we had was for Graves. We had
Stevenson there to speak, and so help me — this was in '54, just after
his glorious showing in '52 — we got two hundred people to come at a
hundred dollars each! That was the first time that they ever had
hundred-dollar dinners in San Francisco. Then we moved on out to
that big building next to the Civic Center. We had one-dollar and
five-dollar and ten-dollar seats for seeing Stevenson to speak. It
was just absolutely jammed! The fire marshal closed the doors five

Kent: times [laughter], and the guys would take in the money. Then they

had given a bunch of the faithful a whole bunch more tickets to take
outside and sell to the people who were standing outside. It was
great, we made a lot.

212 Gang Members

Kent: More about the 212 gang: then Alan Cranston moved in, bringing the
CDC. He and I had a great big strong girl named Lenore Ostrow. She
was a secretary for us both, and that was the start. Then we had Don
Bradley. He was the chief of staff. He was always my executive
secretary. He would put together these fund raisers. I mean, if
Pierre Salinger was his guy, he'd get Pierre to come and help on the
campaigns up in the mountains and so forth.

He then got in this Van Dempsey, who was at that time an auto
workers' business agent. He turned out to be just a tremendously
skilled politico, particularly in the country areas. Then we began
recruiting people like the Morrisons, Jack and Jane. I backed Jane,
and she became the women's chairman [of the northern division of the
California Democratic party] .

Alice: And Clem Miller. That was the five.

Kent: No, Clem Miller was never in the 212 gang.

Alice: Oh, I thought he was.

Kent: No, no, no. See, he was too busy campaigning in the first district.
The 212 gang was in San Francisco.

Then we had a couple of changes in the secretary. Lenore quit,
and strangely enough the Heller gal — Liz Heller — took it on for a
little while. Then we got a little gal — she stood about five feet.
Louise Ringwalt. [spells name] And then she had gone to the State
Department. She had acquired these absolutely crack, top secretarial
skills as well as being college educated and goddamn smart. She also
had a perfectly wonderful light touch with people. She began
recruiting old and young women who had time on their hands and who
would come in and do the nuts and bolts of addressing and getting out
mailings, and doing this, that, and the other thing for the campaigns.
She could get twenty-five people down there on two hours' notice any
time that we asked that something be done. Then there were a lot of
people that were friendly with us.

Kent: The Burtons regarded us as a terrible threat. For one reason, Phil
wanted to elect this dame — I've forgotten her name now — as women's
chairman.

We said, "Well, we think Jane Morrison has earned it. She's
been in it a lot longer than this dame. She certainly will be a
good chairman, and that's the way we're going." So we put it
together, and we beat him. He didn't like it, so he and his friends
used to refer to us as the 212 gang. Now turn off your machine just
a minute! [tape turned off and restarted]

Fry: Now that we've seen your pictures, go ahead and tell us —

Kent: Well, only that this was a very friendly, very closely knit group.
It used to be that Don Bradley had a place over in Bolinas, up on
the mesa. He's a great cook, and he also was a great one at making
New Orleans gin fizzes on Sunday morning. [laughter] We'd oftentimes
have a dozen or more people over there. Some might stay at our
place, and most of them would stay at Don's place.

Oh, there was another just great person that's left the Bay
Area. It was Geraldine Hardin — a great big stout gal who became a
secretary for the operating engineers. She was just a charmer, and
she was in on the thing. She was one of the good fighters.

Fry: Who were the rest of the 212 gang? You mentioned, while I had the
machine off, Tom Saunders and Martin Huff.

Kent: You want to know who they were?

Fry: Yes, who was this "gang" of really pretty powerful people?

Kent: Well, Tom Saunders went into the Brown campaign, came out, and then

was appointed director of industrial safety, and did an excellent job.

Alice: Remember how he fixed your elevator? [laughter]

Kent: He didn't do anything. He just sent the inspector around to say,
"Inspect that elevator," and the next thing you knew, the building
had the elevator fixed!

Martin Huff was an accountant over in Contra Costa County. He
and Martin Rothenberg. Martin Rothenberg was a lawyer over in
Contra Costa County. They came to me in about '56. They said, "We
would like to take a more active part in the business of the party.
How about Martin Huff being the candidate for treasurer, and how
about Martin Rothenberg being the candidate for secretary?" I took
a deep breath, and —

Fry: This was for the state central committee?

Kent: The state central committee. I took a deep breath, because the

traditional treasurer of the party has always, always been a fat cat!
You know, a guy who had money and whatnot. This was a whole new
concept, and a much better concept. That is, you got an accountant
in there who was a very smart and a very conscientious guy, and a
good friend and very loyal. Martin Rothenberg was the chairman of
the Contra Costa County Democratic Central Committee, and boasted
that on no occasion did a Contra Costa County delegate ever cast one
vote for Samuel Yorty at either of the conventions at which Yorty ran.

Martin was on our hundred-dollar-a-month plan, for instance.
Contra Costa County always came in with its hundred. He was one of
Pat Brown's earliest appointments to the bench. Of course, this
was a very destructive thing to the Democratic party, when we got a
Democratic governor. All of a sudden John Racanelli down in San
Jose, and Martin Rothenberg in Contra Costa County, and John Purchio
in Alameda County — and others, all the guys who were our powerhouses
in politics — went on the bench.

Rothenberg and Martin Huff were very definitely parts — key
parts — of the 212 gang. The story on Martin Huff was that if you
went to a convention and wanted to find Martin Huff, you'd ask,
"Where will I find Martin Huff?"

The secretary would say, "The nastiest, dirtiest job that's
going on right now is in the basement or the third floor. No doubt
you'll find Martin Huff there!" And that's where you'd find him.

[These additional written comments were supplied by Roger Kent
on August 18, 1978: There was one very objectionable exception to
this true, general rule, and that was when at the request of the
chairman of the Western States Conference, I brought Martin to a
meeting at Mt. Hood to talk about finances and Van Dempsey to talk
about organization. They were both excellent. Martin made many
points, but perhaps the most important, if taken to heart, is that
reporting to contributors to a fund drive completed for a particular
purpose is the most important element, perhaps, in your next fund
drive. We told them where their money had been used and with what
results in a detailed financial statement. That went all the way down
to the five-dollar guy. John Bailey came out from Washington (he was
Democratic national chairman) and he wanted me to run for chairman
of the conference, which I refused to do. I think I would have made
it and it would have been too hard on the then chairman who had
planned post-meeting festivities. I was elected at the next meeting.
But at this one, they nailed me chairman of the resolutions committee
and handed me a shoe box full of paper with resolutions written out
completely illegibly. After the meeting I was sitting in my room
consolidating the resolutions and writing them up so that they would
be considered by a meeting the next day. About that time, maybe a
quarter to twelve at night, who should walk by my door in swimming
trunks and a towel but Martin Huff, and he just laughed and went his way.
I guess I finished about half past one.]

Kent: Van Dempsey had come out of the labor movement. These guys just had
real standing in their communities and in their businesses. They
could move things, you know. So that's where we had our muscle,
obviously. It doesn't amount to a damn what you've got at the top if
you haven ' t got the troops .

Fry: Could you just run down names of others who were in this group?

Kent: Obviously, Bill Roth, for instance, was in the earliest part of the
group. Ed Heller was a perfectly wonderful man who always supported
us. (Ed Heller used to have a happy custom. When he'd leave his
office at Schwabacher and Company, that building there, he'd go to
the bar across the street and have two or three drinks and get in
the automobile, and his chauffeur would drive him home.) He always
came up with about fifteen thousand dollars a year, average, every
time there was a campaign. He'd say, "I'll put in five, and Elinor
[Heller] will put in five, and my mother will put in five." If we
ever needed anything else, then he'd help.

It was election day, and I went in to see him. He said, "My
God, Roger, it's election day!"

I said, "Ed, you have done many good things for the Democratic
party, and I want to assure you that if you'll walk one block up to
212, that there will be a bar or more, and you can drink just as
much as you want before you start back down for Atherton."

So Ed came up and drank about a tumbler of gin, happily got
down, got in his automobile with his chauffeur, and drove to
Atherton. The fellow said, "I got my money's worth out of the
Democrats after all these years!" [laughter]

That is an absolute Marin powerhouse. [points out photograph]
That's the damndest politician you ever saw in your life.

Fry: Who?

Kent: Becky Watkin. Used to be Esherick. One guy was telling me that

there was a three-way highway down here, and there was some initiative,
some school-bond issue or something like that, and Becky was standing
in the middle of the road shoving these leaflets in the guys' windows
as they went by at thirty-five miles an hour. She'd been doing that
for twenty-five years. The guy said, "If I ever get into any kind
of political business, then I want that Becky on my side!" [laughter]

She's got this big house and is just crazy about politics, but
she has very largely confined herself to Marin. I mean, she'll
come over to a San Francisco function, and she would line up the

Kent: Marin delegation. If we needed votes, we'd get hold of her and tell
her what we hoped we were going to be able to accomplish. She
would always be very, very helpful.

Fry: Well, it seems that Marin County has given the Democratic party a
legacy quite disproportionate to its population.

Kent: This is true.

Fry: I wonder why? It's an affluent community — Republican.

Kent? Well, I've often thought about it. I think that life was so tough
for the Democrats in Marin County in '44, '46, '48, whatnot, that
they had to be pretty tough to survive, and they had to be pretty
dedicated. I think this is a pattern that you'd see in other parts
of the country, where an affluent — and oftentimes, it's a campus-
type group, this not being one of these — community will generate
very strong Democratic leadership. This may be because they have
time enough or money enough to do some work that the poor working
man would love to do if he were able to. But he's just not able to.

I think we'd better quit.

Fry: It's 1:15.

Kent: I've been feeling so much better. I don't think I could have gone
half this time a week ago, even.

Fry: Well, thank heavens. I'm glad.

Kent: Among the absolute most important 212 gang people were Madlyn

Smyth — now Madlyn Day, and Cyr Copertini. On Madlyn Day, it is
very interesting. It is one of the decisions that I am very proud
that I made early in the game. That was that Madlyn was married
to James Smyth — Jimmy Smyth — who was the internal revenue
representative in San Francisco. They took after him and indicted
him. I talked with various people, including a young assistant U.S.
attorney, and he said, "Oh, it's a terrible thing, it's a frightful
corruption," and all this.

I said, "What have you got?" It turned out that what they had —
what they finally ended up indicting Smyth for — was for backdating
some tax on medicines for some druggist that had cost the government
if, in fact, Jim Smyth had done it, about $2.30. It was just
perfectly absurd.

To his everlasting credit, Bill Malone — who, of course, had
been my predecessor as state chairman, in control of the state
central committee, called me up and said, "Madlyn has put Jim Smyth's

Kent: name on this committee for some Democratic dignitary. I just wanted
you to know that it's on there. Do you want it thrown off, because
if you do, throw it off."

I said to him, "Dammit, he was tried and he was found innocent!
To hell with his detractors and Madlyn's detractors. Leave him on."

Then Madlyn, who is this tremendously competent gal on any
political gathering, any dinner, anything of that kind — I mean, she
has gone her way, very cheerfully, as I've gone mine. She put on
a good many of these shows for Joe Alioto, and was not receiving the
fullest cooperation from me. I mean, I was never an anti-Joe, but
I was never an enthusiastic pro-Joe. Madlyn was definitely a member
of the 212 gang, back in those days and with just a really sharp mind,
and tremendous experience and knowledge of techniques and of people
for any kind of an event.

Cyr Copertini is a sheer joy. She's a gal who, again, had been
with Bill Malone and with Don Bradley. She was with Tom Saunders
after she left us, and was with Tom Saunders for a little while.
She now, happily, is [Mayor] George Moscone's appointment secretary,
and as I say again, one of the nicest and most attractive and sharp
and good people that I know — an utterly invaluable member of the
212 gang. I'm sure as time goes by, Chita, I will think of others,
but these were two of the great good friends.

[The following written comments were added on August 18, 1978:
I am terribly happy to get a shot at adding to this because it would
shave been really an injustice to a lot of people if I had left the
list as it was in my first interview. It's probably essential to get
a very short shot in the beginning of the Graves campaign to start off
the 212 gang with anything but the hard core.

George Miller was state chairman and in 1953 he was doing his
damnest to find a qualified candidate to run against Knight for
governor. One of the men who could not tolerate Knight was Richard
Graves, the executive secretary of the League of California Cities,
a liberal and moderate Republican. He kept bugging Miller and, as
man after man faded out as a possibility, Miller finally turned to
Graves and said, "all right, you feel so strongly about this, how
about changing your registration and running yourself?" Dick had a
lot of seniority in his job and a lot of fringe benefits and not
much money in the bank but he agreed to run. I'm sure that Miller
told him to sign me up as northern California chairman, although I
never braced Miller with it. I met Graves at a cocktail party given
by Sue Lilienthal. I liked him, and he asked me if I would be the
northern California chairman. I agreed to take on the job and started
the thing off with a cocktail and pizza party at a small house that
I was living in before we could get into the house we had rented when

Kent: I went East. I brought down a large number of my own first district

friends and some others, and they liked Graves, but many had misgivings
about the fact that he had changed his registration so recently. I
had some too, but was not as worried as I became later and with just
cause. I am sure that George Miller also got Graves to grab Don
Bradley to be his campaign manager. Libby liked him and agreed to go
along. At that point, two of the best of the 212 gang were recruited.
Eugene Lee, a young graduate student at that time I believe at
California was recruited by Dick Graves to make an analysis of the
Knight budget. And I had been hearing William L. Orrick, Jr. , making
noises about being a Democrat and I went to him and said that we had a
great candidate who wanted him to come in as treasurer of the campaign.
The first dive is always the toughest one, and Bill checked around a
bit before he accepted. One of the people he checked with was that
grand old man, Roger Lapham. Roger told Bill that "Graves is the
best qualified man to be governor of California that I know." Bill
was with us from then on.

The hard core of the 212 gang was, of course, the paid professionals,
Don Bradley and Van Dempsey. Van was on the payroll part time (or as
often as we could afford him) and then the girls: first Lenore Ostrow,
then Louise Ringwalt, and then Jean Black. There were then at least
three or four party officers who might not have been party officers at
that time, but later became such. I was one; Libby Smith was another.
She became national commit teewoman. There was Ann Alanson, who claims
she got her start in politics addressing my Christmas cards and who
later became a two- term national committeewoman, and Martin Huff, who
became treasurer and at a later time, the executive secretary of the
State Board of Equalization, a job he still holds.

It was Ed Heller's custom to put up what at that time was a
great deal of money, fifteen thousand dollars, for statewide candidates
that he liked. He wanted to make sure that the money was properly
accounted for and that any tax he might owe on a gift was paid. He
had signed up Bill Roth before I became chairman. (Bill was practically
always chairman of the finance committees for statewide candidates
when Ed was taking the leading position.) Ed also wanted the books
kept meticulously and he used to employ Jack Abbott. Jack Abbott
later married Mary (I've forgotten her last name), who was a good
Democrat herself, and those two became definitely a part of the 212
gang as well as, of course, Bill Roth and Bill Orrick.

I mentioned the pros, Bradley and Dempsey. Towards the end of
my term, Don wanted to quit and stay in Los Angeles after the '66
campaign, and Van took on his job for a while but didn't like it. That

Kent: kind of work was not his cup of tea. He asked me to be relieved.
With Libby being the principal backer, we took on Jack Tomlinson
from the governor's office in Sacramento. I had not known him before,
and this was the start of the long and close friendship. He and his
wife, Vicki, had both worked in the Cranston campaign with Libby. and
she was most happy and excited when they decided to get married.
About that time Jean Black took on some other job and I took on
Marilyn Isenberg, a Japanese- American girl, as secretary of the
committee and my secretary. She was excellent and in a class with
her predecessors. She had married Phil Isenberg, who is mayor of
Sacramento. They definitely became part of the 212 gang.

Nancy Jewel had worked in my campaigns in the first district.
Besides her experience, she was very bright, hard working, and
conscientious. She just about ran the Stanley Mosk campaign for
attorney general in '58 and became his appointments secretary, a
job she held until Stanley went to the Supreme Court by Pat's
appointment and was succeeded by another Brown appointee, his old
friend Tom Lynch. Nancy continued as Tom's appointments secretary.
Meantime, Louise Ringwalt went up to Sacramento and became Pat's
appointments secretary, and Winslow Christian, who has been chairman
of the Sierra County committee and an invaluable ally on the state
executive committee, became Pat's number-one assistant. He had
certainly been a part of the 212 gang. These alumni were holding
down critical jobs in state government, which enabled us to reach
anybody we wanted to at almost a moment's notice. Among the
charming pros I left out was Jim Keene from Los Angeles. He married
another excellent friend, Prudence Thrift. We one time threatened
to run her for state treasurer. Jim was a very skilled PR man and
particularly good on media. Don always brought him in to campaigns
and he was in attendance at most of the Bolinas parties held by the
gang.

Joseph Houghteling, who was a grandson of Czar Speaker Joseph
Cannon Houghteling of the House of Representatives and who owned
the Sunnyvale Times , was in practically all Democratic campaigns
and was very close with the 212 bunch. I'm sure he was considered
a part of the gang.

I mentioned the professional alumni. The amateur alumni also
eventually occupied exceedingly important positions. Bill Orrick
was assistant attorney general for litigation, then assistant secretary
of the State Department for administration and then back to Department
of Justice as the tremendously important assistant secretary, antitrust.
He is now a federal judge. Bill Roth became Christian Herter's
assistant in negotiations of the trade treaties and became the
ambassador upon Herter's death and continued in negotiations with
himself in charge. Libby Smith became treasurer of the United States.

Kent: Gene Lee became a vice president at the University of California and
a very important one. Jack Morrison was elected a supervisor of
San Francisco. Fred Cooper of Alameda County, who was really not
part of the gang, but was my very close associate and collaborator,
became a supervisor in Alameda County.

The gang had staunch friends and allies all across the state,
starting of course with that very important man, Senator George
Miller, Jr. and at least three of the people we had helped to elect:
Stan Arnold, Fred Farr, and Joe Rattigan. Nick Petris of Alameda
County was always ready to do what we asked. Others were not
unfriendly, but did not give us quite the hand that we got from
those named. Hugo Fisher (now a judge in San Diego) was close to
us from the very beginning and at that time used to claim that San
Diego should be considered a part of the north. John Sobieski, the
corporations commissioner, was one of my very good friends and was
always with us, and so was Sally Syer, an aristocratic lady who took
her ACLU card down and threw it in the face of the clerk when ACLU
backed the removal of the Japanese. John Stokes of Arcata, many
times the county chairman of the Democratic party for Humboldt
County, would definitely be considered a member of the gang. Frank
Mesple was in the governor's office and was a good friend of Don
Bradley 's and of mine. He participated in a number of the 212
parties and was always an important contributor to their success.

The way it would work would be that the nucleus that I have
described would be working in the office until an event or campaign
came along. The first two people that would probably be hired when
we needed them and when we had the money would be Madlyn Smyth
(now Day) and Cyr Copertini. Right behind them would come Pearl
Zaron and Sally Laidlaw. After that we would try and give any
paying jobs to the volunteers who had put in many weary and valuable
hours on party work and campaigns before we would accept any kind of
applications from newcomers.

Among the other tremendously helpful people to the 212 operation
were a number of lawyers, principally Gerald 0'Gara,who became
municipal court judge, and Gerald Marcus. Bill Coblentz as a young
man helped put together a task force of lawyers who represented Fred
Farr in a suit he brought against members of the Republican committee
and others. Fred Farr and his wife had in fact been charged with
being Communists or Communist dupes. The judge in Monterey County
kept throwing out the complaint against the Republican committee.
We finally got Bernie Witkin, without question the leading California
law scholar, author, and lecturer, to mastermind the final draft of
the complaint which we were prepared to take up on appeal. The judge
did still rule that we had not stated the cause of action, so we
took it up on appeal and won that case. It's one of those crazy
things in politics where the timing happened to be exactly right.
The court declared that Fred Farr had a cause of action and should

Kent: have been allowed to present his case. The press practically said
that it was a Fred Farr victory. It was, in a sense, but certainly
it was not a clearing of Fred Farr from any charges that were made
by those folks. Later, that case was settled and Fred got a fairly
substantial amount of money that enabled him to pay a part of his
expenses.

Marcus and O'Gara I got into the Nixon case in '62, and I'm
sure it is adequately covered elsewhere in these notes. O'Gara was
and is a fine man and a fine lawyer and made a very good judge.
It was an outrage that Pat Brown appointed him to the municipal
court instead of superior court. Brown appointed some guy to the
superior court, whose name now escapes me, who quickly found out
that he didn't really want to be a judge and that he couldn't make
enough money in the job and resigned. So O'Gara could have had that
job and a much more meaningful career on the bench although he
became, of course, the presiding judge in the municipal court.

Gerald Marcus again was a very good lawyer in a very good firm
and was always with us on any campaign. He also was a leading
campaign chairman for Tom Lynch in the '66 campaign. Whether he was
smart or just lucky, I don't know, but he said to Libby and me, "We've
got to face up to the fact that maybe Tom is the only one who's
going to win in this election." We thought that was nonsense but,
sure enough, it turned out that it was true.

That brings me to Tom and Pat Lynch. They were great people and
very thoroughly Irish, and I had not tangled with that kind of person
before at least 1954. Tom would tell a story about World War I,
where one of his Irish cousins walked up to one of the old men wearing
an American uniform with leggings, and the old man mistook him for a
Britisher and hit him over the head with a shillelagh. He and I were
very good friends, and Pat and I had a great mutual admiration society.
She is an extraordinary, interesting, and delightful woman and was
thoroughly in with the entire 212 gang.

I'm reminded of another amusing incident. In the last three or
four years that I was chairman and we had the Democratic State Central
Committee meeting in Sacramento, I had found out that it was extra
ordinarily difficult to get lunch in Sacramento between the time when
the state convention adjourned after adopting the platform and the
full state committee met after lunch. I had had a bunch of people
of the probably 212 nucleus up in the room for steak sandwiches and
coffee and, of course, a drink or so first. We then walked over to
the Capitol for the state committee meeting. I presided and as soon
as my duties were done, I went out the back entrance behind the
speaker's rostrum, across the park, and up to my room. There, on
the couch, was a lady's girdle. I didn't know how it got there. I
thought there was a possibility that it was a Republican plant. I

Kent: left it where it was and got a cup of coffee. The next person who

arrived was the attorney general, Tom Lynch. I pointed to the girdle
and said, "What do you think that is?" He made some comment, such
as, "That's no way for the chairman to act!" Shortly thereafter I
packed up and met the others for the trip home out of the Sacramento
heat. It was several weeks before we found out that the incriminating
garment was left by Margie Coate, who made the grievious error of
wearing it in Sacramento in August. She had removed it when the
rest of us left the Capitol and never mentioned it to anybody.

Another of the officers who was definitely a member of the 212
gang was Dave Freidenrich and his very pretty and bright wife, Edith.
He was a Palo Alto attorney and I'm quite sure was on the Democratic
State Central Committee executive committee and had been a very powerful
voice, right and good (meaning he was on our side) in meetings of the
executive committee. When Martin Rothenberg, who had been the state
secretary, resigned to go on the bench by Pat Brown's appointment, we
elected Dave at an executive committee meeting as his successor. Dave
stayed on as secretary until we came to the election where Jane
Morrison was elected woman's chairman over Phil Burton's candidate
for that job. Phil, with his customary political astuteness and, perhaps,
vindictiveness, decided that he would teach me a lesson and so very
quietly he lined up Byron Rumford, a black assemblyman from Alameda
County, to be nominated as secretary of the committee. We had been
working hard on the Morrison election and had not noticed that Dave
was in danger and did not do our homework. Dave was narrowly
defeated by Rumford, because Phil astutely was able to put together
two blocs — one was the assemblymen themselves, who would go for one
of their own and bring their delegates along with them, and the other
bloc wanted to see a black representation in important jobs. As is
the universal result, the election of an incumbent officeholder was
a mistake. Byron never did anything but sign minutes and notices
which had been prepared either by me or by Louise Ringwalt. Of course,
there was no sense running anyone against him because it would have
caused an uproar and the incumbent would certainly have won anyway.

Other important friends around the state were a lawyer, Jack
Chargin of San Jose, who served on the executive committee for many
years, and Marge Freitas of Suisun, who also served on the executive
committee and who was always with us. Leo Giobetti and his wife (I m
quite sure her name was Lou) , who at that time were in the business
of raising a very large number of tomatoes in the valley, were always
close to us. Leo made one exceedingly valuable contribution, and
that is, he said, that, "as far as he and his friends were concerned,
it would be perfectly all right for us to go ahead and nominate and
vote for Ann Alanson for northern California women's chairman," a
job which had been held traditionally by a woman in the valley, and
it had not worked because they couldn't get to the San Francisco
office and they were not able to do much of the work of the party.

Kent: Leo agreed with me that they would see more of Ann in the valley than
they would of one of their own, and he undertook to and did satisfy
the valley people that this was in the interest of the party and their
own interest. It was a great contribution, one of many of his.

George E. Johnson, who had been our candidate for state president
in 1954, was a wealthy Greek restaurant man in Sacramento, who ran a
very good restaurant. He was always very helpful and always close to
the 212 gang. One experience with him was as much pleasure as almost
anything that happened in politics; at the 1956 CDC convention, when
Stevenson and Kefauver were both going to speak before the primary, I
walked outside of the auditorium and I found the excitable Mrs.
Johnson berating George, giving him hell for not providing a ticket
for her for the proceedings. She was recalling how many times he'd told
her he was a big shot in the Democratic party and now she didn't quite
share that opinion and was pounding on his chest, at which point I
stepped up and said, "Oh, by the way Mrs. Johnson, I'd just like to
give you the two tickets that George asked me to get for you" and
pulled two tickets out of my pocket and handed them to her. I never
saw such relief and pleasure and thanks on anybody's face as on
George's.] [end of written insert]

You know, the criticism of Hubert Humphrey, of his saying, "the
politics of joy." This criticism would ring so true with 99 percent
of the people. Yet, I understood what he was talking about, and
I'm sure he would understand completely the 212 gang, because he's
been with us on many occasions. It is close fellowship. It is
dedication and work, but it is also just having one hell of a good
time while you're at it.

Fry: That's not always true in some parties, I shall say. [laughs]

Kent: Well, of course not. It was true of the 212 gang.
[Interview 2: March 11, 1976]//#

Fry: We can start today on whatever else you want to say about the 212
gang.

Kent: A little bit more about the 212 gang. It was the group that worked
at 212 Sutter. I think we had our headquarters there for the best
part of ten years, eight or nine years. It was very convenient for
me. It was just two blocks from my law office. It was convenient for
a lot of other people on Sutter Street and Market Street — trolleycars
and buses and so forth. And there was adequate space to do work.
As I said, this Louise Ringwalt had a large number of young and old,
mostly gals, whom she could bring in, and who would do volunteer work
in politics.

Kent: You asked about the morale. She would give them cakes and cookies.
Usually, if people stayed until seven o'clock, we would give them a
drink before they went home. There would be work going on there of
one kind or another at all times, party work. And, as mentioned, it
was the office not only of the party but of CDC. We had the closest
relationship with CDC. Alan Cranston stayed at 212 until '58, when
he became controller. Then Joe Wyatt became president, and our
relations with Joe were just as good as they were with Alan. Tom
Carvey, again of Los Angeles, came in as president of CDC.

If you walked in that office and there was a project going, you
wouldn't know who was a party person and who was CDC. We were all
friends, and we just did what had to be done, whether it had a CDC
tag on it or a party tag on it. For instance, on the Dollars for
Democrats, that had to be successful by having a large number of
troops out there asking for money on nights, and we'd carry it over
onto a weekend.

The first time that they did that was 1952 — 1953, I think, or
maybe '56, when Stevenson ran again. We raised $170,000 in one
weekend.

Fry: In '56.

Kent: In '56, '56. Anyway, we raised $170,000 in one weekend on this
small money.

Dollars for Democrats

Fry: You have to explain to me what was the system of Dollars for Democrats.

Kent: Well, it had to be done through the clubs, because we depended on
manpower, mostly womanpower. We had books, which had receipts in
them. We just went to the clubs and explained the fact that on a
certain weekend, they were to put people on the streets to go from
door to door, and say, "I'm from Dollars for Democrats. We're raising
money for the Democratic party and Democratic candidates, and we'd
like what you can give us. We certainly hope that you'll give us not
less than a dollar!"

As a result, if we put people on the streets, and they were in
an affluent area — of course, they went only to Democrats — they would
come up with not less than twenty-five bucks. If they went just
through low-income apartment houses, they'd come up with ten bucks.
It was a remarkably successful way of raising money.

Kent: The present substitute are these telethons. I think they work pretty
well. The Dollars for Democrats was the way in which we reached the
guy who was only going to give a dollar, five dollars, or something
of that kind. And we got that money.

There is no other way to get that money. You can't get that money
with a mailer. If you mail to a thousand people, asking for a dollar,
you won't get back fifteen dollars. But asking door to door was
successful.

In the planning and the initial financing, usually, the State
Democratic Central Committee would put up the money that was necessary
for the initial plans. The state committee would then have some funds
that it would raise from the fund raising dinner. We decided that the
allocation of such money as the state committee and the CDC had would
be handled by a joint committee, particularly the Dollars for
Democrats money. The Dollars for Democrats money would be handled
by a joint committee of the CDC and the state committee.

Allocating Funds

Kent: Then CDC would go ahead and appoint such good people on there, and we
would try and appoint such good people on there, that we would say,
"Put everything in the same pot, and we'll allocate on the vote of a
joint committee of the CDC and the state committee." You were asking
me about building morale — well, this quite obviously was a good morale
builder. We operated on the very sensible system that we would give
a token sum of money to every Democratic nominee (this was after the
primary) . We would not give anything more than a token to a guy who
was sure to win or a guy who was sure to lose. We'd divide the rest
and give it to an incumbent who had a tough race, or give it to a
Democrat who was running in an open seat and had a good shot at being
elected, or a Democrat running against a very weak Republican, with
a good chance to be elected. That was the theory.

I got into some furious arguments with the congressmen who didn't
like this. Most of them were in that first category. They were sure to
win. Naturally, everybody wants money, and they didn't like the fact
that we would be giving them, in a great many cases, merely token money.

Fry: Was this a problem later on then, of building up followers, because
these who were sure to win did win, would get into office and bear a
grudge against you?

Kent: They wouldn't carry it. If they won, they wouldn't carry too much of
a grudge. This all took place after I had come back from Washington
and the Department of Defense. I mean, I became the northern California
chairman and then the chairman. Northern California '54, state '56;
northern California '58, state '60; northern California '62, state '64.

III WASHINGTON DAYS AND THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

Kent: We talked about the steel seizure case when I was in Washington.

Then there were two or three other things that happened when I was
back there in the Department of Defense — I'll make it as short as I
can.

The National Defense Act — I've forgotten — it was either '47
or '49. Anyway, in 1952, the individual services, army, navy, and
air force, were not reconciled to being put in one bucket at all.
Nor were they particularly reconciled to civilian control. I mean,
they had had their own secretaries in the past but when they had the
Department of Defense sitting on top of the individual services, they
didn't like that.

Fry: Was it an enlargement of civilian control?

Kent: It was an enlargement of the civilian control. So that as these
various plans and programs would be submitted to me, as general
counsel of the Department of Defense — and I had some very, very
good lawyers on the staff — I'd look for the curves. There would be
a curve in, substantially, every one to weaken civilian control and
to weaken consolidation of the services under the Department of
Defense.

Local Defense Spending Is Campaign Issue

Kent: I think I covered the matter of the '52 campaign, where Truman asked
me for that information on the various defense contracts.

Fry: I don't think you covered that on the tape.

Kent: Well, the word came from Ken Heckler, who is now a congressman from
West Virginia, who was at that time an aide to Truman. He would ask
when Truman was going to go on a campaign swing for a rundown on the

Kent: dollar amount of defense contracts in the particular area that

Truman was going into, and on the number of the people employed in
defense industry in these places. This, again — I think I told you
that the services were kind of sore at me for giving them more of
this extra work. They finally ended up sending a bill, but I don't
think anybody ever paid any attention to it. [laughter]

Fry: And you sent the bill to the White House?
Kent: Right.

Voting Rights Restored to' "Deserter"

Kent: There were two real things that I did that I was very pleased and
proud about. One fellow here in Marin County, who later became a
judge, was named Leonard Thomas. He brought to my attention the
fact that there was this guy who wanted to be a radio man on an
American merchant marine ship. He had made application for the
merchant marine about 1952, I'll say. Earlier, he had gone over the
hill as a deserter —

Fry: Let me see if that refrigerator noise is going to interfere here.
Excuse me. Go ahead.

Kent: Well, earlier this guy was in the Coast Guard. He was a radio

operator. World War II was over. In June 1950, he got tired of
military service and deserted. The Korean war had not yet started
and so there were no hostilities going on, and yet there was a
technical state of war that had not been abolished by Congress or
proclamation or anything else. So when they caught up with him, he
was guilty of desertion in time of war. Under another statute, if
you are guilty of that crime, you lose your citizenship, including
your right to vote and your right to hold a job, say in the merchant
marine on an American vessel.

I always thought that losing citizenship was a very silly
remedy anyway, and in this case, it was perfectly obviously very
unfair. First, I think, I checked it out myself with the navy and
the Coast Guard and the Treasury Department, because the Treasury
Department operates the Coast Guard in peacetime and the navy takes
over in wartime. They said, "There's not a thing we can do
administratively. Nothing! The guy was convicted of desertion in
time of war. There's no administrative action that we can take that
can be of any use to him at all."

Kent: So then I called my legal guys in (it was a great pleasure to have
this high-powered, skilled staff) and I said, "Well, hell, this is
so unjust. Let's find a statute, or maybe the president can do it
by proclamation." So they checked it out, and found out that
President Truman could do it by proclamation. So I got word over to
the White House of this situation, and of the fact that I thought it
was highly unjust, and that I hoped the president would feel like
issuing a proclamation.

Well, Truman was just perfectly delighted. He said, "Of course
I will!" He said, "Be sure to get right at it, because I'd like to
give it to him for a Christmas present," in '52. I always felt
that if I ever had run for office in California, I should have been
entitled to ten thousand votes, because there 'd been ten thousand guys
who'd had their citizenship restored, who never could have votes
unless I'd got 'em — !

That is in the Congress ional Record. I asked Coolidge, whom I
was working for as assistant secretary, legal and legislative, "Do
you mind if I sign the papers going over to Congress and going over
to the president?"

"Oh, hell yes. By all means. This is your deal, go ahead and
do it," he said. So I'm in the Congressional Record, as having sent
this thing over there.

Publicity Seeking_by General MacArthur

Kent: The other thing that tickled me was that some magazine came out with
a story about General MacArthur 's exploitation of his job as the boss
of the Japanese, and the fact that he got a hotel at the expense of
the government, and he got the best cartographers and photographers
and whatnot in the Japanese economy, and he set them to work for a
period of years preparing material to be used in some books that were
to be entitled, MacArthur and the Pacific War.

Fry: All at government expense?

Kent: Oh, yes. And this was picked up by some magazine, and then it was
picked up by the Washington_Post. The Washington Post had a little
story on it, that forty-four trunks of MacArthur 's material were
arriving in New York within ten days to two weeks, with this material
in them, which was to be used for MacArthur 's book. So I wrote a
memorandum to Robert Lovett, Secretary of Defense, and I said, "Here's
this story." I said, "In my opinion as your counsel, you should not
permit this to happen because obviously, all this was paid for at

Kent: public expense, and it belongs to the public! I enclose a memorandum
to Frank Pace, Secretary of the Army." The memorandum said, "You're
Secretary of the Army, here's the story in the Washington Post. These
forty-four trunks are supposedly arriving on such and such a vessel
in New York harbor at such and such a time. Reduce them to the
possession of the United States." [laughs]

So Lovett called me in, and he said, "Gee, Roger, this is a
little rough."

I said, "I mean it!"

He said, "Well, I think you're right. I think you're right but
I'm not just going to send Frank Pace that rough memorandum and sign
it myself. I'm just going to get him up here and tell him to do it."
And so he did, and those trunks were all reduced to the possession
of the United States, and General MacArthur didn't make two million
dollars off selling the thing. [laughs]

I don' t know whether he went to his grave knowing who had done
him the dirty trick or not [laughs]. But as I said, that one tickled
me, because MacArthur 's publicity seeking in the war was just anathema
to me, as well as to the navy and the marines and whatnot. He was
always for grabbing headlines. We came across one of the memoranda
that MacArthur 's public relations guy wrote. He said, "In writing a
story about any incident that takes place in the Pacific, General
MacArthur 's name is to be in the first line, it's to be in the fourth
or fifth line, and it is to be in the last line of anything that you
put out."

Fry: No kidding?

Kent: Yes. And it was_!

Fry: The Department of Defense followed that memorandum?

Kent: Oh, no, no. That was for his own command. And, of course, he kept
the CIA and OSS [Office of Strategic Services] out of Korea. He was
relying on his intelligence. It was in fact just nothing except a
public relations flack to publicize Mac Arthur. I saw a wire (the
night the Chinese crossed the Yalu) that was shown to me by a guy who saw
these things — they came over his desk as a matter of routine — where
the nightly wire from MacArthur started off saying, "Such and such
was a situation with this division, and such and such was a situation
from this front." (This was when MacArthur had been saying that he
was going to be on the Manchurian border by Thanksgiving or Christmas,
or something of that kind.) This wire was going on in routine manner,
and then it said, "Stop. Enemy attacking all along the line in
unknown strength." That was when the Chinese got into it full fledged.

Kent: Had it not been that they ran into probably the toughest fighting
unit in the world, in the First Marine Division, there would have
been a perfect catastrophe. The marines fought their way out of that
thing to the coast, you remember, so it wasn't quite as bad a disaster
as it might otherwise have been.

My brother Sherman (who worked for the CIA) said, "Had the CIA
been there, there couldn't have been any concealment of the fact that
an attack was going to come on, or of the weight the attack was going
to be." He said, "The easiest intelligence task that you could
possibly ask for, would be to make that determination that the
Chinese were getting ready for something big."

Fry: I don't understand. If the secretary of defense wanted the CIA to

be in Korea, couldn't he go over MacArthur's head?

Kent: Well, of course Truman had to fire MacArthur before it got to the
point where MacArthur wasn't a little tin god that was immune from
direction from the Defense Department or even the Joint Chiefs of
Staff. The stories on Truman are that George Marshall and Omar
Bradley were not particularly approving of MacArthur but they were
very, very chary of how they handled him.

Fry: Now your brother had what position at that time?

Kent: Well, he was called back to the CIA, you see. He'd quit as the

director of research and analysis for OSS in '49 or early '50 and he
got a Guggenheim to write a book on strategic intelligence. He
taught at the War College and then he went back to Yale. He was at
Yale in 1950 when the Korean invasion hit. That's when Bedell Smith,
who was director of CIA, called him and said, "When can you come to
work as the boss of strategic intelligence for CIA?" So he came
back shortly after the Korean intelligence fiasco.

Fry: He must have known then what was really going on at the time and
been chafing at the fact that they couldn't get CIA in there.

Kent: Well, you see, he was a very secure guy, in terms of security. Once
he quit OSS, he wasn't going to go ask anybody anything, because he
didn't like anybody asking him anything, if he was in a position of
sensitive intelligence. He probably read the newspapers — and much
more intelligently than you and I would read them — and he probably
was very much concerned about it. But he wouldn't have seen the
information that would have just absolutely impelled him to the
conclusion of what was going to happen in Korea.

Defense Secretary Wilson: Penchants and Peccancies

Kent: Now you asked me about some of these other guys that I met in defense.
The first thing that happened after the Eisenhower election was, of
course, that that Engine Charlie [Charles Erwin] Wilson got in a
brawl about conflict of interest and his ownership of General Motors
stock. Bill Rogers (who was Herbert Brownell's assistant attorney
general) and Brownell at that time thought that they could work out
something and that Wilson could put the stock aside while he was in
defense and come back and pick it up, and do this and do that and
the other thing.

Fry: After he was out of office?

Kent: Yes. I said, "Well, I have just seen Margaret Chase Smith in action,
and some of these other people in action on the question of conflict
of interest, and this isn't going to work. Wilson is going to have
to make up his mind whether he wants to be secretary of defense or
whether he wants to hold his General Motors stock."

Rogers said, "Oh, I think we could work something out." Then he
found out that they couldn't, and they were awfully tough on Wilson.
They were tougher with Wilson than they subsequently were with a
number of other people.

I mean [Secretary of Defense David] Packard had his Hewlett-
Packard stock put away in a nonvoting trust, and so forth, and some
other people had the same thing.

Fry: Do you know why they were so tough with Wilson?

Kent: Well, it was the first time, I think, that a guy who was to be

secretary of defense, for instance, was moving to that position from
having been president of General Motors which at that time, I believe,
was the largest arms supplier to the armed services. The president
of a company that was selling five billion dollars worth of arms to
the government was going to be put in charge of buying it. There
was very good reason for being tough on him, but there was equally
good reason for being tough on some of these later ones.

Fry: Yes, because it was still a conflict of interest. I couldn't tell
whether this might be something that Eisenhower himself might have
taken a hand in.

Kent: I don't know. I know that Eisenhower got awfully sore at him, because
again I saw one of these wires after Wilson became secretary of
defense. I think Eisenhower was one of the military types that just
admired any guy who was a millionaire and a success in business and

Kent: so forth. The time that Eisenhower got mad at him was when Wilson
went over to Europe and then Africa, and was running around hunting
with sheiks and sultans and whatnot [laughs] . Eisenhower wired him —
I saw the wire: "Return to the United States! Repeat, return to the
United States immediately!" Because Wilson was just having a wonderful
time. [laughter]

Another one of the bad ones that Wilson did, I was able to help
on. I've forgotten the exact name of it. It was called something
like "The Subversive Appeals Board." Some guy working in a plant
would be accused of being a Communist sympathizer, or having some
security risk. They would can him, and then he had an appeal to
this board.

Well, Wilson said to me and some of the guys that were there,
"I don't know why we give these guys an appeal." He said, "They're
all guilty. It all depends on whether they're this much guilty or
that much guilty. As far as I'm concerned, to hell with them. Let's
give them no appeal."

I said, "Mr. Secretary, there are cases of mistaken identity."

One of my lawyers was there, and said, "Mr. Secretary, one of
these men that was up before this appeals board was fired from his
concern because he was seen going to the Russian Embassy. At the
hearing, before the appeals board" — and he'd never had any hearing
at all — "it came out that he was an army agent, and he was going there
on the orders of the army! And he was fired."

Well, Wilson was absolutely adamant. He was going to go right
ahead and abolish this thing.

Fry: Did he have any idea of due process?

Kent: No! Absolutely not. Absolutely not. So then, one of the legal guys
said to me, "Do you know that one of Wilson's vice-presidents from
General Motors is on this board?"

So we went back, and just as Wilson was getting ready to sign
this thing, I said, "Mr. Secretary, Theodore J. Mullings , a vice-
president of General Motors, is on this board. Have you discussed
this with him?"

He said, "I can't believe it!"

I said, "Why don't you give him a call?" So he gets hold of the
telephone operator, and he says, "Get me Mullings in Detroit, at the
General Motors office."

Kent: And so Mr. Mullings (not his real name) just read the riot act to
him, as much as he dared, to Wilson for a half an hour. He said,
"Mr. Secretary, this would be the worst thing in the world. This
appeals board is the best protection that we have. If we want to
can somebody, if he has an appeal, and he's heard by a government
body, and his firing is sustained, that's the last word, and we'll
never have to worry about it." He said, "But if we can him, and it
turns out that we made a mistake, we will get a jolly good lawsuit,
and some very adverse publicity, let alone having committed a very
grave injustice on this guy."

I never saw a man look so disgusted in my life as Wilson did,
as he pushed away the paper that was about to abolish this board.

Fry: And was that the end of it?

Kent: That was the end of it. It took a General Motors vice-president to
change the Defense Department's posture.

Fry: Well, that was good that you recognized the name and made the
connection.

Kent: One of my lawyers told me this, you see. I said, "What is the board?"
and he said, "Well, it's so-and-so and so-and-so, and as a matter of
fact, there's one guy who's a vice-president of General Motors who's
on this board." [laughter] Now, there was on —

Fry: This was when the Department of Defense, in the larger picture, was
under attack by Joseph McCarthy for having "Communist" employees?

Kent: Oh, I had a rough go with that one. Did I tell you that story?
Fry: No.

War Criminal Pardons and Parole Board

Kent: First, I'll tell you one about how it was under Truman. As general
counsel to the Defense Department, I went on this War Criminal
Pardons and Parole Board, which was dealing with the Japanese war
criminals. There was a guy from the State Department and a guy from
the Justice Department on this board. We were entertained by the
Japanese embassy at a splendid lunch. Then we would get this material
on these guys who were incarcerated, and they were guilty of various
crimes, most of them for having mistreated American prisoners and
prisoners of other nationalities. They were in jail, over in Japan.

Kent: It was the silliest thing to call this a "parole," because they

were strictly under the jurisdiction of the Japanese. The people
they reported to were Japanese.

But we had to decide whether they should be paroled, or whether
they should be pardoned. I'd been out there on Guadalcanal and at
Tarawa, when there was this just utter brutality and just murder of
Japanese prisoners by Americans. If a marine was bringing a Japanese
prisoner in, and anybody wanted to shoot the Japanese prisoner, well,
nobody did anything about it. If the Japanese prisoner ever got to
a detention camp that was set up for that purpose, he was safe; he
would not be beaten nor mistreated, and he would be shipped off
probably to the United States, and interrogated and whatnot.

But, as I said to these fellows, I said, "Hell, on one occasion
an Australian coast watcher on the other side of Guadalcanal had two
Japanese prisoners, and he wanted us to pick them up with the
submarine. Our people promised they would do it. But they couldn't
do it, so finally the guy wired over to us, through the Australian
coast watcher radio system. He said, "This thing is getting too
sticky. My life is in danger. Are you going to take these guys off
or not, or I shall have to take other steps?"

So the general just told me, he said, "Just tell him to take the
other steps. We're not going to be able to pick these guys up."

So I wired this guy, "Your safety paramount. Take what steps are
necessary." We got back the word from the Australians — of course,
they had killed these Japanese prisoners. So _I probably would have
been in the dock as a war criminal if we'd lost the war.

Well, anyway, I finally concluded that this was the silliest
thing I'd ever seen. There were some things that the Japanese did
that were just absolutely outrageous, and they were shot and/or
hung, or they should have been. But at this time, we had maybe five
thousand prisoners — Japanese prisoners — locked up in jails in Japan.
At the same time, the Russians had about three hundred thousand that
they'd taken prisoner in Manchuria, and they were just living in slave
camps and getting the worst conceivable treatment, and yet all the
publicity in Japan criticizing the treatment of prisoners was about
the five thousand prisoners that the United States was holding; there
was never a mention about what was happening to the guys that were
being held by the Russians.

So I wrote to Truman. I said, "This is just an absurd situation,
as far as I'm concerned. With war criminals, you should have two
punishments — death or a maximum prison sentence of five years."
Because by this time, as soon as Korea started (and some of these
guys were still in Japanese jails) you can be damn sure that things

Kent: changed immediately. We took care of the Japanese guys by loosening
discipline and confinement. I said that as far as my sitting here
trying to decide who was worse, a guy that beat the American prisoner
with a fence post or a baseball bat, and one's entitled to be
paroled, and another isn't — I just didn't wany any part of it. I
most respectuflly resigned and I urged that he liquidate the program.

That was very shortly before Truman's term expired. I got a
very nice letter from him saying that he accepted my resignation
and whatnot. Gee, the State Department guys were just scared dizzy
that I was going to blow this publicly, which I didn't do. I just
did it privately with Truman.

Fry: What did they do? Did they abandon the program?

Kent: When Korea came along, they substantially abandoned it because we

were then asking the Japanese for matters which had not been covered

in the treaty of peace, in terms of bases and courts and this kind

of thing. At least some of the five thousand prisoners were released.

Fry: Let's see, the Korean War started then in —
Kent: — June of '50. [long pause]

Defense Contract Bidding Practices under_Wilson

Kent: Oh, another one on Wilson. He called me in, and he said, "Now

suppose that somebody contracts with the government to build something
for a certain number of dollars, and then decides to make it and
deliver it for less than that. Is there anything unlawful in that?"

And I said, "Mr. Secretary, I've got to know more than this ,
what the facts are."

It turned out that what had happened was that they had asked for
dynamos to be built to be installed, I think, in the Hungry Horse
Dam up in the state of Washington, something like this. And there
was a policy of American preference that entitled an American guy to
be so many percentage points over a foreign competitor and still
get the contract.

But in this case, the British, for these dynamos, had underbid
Westinghouse, who had quoted a price which was higher than
permissible even under the American plan. Wilson then said, "Suppose
we talk to Westinghouse, and Westinghouse, instead of saying, 'We'll
build this for $10,300,000,' amends its bid and says, 'We'll build it
for $9,800,000,' which would bring it within the preference, and give
them the contract."

Kent: This was about five o'clock in the afternoon, and I'm not too good
a slavedriver, but my guys were so willing and they were so good.
I said, "Well, we'll try and get you the answer. When do you want
it?" He said, "Tomorrow morning."

So about four of these very bright guys worked all night, and
they came up with, among other things, a regulation of the Defense
Department which said that if you had a bid and then you went to one
of the bidders and you got that bidder to reduce his price to the
point where he became the low bidder and you awarded the contract to
him — this could not be done. It was not only unethical but almost
certainly unlawful and a violation of the secretary's own regulations.
In the long run, it would lead to greater cost to the government if
the suppliers realized that this kind of fraud was being perpetrated
by the government.

I gave this to Wilson and I never saw him again. [laughter]
What they did was throw out all the bids for some technical reason
and when they came back, sure enough, Westinghouse got it.

Fry: So they got around you after all?

Flying Saucers

Kent: One thing that happened that was fairly interesting was that another
guy out here in Marin County got tremendously interested in flying
saucers. He had gone to Canada and he had met up with a crack
Canadian scientist who, in turn, had introduced him to the British
airplane designer who had designed the Spitfire and some of the
other best of the British planes.

This guy says that he was tremendously intrigued by these stories
of the flying saucer, because he figured that, in fact, that it could
be the aircraft of the future if they were ever able to develop a jet
engine that was big enough to be able to do these complicated up-
and-down maneuvers — straight and sideways and so forth — that those
who had seen it said it could do.

So I got him an interview with some of the top air force
generals, and they said, "Sure, it's got enough promise."

Fry: This was an interview with the Marin County man?

Kent: No, the Marin County guy came back, and he said to these fellows,

"Here's the stuff from the Canadian scientist, and here's the stuff
from the British scientist. I'm just interested and I- think that maybe

Kent: you guys should look into this. This is the dope." Well, they got
Canada to do it [the development]. Canada did it for expenses of
five or ten million dollars — little chicken feed like that, or
something. Apparently, it didn't work.

Fry: It did not?

Kent: It didn't work the way that this British scientist had predicted.

I have one very funny one on the flying saucer. That is, my air
force aide was a perfectly wonderful guy. He had gone into the air
force as a private, been sent to the flying school, gone through
flying school fairly early, got into a B-17, became a group commander,
had something like sixty-five missions over Europe, later became a
group commander in Spain of B-47's. He was about 220 pounds. He'd
be chewing black cigars when he came in. He was called Moose Hardin
and he was a colonel.

He told me that he and another guy were flying up from Florida —
he and a copilot. All at once, the copilot said, "What in the hell
is that?" They looked out, and two or three miles away, here was
the blue circle, and here were these lights that were going on and
off. He said they watched it, and it flew alongside of them for
a while. And then, he said, "It just went straight up in the air
about ten or fifteen thousand feet and then came back down and then
flew alongside of us again, and then went just right out of sight,
going like a bat out of hell."

Fry: Straight ahead.

Kent: Straight ahead. But you know, you couldn't imagine a guy less likely
to make up a story, or to see things —

Fry: Well, Roger, this was when the air force was saying, as I guess
they're still saying today, that this didn't happen, and that no
such thing existed.

Kent: Right. The air force had a great big project where they put an

investigator on every report of a UFO, and they said — they jidmit they
have something they can't explain. They said that they could explain
a vast number of them.

Fry: What did you do with Moose Hardin' s report?

Kent: Well, I just said, "Forget it. [laughs] I'm not going to get into
a fight about flying saucers. I've got too much to do."

Fry: Do you still have some more on the Department of Defense?

Kent: Yes. I have one, and then I'll get to McCarthy.

"Q" Clearance in Jeopardy

Kent: All of a sudden, I'm sitting here in the Defense Department and I'm
the luckiest man in the world, because I was a good friend of the
security officer. [laughter] I had to put in for a "Q" clearance,
which would allow me to examine atomic information on a need-to-
know basis. (I might need to know some of this stuff, because I
already knew most of what was going on.)

So the security officer came in, and he said, "We seem to have
a little difficulty with your security clearance." I said, "What's
the problem?" He said, "It's your sister." (That's the girl who
was the artist, who did that stuff that I showed you.)

Fry: Oh, what's her first name?

Kent: Adaline. I laughed! First, I said, "You know, there's the guy across
the Potomac River who's the chairman of the Board of National Estimates
and assistant director of the CIA and it happens that he's her brother
too!" [laughter]

Fry: How did your brother Sherman get in his position?

Kent: The security officer said, "Well, the story is that you're much closer
to her than he was." Well, as a matter of fact, in some ways it was
true, because I was living out here in California where she was,
and he was in the East.

I said, "My God, this is just absolutely ridiculous. It is true
that in the thirties, a number of the artists were Communists, and
Adaline always had sense enough to realize that that was the stupidest
thing that ever was, because of all the people who should not want a
rigid society, as the Communist society is, it's an artist!"

Then I said, "What have you got?" That's where I was so lucky
because if it had been the ordinary guy, there just would have been
a denial of "Q" clearance, and I never would have found out why.

He said, "Well, she took the People's World for two weeks."

Addie had taken the People's World because there was some stuff
on East Bay art that was in the People's World. There was some gal
who was a Rosenberg, who was a co- trustee in the Presidio School with
Addie. Addie had never seen her socially in her life. She'd seen
her at these trustee meetings.

There were a couple of other things that were just about as silly
as this. So when they got through — another security officer came in —

Fry: You were just saying something about these funny charges against
Addie.

Kent: Yes. I wrote her, and I got an explanation for each and every one
of these four or five silly charges. Unhappily, my friend didn't
come back — the security guard who'd been nice enough to tell me what
the charges were. Another guy came in, and he read what my sister
had said. He said, "Well, we've considered this, and we're going to
issue you your "Q" clearance. But we want your assurance that you
disapprove of what your sister did."

I looked at the guy, and I said, "For Christ's sake! There's
what she said she did! I believe her. There isn't anything she did
that I disapprove of!" He looked kind of nonplussed, I mean, the
idea that they would want me to make a confession before they would
get me back on the clearance list.

Fry: And you said that there wasn't anything that she did that you
disapproved of?

Kent: There was nothing that she had done that I could see that there was
any reason for me to disapprove of!

Joseph McCarthy versus the Department of Defense

Kent: Now, this McCarthy thing was a strange one. An army intelligence guy
came and talked to Coolidge, and then they talked to me. It seems
that a guy — whose name now escapes me — who was a pretty high-up
official in a kind of an agency of the Defense Department called
Munitions Board, which had a lot to do with allocating orders for
making steel for shells and engines and weapons systems and this kind
of stuff, was giving information to Drew Pearson. They said that under
Defense Department regulation such and such, we were to give this guy
an opportunity to make a statement, and that I was elected to take
this statement.

Fry: This was about a leak to Pearson?

Kent: Well, they didn't even tell me it was to Pearson! They just told me
it was a leak to newspapers or media or whatnot by this guy. So I
called the guy in, and I asked him these various questions. Then I
asked him about any radio or TV people.

"Oh," he said, "now I know what you're talking about. Drew
Pearson broke this adverse story about the chairman of the Munitions
Board," a guy very appropriately named Jack Small.

Kent: Small called him in and told him to go see Pearson, and tell him why
Munitions Board members had done what he criticized them for doing,
and see that there were no further bad stories that came out of
Pearson's office or on TV or in the paper about Small. Small said
he warned this guy that he wasn't to tell Pearson anything that was
classified. Well, of course, you couldn't possibly live with this
thing! In other words, Jack Small called this guy in. He says,
"All right, we're going to put you in a whorehouse, and you be a good
girl, but you make a living!"

Well, anyway, before I got to question this office about the
leak, the intelligence guy came to me, and he said, "Do you want to
hear this fellow spilling the stuff to Pearson?" I said sure, so we
went down to the basement and took a recent Munitions Board
memorandum — stuff about ammunition and artillery shells and supplies
and allocations between plants and stuff of this kind.

Fry: Was this the basement of the Pentagon?

Kent: Of the Pentagon. So pretty soon, we hear loud and clear this guy
reading this thing to Pearson.

Fry: Over a — ?

Kent: A bug. This fellow's room was bugged, and this guy was reading it to
him. I said to the intelligence guy, "My God! That's the damndest
thing I ever heard. The ink is hardly dry on that order!" He took
his thumb and went like that, and he smudged it and it wasn't dry! This
guy had passed the stuff on to Pearson. Well, he got canned, and the
word got to McCarthy about this. McCarthy wanted to know all about it.

Truman had issued an order (this was after Eisenhower was in
office) that no member of the executive branch should go to the Senate
and testify about any security or subversive matter without clearance
by the president. So McCarthy sends Wilson a memorandum that says,
"Come and bring everything that has to do with this case." So I wrote
an opinion to Wilson. I said, "You can't do this. It's contrary to
presidential regulations."

So McCarthy then said, "Well, send that lawyer down here."
This was the time when he was really quite at the height of his power.
John Adams later became the general counsel of the army and saved
what little honor [Secretary of the Army] Stevens was able to
retrieve in the McCarthy hearings. He was then one of my two deputy
general counsels in charge of legislation. He and I went down to see
McCarthy, and I want to tell you, that was an experience!

He started off with that blandishment — he was about a quarter
drunk —

Fry: Oh, was he?

Kent: — which he normally was. He said [mimics slurred voice] , "I know you
fellas are good all-Americans. I know you wouldn't do anything to
harm the country. I know that you're going to straighten out Wilson
and have him down here to testify and bring the papers" and so forth.

I said, "Senator, we can't do that."
"Why's that?"

"Because of this regulation that says it cannot be done without
the approval of the president, and we certainly are not going to ask
the president. Why don't you ask the president?"

Well, then he just blew his cork. He said (I think on Saturday),
"Have Wilson down here to explain why he wants to protect a man who's
giving information to Communists." I had prepared for this by reading
every damn column of Pearson's from the time this contact started
between him and the Munitions Board guy — the guy we canned. I read
every column, and I got transcripts of every TV and radio broadcast.

I said, "Senator, we don't have — " He said, "Are you going to
prosecute Pearson?" I said, "We can't prosecute. He never
disseminated this information, and the standing order is if you
gather confidential information and you don't do anything with it,
there's no offense."

He said, "Then you mean to tell me that he spent all this time
and all this money gathering all this information, and he never made
it public? He never sold any of his columns? He never put it in
radio and TV? What do you think he did with it?" It was clear that
McCarthy meant that Pearson was taking that to the Russians!

God, we were there for two hours and he just got meaner than
hell! I got back to the office and told Lovett and Charlie Coolidge.
I said, "Look, I've done my best, and here's what happened. I
wouldn't be surprised if you guys are down there next."

Lovett had almost as much supreme confidence as George Marshall.
"Oh, to hell with the guy," he said, "I'm not going to be bothered."

He never did anything more about that issue. He began to go
downhill shortly after that.

Fry: McCarthy did?
Kent: McCarthy.

Kent: I had this other episode — I think I told you this, but I didn't on
the tape, about Greenspan and the homosexual issue.

Fry: But not on the tape. I think that's interesting that McCarthy was
so vulnerable.

!Kent: Yes. On that Greenspun thing. Greenspun, in Las Vegas, published
the Las Vegas Sun and he used to put out in the newspaper at least
once a week episodes about McCarthy's homo sexual ism. McCarthy would
absolutely and totally ignore it. If some newspaperman ever asked,
"Have you any comment about what Greenspun says?" McCarthy said, "I
never read anything that Mr. Greenspun says. I don't have any
comment." If he'd ever come out and denied it, then he would have
gotten into the open.

I think under today's rule on libel, if reporters had taken after
him on that issue, he would have had grounds for a libel suit against
their bosses.

Fry: Whose bosses?

Kent: The newspaper boss. But anyway, this general came to me, and we were
talking about this Munitions Board case (he was interested in that).
Then he told me this story about McCarthy that the White House (I don't
know who was in the White House) got a letter from a guy saying that
McCarthy and a private — he gave the name and number and rank and unit
of the private — were heard discussing a rendezvous which they were
about to have in an adjoining motel, so the general said.

I said, "Did you follow that up?"

He said, "Yes, indeed we did. We got the wrong guy first, and he
was mad, and then we got the right guy, and he was a baker, and he was
over in Korea. We immediately were able to identify him completely
as a total homosexual."

I said, "What did you do?"

He said, "We naturally threw him out of the army."

I said, "I hope you didn't stop your proceedings at that point!"

He said, "It's my business to get homosexuals out of the army,
not out of the U.S. Senate!"

I said, "Well, I'm disappointed in you, General." I had intended,
if McCarthy got rough with me in a public hearing, to nail him on that.
I had a cute gimmick that I was preparing to use.

Fry: How could you have used it. Tell me what gimmick — [laughter]

Kent: It was a little bit vulgar, I was going to say — there was always

this business of being soft on Communists. I'd say, "Well, Senator,
what about homosexuals? Are you soft on homosexuals or are you hard
on homosexuals?" [chuckle, chuckle]

Fry: Oh, no. [laughs]

Kent: And everybody — all the newspaper guys who were in the room when

McCarthy was questioning me knew exactly! And, of course, Welch did
this in the McCarthy hearings. It came out that Welch said something
about, "How did this happen? How did this piece of luggage get from
here to there?" Welch said, "You said you don't know — maybe it was a
pixie."

McCarthy said, [mimics voice] "Mr. Welch, I don't know what a
pixie is."

Welch stopped, [pounds table] and said, "Senator, a pixie is a
kind of fairy!" And all of the cognoscenti in the United States, and
those in the room, just folded almost.

The psychiatrist used to say, "Well, it's very simple. McCarthy
loves Cohn, and Cohn loves Schein," and whatnot.

Fry: Oh, a triangle! "McCarthy loves Cohn and Schein loves Cohn"? Or
something like that.

Kent: I've forgotten it now.

Social Life in Washington

Kent: When you asked about Washington, this was a very, very sad thing for
me, and also for my dear wife, Alice, who had had one TB operation,
one of those awful thoracoplasty operations, and she'd been in three
different sanitoria. She was in bed all day long, and my daughter,
Alice, was there with us, and we'd cook dinner. My wife would be in
bed, and get up and get on a couch. So we had no real social life.
My brother was there, and the Cooleys, and some of the other people
from my office. I occasionally stayed down at a cocktail party with
the boys and whatnot, but normally we would have seen just a hell of
a lot of people.

Her life was just saved by the new drugs and the new operations.

Fry: In our interview with Mrs. Gatov, she mentioned, just parenthetically,

that your wife had just had this operation as you came here to California
to work in the Democratic party right at that time.

Kent: She had that operation out there in Hawaii by this guy who slugged
her with drugs and then went in and excised the diseased parts of
her lungs .

Fry: The lesions.

Kent: And now she's well as can be.

Fry: Very healthy ever since. Isn't that amazing. At any rate, your

experience in Washington, when you were working for the DOD, was very
different from the social life that your father and mother had had
when you were growing up in Washington.

Kent: Yes. Even then Dad, of course, worked very hard, and Mother, I guess,
went to a reasonable number of parties. I went on one junket. I
went as far as the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland [laughter],
because I heard they had the best duck shooting on the East Coast. I
went down with a friend of the general. I went down to see him shoot
off an atomic cannon, which I suppose was not as foolish an
expenditure of millions of dollars as to build this cannon (that
would shoot an atomic shell about twenty-five miles). I don't know
how many tens of millions of dollars that cost. This was just when
they were developing rockets that made this thing just absolutely,
totally obsolete.

But anyway, I did make friends with the general and I had a very
good shoot down there a few months later.

Fry: If nothing else, it kept a good duck-hunting grounds going! So much

for our atomic cannon program [laughs] Let's see. Do you have any
more on the Department of Defense? What's next on your list?

Kent: I don't think so. I spoke to Lovett — I think I said this — after
Stevenson's defeat. I said, "Look, I've got three kids here in
school, and I would like to stay on and help you pick a successor
and help the transition, if this can be done. I'm not trying to
hold on to this seat at all, but it would be wonderful if I could
stay a little while." He said, "Until the first of May would be fine."
I stayed until the first of May. That was the first of May in '53.

I had three kids, two of their friends, and we had two Plymouth
station wagons. We drove west through the north and through
Yellowstone and down here, and my wife took the Canadian Pacific
Railroad and came back here.

IV 1954 CAMPAIGN IN CALIFORNIA

Kent: I think now on the political thing — I'll go back. I had met Don

Bradley in the 1948 campaign. He was running a laundry up in Napa,
and he was the chairman of the Napa Democratic Central Committee,
or something of this kind, and he was on an amateur basis. He was
a very good friend of George Miller, Jr. Bradley is one of the
most talented politicians that you'll ever find. Of course, he ran
George Mos cone's mayoralty campaign, and he ran Engle's campaign to
get elected to the Senate and whatnot. But he brought Miller over
in '48, I think, to see me in Kentfield. We lived over across the
bay at that time.

Fry: Where?

Kent: We had built a house in Kentfield when my mother was still in this
house. We made a swap with my mother and sold it in '47, and moved
in here. We gave my mother some lots, our guest house, and some
cash.

Fry: And George Miller was in the legislature?

Kent: Miller was a state senator. Then he became, in '50, Democratic State
State Central Committee chairman. He was frantically trying to find
somebody to run for governor. When Eisenhower appointed Warren to the
[Supreme] Court (we're getting into '54, aren't we?), Miller became
state chairman in '52.

Fry: And Warren went to the Court in October of '53, so that was when
Goodwin Knight was governor.

Kent: So Miller was frantically trying to get somebody to run against

Knight. Among those he kept talking to was Dick [Richard Perrin]
Graves, who was the executive secretary or director of the League
of California Cities, and who was a registered Republican. Graves
had the lowest possible opinion of Knight. He had a very high opinion
of Warren. At this time, Knight was fighting Warren all the time.

Kent: Miller, I think, asked me when I got back here to raise some money.
I raised a little money, a few hundred dollars, a thousand dollars,

Fry: For whom?

Kent: For the Democratic State Central Committee.

Heading the Northern California Graves Campaign

Kent: Then in about November or December, I went to a cocktail party at

Sue Lilienthal's, in San Francisco. Dick Graves was there. It was
to meet Graves.

Fry: And that was the first time you ever met him?

Kent: Yes. He was a very knowledgeable, very personable, very nice guy.

We got along fine. Right then he asked me, "Will you be chairman of
northern California for my campaign? (Obviously, Miller had put him
up to it and said, "You go get Kent.") I said, "Hell, I'd be
perfectly delighted to work for you anyway. I don't need to be
chairman." He said, "Well, I want you to be chairman." So I said,
"All right, then I will."

Fry: Now you had already come back and resumed your law practice, I guess?

Kent: That's right. I resumed my law office. You see, I had run again

in '50, and when I got through the '50 campaign, it would have been
late November, and I undoubtedly took some time off. Then I went
back to practicing law in '51 and '52. The end of '51 was when I
went back to Washington and then I became General Counsel of
Defense in '52. So I was gone from '52 to May of '53. Then I
resumed my law practice, and then it was in the fall of '53 that
Dick Graves asked me to be chairman.

Fry: Was this a difficult decision for you to leave your law practice?

Kent: Well, I really hadn't gotten back into it yet, and I had these

breaks in continuity, and I didn't have any particular clients that
were looking to me at that time. I also didn't realize how much
time I was going to spend on the campaign. Of course, I just
progressively got to be spending more and more time on it for a while.
In early '54, I invited all the guys and gals that had worked in my
'48 and '50 campaigns in the eleven counties of the old first district,
and some from the second district, and some from San Francisco, and
we had a big party here for them to meet Graves. Most of them liked
Graves, and they agreed to work for him.

Kent: Then, of course, we were thrown right into the CDC
convention.

Fry: Well, before we get to the CDC convention, how did you manage — was
there any special way that Graves would make public his change
from the Republican to the Democratic party, in order to run?

Kent: Well, Don Bradley used to use Pierre Salinger as an unpaid volunteer,
a newspaper guy. Don and Pierre got up some kind of release on it.
You know, Graves said that he couldn't tolerate Knight, and he
couldn't tolerate the party that Knight seemed to represent, so he
decided that he would switch to being a Democrat, and he would run
against Knight.

Ed Heller was a perfectly wonderful man on the financing. If
there was a Democrat Ed liked running for state office, Ed'd start
him out with $15,000. He would say, "I'll give him five, and Ellie
will give him five, and my mother will give him five." That was a
lot of money in those days. So Ed liked Graves, and he put up some
money to start a fairly decent campaign going.

We had an office that had about one and a half rooms in it, and
we had a graduate student — he became later a very distinguished
researcher and a vice-president of UC, Gene Lee. He worked with us
in the campaign, and Libby [Gatov] worked every day, and I worked
part of most days. I don't think we had more than $20,000 before
the CDC convention. Then Bradley recruited Andy Hatcher, who was a
very talented black guy, who later became John Kennedy's deputy press
secretary. Didn't I have this today? Maybe not on tape.

Fry: No.

CDC Endorsing Convention

Kent: Well, anyway, Andy was in charge of spontaneous applause at the CDC
convention, and banners and buttons and the rest of it. And then I
think about a half-dozen of us went around to the various caucuses
and talked for Graves at the individual congressional district
caucuses of CDC.

Fry: You were a caucus speaker?

Kent: Speaker, yes. John Sobieski from southern California was; Lib, I'm
sure, was. I don't know who else.

Fry: Did you find that there was opposition to Graves, because he had
recently been a Republican?

Kent: Yes.

Fry: Or did this not bother anyone too much?

Kent: It was a handicap throughout the whole campaign. There was no doubt
about it. Not with some people. With some people, it didn't make
any difference. But some people thought, "Oh, to hell with him," since
he was a Republican.

Fry: Well, at the CDC, I guess .his leading opponent was Laurence Cross,
but then were Rex Nicholson and George Killion also trying to get
the —

Kent: Endorsement. I don't remember. They cut such a small swath that if
they were running against him, they certainly didn't get anywhere.

Fry: I don't know at what point Nicholson and Killion dropped out of the

picture. It could be that someone just persuaded them not to try it,
because Graves was in and he already had Laurence Cross's support.

Kent: Has anybody given you the Roybal story?

Fry: No. That was the lieutenant governor's race?

Kent: Yes, lieutenant governor. And Roybal was to walk forward to the
rostrum and this big loudspeaker, and he was to say that he
appreciated the applause, and he appreciated the kind words but that
he was withdrawing, and that he wished them to support so and so.

Fry: For lieutenant governor?

Kent: For lieutenant governor. Well, the applause got to him to such an

extent that he accepted! [laughter] He became our endorsed candidate
for lieutenant governor.

Fry: Tell me, what you do in a case like that, when the candidate has
agreed to throw his support to someone else but accepts the
endorsement for himself.

Kent: Well, there's nothing you can do. He got the endorsement, and then

they had a vote, and he got the endorsement of the convention, and so
he became our endorsed candidate.

Fry: There was something else about the endorsement voting process, too,

where the man who nominated Graves had had a few too many drinks on
his way to the forum, and he just about blew it, because he made
several statements charging Laurence Cross with being pink! Do you
remember that?

Kent: I have a vague recollection of it. It was very bad, yes.

Fry: And Graves says in his interview, he thought he'd lost the
nomination right there.

Kent: Yes. Graves finally got up and made a very good remark. He said,

"Now, I'm very grateful for the opportunity of saying a few words

on my own behalf," which took a lot of the sting out of it. I've
forgotten who that idiot was.

Fry: I've got his name here — Harlan Hagen?

Kent: Oh, yes. He was a no-good guy. That was one of his occupational

hazards. He finally was defeated. He was a congressman down there
in Bakersfield. I remember picking up the paper one election day,
and feeling thankful I was not one of those people who worked hard
for Harlan Hagen. Harlan Hagen was jailed for drunk driving the night
before the election! It was on the front page of all the papers down
there, that their congressional candidate — if they wanted to see him,
they ' d have to go to j ail !

Fry: At any rate, did you feel that it was pretty well sewn up for Graves
by the time CDC had its meetings?

Kent: Well, no. We weren't sure that we had the endorsement. We worked
like hell to get the endorsement and we did get it. I've forgotten
how big a margin it was, but it was decisive.

Fry: Healthy, yes. Well, I've interrupted you with a lot of questions.
I think you have a lot of things written down there.

Kent: This was, of course, the first election with party designation on the
ballot. I won a bet against a Democrat — a betting commissioner — who
bet that Knight was going to get both nominations. Of course, he
didn't miss it by too damn much, and Graves did get the Democratic
nomination. Then Neil Haggerty, of course, had become a buddy of
Knight's and Haggerty, of course, was the secretary- treaurer of the
AFL-CIO, and probably the chairman of COPE.

Fry: And Knight got the endorsement at the AFL-CIO convention.

Labor Support for Graves

Kent: The source of our money and support was the Graves-Roybal labor
committee. Bill Kilpatrick was the cooks' [Union of Cooks and
Culinary Workers] business agent. He was a very fine fellow. George
Hardy was the building employees' union, and there were two or three
others .

Fry: Selected unions?

Kent: Yes. They formed a committee and raised probably half the money
that Graves had. I don't think Graves had —

Fry: About $80,000, I think. The budget for Graves' campaign is in your

papers. It's a ridiculously low amount! I think it's around $80,000
in all. Graves, in his interview, says that later Knight told him
that he spent up to two million dollars on his campaign. I don't
know whether that's really right or not, but that's what he says.

Kent: That's right. Well, Knight had Whitaker and Baxter working for
him.

Fry: Oh, did he?

Campaign Tricks

Kent: Yes. That's where I found one of these trick things that Whitaker
and Baxter did. Leone Baxter, later in the Nixon '62 campaign,
attempted to use almost the same thing. I mean the same principle.
They formed an educators' committee and they put out a newspaper.
They featured the past presidents of the California Teachers'
Association — and I don't know how much it cost to buy these guys —
and they got about three or four of them.

Then they put this slick thing out, and it was pretty interesting
and pretty well written, and it didn't mention Graves or Knight for
the first three issues. They sent it gratis to all the teachers in
the state of California. Then, the last two or three issues told:
"This is what Graves did to the teachers when he was the president
of the League of California Cities" — "This is what a splendid man
Knight has been." Then they urged the vote for Knight. It's a
very, very effective technique because it buries your money, I mean,
if people don't find out about this, which we didn ' t in that campaign.
We found out in the '62 campaign, where we just nailed [Nixon] with
that stuff.

Fry: Yes, right, and the law case and everything.

Kent: I suppose that cost him a hundred thousand in 1954, that gambit to
get that message to all the teachers with the fraud that it was
coming from teachers, and not that it was the work of talented PR
people.

Fry: When did you find out about this?

Kent: Not until after the election.

Fry: And did you think about bringing litigation then?

Kent: Oh, no, no. We were busted and discouraged.

Impact of Party Labeling

Fry: Roger, I'd like to just say a word to get this put in historical

perspective. The 1954 campaign was the first one, I believe, where
the candidates had to put down their party affiliations on the ballot.
Most of what I've read on this subject that this is maybe the turning
point for the Democratic party in California in the twentieth century —

Kent: It was .

Fry: — because although you didn't see any hard results until 1958, this

was the beginning of the organization and the fund raising and every
thing else.

Kent: Well, it made this fantastic difference, as you well know. I mean,
before this, 80 percent of the assemblymen were elected in the
primary and 90 percent of the senators, and 80 percent of the congress
men and so forth. This was when a lobbyist could put up twenty-five
thousand dollars and he could put his man into Sacramento because
under cross-filing, nobody knew who the fellow was. The incumbent,
whatever his party, was number one on both ballots, so that the
Republicans receiving the ballot with the Democrat as an incumbent
would think they had a Republican to vote for, and vice versa. Party
labeling really changed things.

Fry: And usually, they did have a Republican to vote for, because before
that, apparently there were a lot of contests that never even had a
Democratic candidate in the election. What amazed writers who
commented on this '54 election was that every contest had a Democratic
contestant. This was the first time in fifty years that this had
happened (or forty years) .

The results of the 1954 election were that the Democrats gained
one seat in Congress and lost one. In other words, they held their
own here, and so did the Republicans. The Democrats did not give
up any — how can I say this? This was still cross-filing, and in the
election there were no Republicans who won a Democratic nomination
in this election. I think it was the first time in a long time that
had happened, too.

Kent: Now when you say that things changed on this basis, that is true.

But things also changed because of George Miller and Don Bradley and
the 212 gang. What George Miller did when he became chairman — he
looked at the situation: there was a Republican governor, a Republican
attorney general, a Republican — two Senators — most of the congressmen.
He figured that maybe the soft spot could be the state senate, in
which at that time were twenty-nine Republicans and eleven Democrats.

He then started in to zero in on special elections for state
senate and special elections for assembly.

Fry: I do want to talk about that. Were you in on that?

Kent: Bradley and Miller and Pierre Salinger and Hale Champion and some of
the other guys were in on it first. They won one or two. Then I took
over from Miller and inherited Bradley and inherited Salinger and
some of these other guys.

Fry: After August of '54.

A Winning Strategy Forged

Kent: Fifty-four, yes. We just said the Democrats had won, I think, really
only one seat up there in Susanville. This Dale Williams was a very
fine fellow. Then we started in, and we said, "Okay, this is the way
we're going to go. We're going to follow the CDC principle, which is:
go for one endorsed candidate and not have a great big scramble with
eight Democrats running against maybe one Republican. We will go
to the local people, and we will suggest, as a formula for the people
who come to an endorsing convention, that they invite every member
of the central committee, every president of every club and a certain
percentage of memberships of the club, that they invite every Democrat
who is the holder of a nonpartisan office like schools or trustees
or something of this kind, or water districts, or whatnot. And
they should invite a representative of those people who have normally
and regularly contributed to the Democratic party."

We finally worked it out, in which the endorsing convention should
have probably not less than eighty people, and they should have all
the candidates who wish to run to come and appear before them, and state
their piece and take a vote. Then the convention would try to get a
loyalty oath from these candidates, that if they didn't win, they
would support the person that did win. Sometimes they would and
sometimes they wouldn't. But quite generally speaking, they did.

Kent: Then we would provide the winner with Bradley as campaign manager,

and very often our secretary. (We'd do without one in San Francisco.)
And we might raise $2500, and go up there to help with the campaign.

Then we started winning them. We won eight out of nine. These
were the special elections. (I guess the party designation went on
the ballot of these special elections as well as it went on the ballot
of the generals.)

That gave us a tremendous shot in the arm, so —
Fry: You began to cut that Republican majority in the senate.

Kent: We cut that majority, and we got all kinds of steam out of it. I
mean, everybody got to saying, "Oh, we're winning, we've got good
guys." We did have good guys. Fred Farr, for instance, beat the
retired lieutenant governor for an assembly seat. Then we had guys
up in the mountains that were just wonderful fellows.

We raised money all around the state, and we raised money from
all the clubs for the endorsed candidates for these offices. We
picked up something in '54. We picked up eight out of nine seats
in these special elections, and we picked up several in '56 with
Stevenson — the Stevenson campaign. Then we were ready for the
clean-up victory when Knowland blew the Republican party apart.

I knew Soapy Williams quite well. I knew him in the navy. We'd
been on carrier together on the Wake Island raid. He became governor
of Michigan in '48, I guess it was. He went into office on the
Truman victory. So I always said, "Well, hell, you guys did it the
easy way. You started at the top. We're starting at the bottom!
I wish we could start at the top, but starting at the bottom is the
way to do it." It proved out that that was the way to do it. We
got our base established so that we had control of the senate and
control of the assembly and then we had winners in Brown and Engle and
Mosk and Cranston. We just had a clean-up victory there in '58.

Fry: It's getting late, and I think this is a really good time to stop.

I want to go on next time with some questions about the general
operations of CDC and the Democratic party. Another thing we haven't
covered is how you got elected and made a — was it a vice-chairman
first?

Kent: Vice-chairman first.
Fry: We need to go into that.
Kent: Have you got any more tape?

Fry: I'm not going to let you talk any more today!

Kent: [amiably] Okay, okay.

Fry: I just have to be firm with you, because otherwise, you won't be
able to let us in the door again, because you'll say, "Oh, there
are those women* who always wear me out!" [laughter]

*Anne Brower, co- interviewer on the memoir, sat in on this interview.

V ELIZABETH GATOV AND NATIONAL PARTY POLITICS
[Interview 3: March 16, 1976]##

Kent: Libby Smith's daughter and my oldest daughter were going to

Dominican Convent up in San Rafael. (Neither of them went there too
long.) I had just gotten out of the service, and I wasn't working
full-time every day, so a couple of times I picked up their daughter
in Kentfield with my daughter and took them up to the convent. I'd
wave hello to Libby — I'd met her once or twice. I guess that must
have been in '47, or at least later than '45.

Managing Kent's Congressional Campaign

Kent: We had a meeting up at my house when I made the decision that I would
run for Congress. (They asked me because they couldn't get anybody
else to run.) These were the old cross-filing days, and Scudder,
a Republican, had been the assemblyman from Marin and Sonoma, which
was 60 percent of the vote in the first district, or more. He had
gotten both party nominations six times in a row, and so the Democrats
were getting really desperate about getting somebody to run. They
finally urged me to run, and I decided I would.

Then I went around and I signed up a very good guy who was a
young DA as my Marin County chairman — Dick Sims. He was judge of
the State Court of Appeal. Then we began looking for women, some
who had been active. I talked with Vera Schultz, and I talked with
some others who were identified as Democrats.

Then we had a meeting. There were a number of people there. In
the meantime, there was a schoolteacher, Lauris ton Tardy , and he was a
little guy, and he was helping in my campaign. He was there, and
Libby was there — I don't remember how she knew, or who decided to
invite her. About twenty-five people were there. I guess I had
talked to Tardy before and had invited him.

Kent: Tardy said, "Why don't you get that Mrs. Smith? She is just a ball
of fire. She would do the best possible job for you." In the
middle of this meeting, I said, "I would now ask Libby Smith if
she would be my women's chairman for Marin County." Libby was
absolutely flabbergasted, but it happened to hit her at exactly the
right time, when she had just decided that a lot of the things that
she was doing weren't worth it, and that the political scene was
one that really interested her. So she said yes she would.

When the primary campaign was over — and we had just barely
lost the primary, the Democratic primary — Libby had just done an
absolutely magnificent job! She had been on the telephone twelve or
thirteen hours a day, and had lined up some women. The first six
women she called were supposed to be Democratic women. Two of them
had died, two had moved, and two had changed to being Republicans,
[laughter] It was a very poor time.

Then I told Tardy. I said, "Thank goodness that you recommended
Libby Smith! What other campaigns were you in with her where you
knew what her skills were?"

He said, "I was never in any campaign with her." I said, "Did
you hear of her in any campaign?" No. I said, "Well, why did you
make this recommendation?" And he said that he and some others were
running an aptitude school in San Francisco, where you could go
and take some tests and decide what you should do. He said, "When
we got through testing Mrs. Smith, we told her that she should be
the president of a women's college or in charge of women employees
for the telephone company, because in our opinion, she was qualified
for either of these positions." [laughs] That's how she entered
politics, and why!

Fry: [laughs] Why the telephone company, I wonder?

Kent: He just said — don't even say the telephone company — that she should
be in charge of women employees at say, a manufacturing company,
or —

Fry: Executive.

Kent: — in an executive capacity, as in running a large group of employees.

Fry: Well, she certainly took off. I gather, from your correspondence,
that you were sort of able to help each other, and you had a great
deal to do with her rise in politics.

Kent: Well, yes. All I really had to do was introduce her to, say, Pat

Brown or Clair Engle or Stanley Mosk or anybody else, and she'd sit
there and listen and talk for an hour. She had that wonderful

Kent: capacity that if she wasn't talking for an hour, she was listening
for fifty-five minutes and talking for five, and giving her ideas
on what she thought the plan should be, and things of this kind.
They were just right.

Fry: It's very fitting that our office is interviewing both of you at
the same time.

Kent: Oh, great!

Fry: Do you want to hit the freeway?

Kent: Sure.

Treasurer of the United StatesM

Fry: I thought that we might start out today with some comments on some

things that I did find in Libby Smith Gatov's papers. I gather
that even when you were in Washington with the Department of Defense
that you were still very active, via the U.S. mail, in California
politics.

Kent: Yes, and of course, when Lib became Treasurer of the United States,
she stayed on as California National Commit teewoman. This, of
course, was when there was only one committeeman and one committee-
woman, [small gap where tape was mended] She was busy both places,
too, but she was able to do the treasurer's job with a full-time
secretary, and she was able to be a very effective national
commit teewoman for California while she was back there.

Fry: Is that treasurer position primarily a political one? What is the
function?

Kent: It is an honorary plum for a woman, because the people who sign the
currency are the secretary of the treasury and the Treasurer of the
United States. [someone enters; tape turned off and restarted]

This is one thing I had against the Kennedys. They didn't have
any respect, as far as I could see, for the brains of a woman. When
Lib got back to Washington as the treasurer, she tried to do something
besides appearing and talking to women's clubs, and telling them how
they could take parts of bills to the banks and get back a part of
their money and so forth and so on, which was about what the
Treasurer of the United States did.

Kent: She wanted to change currency to different colors. She made a study
of currencies all over the world, and she had exhibits up in her
office. There is no question about the fact that there would be
less mistakes made in giving change and receiving change if you had
different colored money. She ran into something like what we ran
into when I sat on the Stamp Advisory Committee, and that was the
absolute inertia of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. They'd
been doing something one way for a hundred years, and by God, they
weren't going to do it another way, come hell or high water. (Of
course, as far as we on the Stamp Advisory Committee were concerned,
we had some muscle behind us, clear up to the president. We just
told them [on the Bureau of Engraving] that we were going to have
good stamps and good subjects, not just stereotyped pictures of a
state capitol or a state flower. We were going to spend the money
to make good stamps. [laughs] Some of the guys in the Bureau of
Engraving and Printing were absolutely shocked by it. The idea
that we'd have an abstract painting or other work of an American
artist as an American postage stamp was something that almost killed
them.)

Well, Lib did her best, but she had a terrible problem, because
when she went to the Kennedys , they were sympathetic on this , but
they said that if we changed the color of the money, the Republicans
would say the only thing that Kennedy did with money was to change
the color. They said, "Get Congress to do something about this."

The congressmen were afraid of ridicule, of taking on something
which preumably could be of such little importance. They knew it
would be a major fight. So she was not able to accomplish the
change. I'm sure she put in some other improvements in the office
of the treasurer. I know that the people over there in the Treasury
Department, in the lower echelons, were just very, very fond of her
and did everything they could for her. But it finally in time, I'm
sure, got just too boring, and she just decided that she was going to
go back to California.

I'm sure I told you before that for a period of eight or ten
years, there never was a meeting of top Democrats in a campaign or,
quite often, in other matters , where there were more than five people
that she wasn' t one of them.

Fry: This was in what period?

Kent: In California. This was from — at least from '56 to '64. Probably
beyond that, into '66, the Brown campaign of '66.

Party Personalities and Powers

Kent: She knew Larry O'Brien intimately and Kenny O'Donnell and the rest

of those guys in Washington. She would go in and talk to them about
various things. And they would presumably listen but, as I found out
later when I was talking to them about things that I wanted them to
get to the president, very often they didn't bother the president
with this kind of stuff.

Therefore, if it didn't happen to meet with their approval, that
was as far as it ever went, and nobody ever heard anything about it.
Libby could never see any result of her political activity as far as
anything she was telling them was concerned.

Fry: O'Brien was the head of the Democratic party, under Presidents
Kennedy and Johnson?

Kent: Yes. This was a very funny thing. What happened was that John

Bailey of Connecticut — he moved quickly to back Kennedy. He was, no
question about it, a powerful boss of Connecticut and of the Democratic
party in Connecticut. He had it under his thumb. He had influence
in other New England states. He had put together a lot of votes
for Kennedy for vice-president in '56. Then when the time came for
the convention, and people looked around to see who was going to be
the nominee, the fact that Bailey had New England just about completely,
solidly lined up for Kennedy affected his being able to get other
delegates elsewhere.

I talked to Chester Bowles one time, and Chester Bowles was a
Kennedy man. He said: I've got to be a Kennedy man. Obviously, I'm
on much better terms with Adlai than I am with Jack Kennedy, but as
far as I'm concerned, if I come out against Kennedy, and all of
Connecticut and most of New England is going to be for Kennedy, I just
won't be in a position to accomplish any of the things that I want to
accomplish.

Fry: That was "Kennedy for President," against Adlai in '60?

Kent : This was ' 60 , yes .

Fry: So Bailey was very powerful?

Kent: Bailey was powerful, but then he moved in and he became the national
chairman, and pretty soon, Kennedy got disillusioned with Bailey's
ability, and they just left him in a big office, and they went
right around him. They put some potent Irishman from Boston in the
treasurer's office, or in some other office, and he would be the
guy who had the real muscle, who would deal with the White House.
Bailey could only make ceremonial trips around the country and speak

Kent: at banquets and introduce people and this kind of thing. I don't
know how he stood it, except that he probably made a great deal of
money out of it. He just had no influence at all for the last six
or seven or more years that he was the national chairman.

I'd walk into the national committee, and I'd want to see a
couple of the people — maybe one newspaper guy, and maybe the treasurer,
and I'd have an appointment, and they'd say, Mr. So-and-so is running
behind a half hour. I would just walk down the hall and walk in
Bailey's office. Bailey's door would be open, and Bailey'd be
sitting there. Like as not, he'd be looking at TV and he'd turn off
the TV and we'd sit and chat. I never went in to say hello to John
Bailey but what I could walk right in the door and talk to him.

As I said, he was absolutely without influence, and finally
Johnson threw him out and established a guy — a guy named Carter,
who was pretty good. Bailey was the Irish Mafia, and this guy
was the best of the Texas Mafia that I had to deal with.

When you tried to get word to the White House and were serious
about it, then you didn't deal with Bailey. Whom did you deal with
during Bailey's term?

Kent: Well, I'd go to Larry O'Brien or Ken O'Donnell.

One of the very funny ones — I don't know whether I told you
this before; I'm pretty sure it's not on tape — Jesse Unruh, who was
of course the speaker of the assembly, was gearing up to be a mortal
enemy of Pat Brown — he probably had already started on that career.

He was getting this national publicity about the fact that he,
as the leader of California Democrats, had taken over control of the
legislature. I'm sure I told you this — at the time that I took
office as northern California chairman, there were twenty-nine
California senators who were Republicans, and eleven Democrats.
There were about, let's say, sixty Republicans to twenty Democrats
in the assembly (it might have been more than that). Of course,
in the assembly, it was representation by population. At that time,
I guess Los Angeles had about 55 percent of the population. I mean,
southern California did. So they did have more assemblymen than we
did.

But to credit Unruh with taking over control of the senate when
there were only eight senators in all of southern California — and
he never came north at all! He was never involved in any of the
campaigns that we won up here to take control of the state senate.

And then Unruh began to get credit for winning the '62 campaign
against Nixon (that Brown had won by a very substantial margin),
saying that he was responsible for doing this great job.

Kent: Orville Freeman, who was secretary of agriculture, and his wife, Jane
(who's one of the most charming, bright people I ever knew) were
out here on some kind of a business promotion for Minnesota. He was
making a speech at the Press Club, and I went there. I passed a
message up to him. I said, "There's a 'Dancing for Democrats' tonight.
There's one going on at my house. How'd you and Jane like to go
over there?"

I got back a message. (He'd passed one to Jane.) It said,
"For Christ's sake, let's get out of this! We've been doing business
with nothing but businessmen for the last ten days in California, and
we want to do business with Democrats." So they came over and they
had a great time. They're both charming people.

This Nixon-Brown election had been — the figures are approximate —
that Brown had won by about 175,000 votes, of which 5,000 came from
southern California and 170,000 came from northern California. I was
talking to Jane Freeman, and I told her this, and I told her that it
gave me something of a pain to have Unruh touted as the boss just
because he was the kind of boss-type politician that these guys could
understand.

I gave her these figures, both on taking control of the
legislature and on this last election. It gave me something of a
pain to have Unruh getting all this credit, and the Kennedys,
presumably, playing ball with Unruh.

Unruh at this time was knifing Pat. He went to Pat Brown, and
he said, "I will be the chairman for the Kennedy [re-election]
campaign in 1964. There's only one man in California that can prevent
me from being that chairman, and that's you. I just want to ask you
whether you want your legislative program more than you want to veto
me."

So Pat was in a real dilemma; Unruh was not helping him with
his legislative programs at that point either. Anyway, it was such
a thoroughly obnoxious business. I didn't like it, and I was
talking. Jane Freeman said to me, "Have you told the president
this?" (It was on the figures.) I said, "No, I don't bother the
president. I'll pass this to Larry or to Ken O'Donnell." She said,
"Well, this is so typical. The good ones don't bother the president,
and the bad ones do." She said, "You go see the president, because
he can count."

Whether this is what put the nail in Unruh 's coffin, I don't
know, but two weeks later Unruh had stopped talking about being
chairman for Kennedy in ' 64 , and then he was on his way to the Far
East to talk about educational problems with the Japanese. He was
never again mentioned as being the chairman for Kennedy in '64.

Kent: Well, of course, Jack was assassinated prior to that time, so this

never came up. But he [Unruh] would not have been the chairman, and
Pat probably would have been the honorary chairman. I don't know
who would have been the actual chairman.

Fry: Do you know if he and Pat really had an agreement for Unruh 's
chairmanship?

Kent: I don't know, but when I called the president I was amazed! I got

hold of Kennedy's secretary. I said, "I'm going to be in Washington
Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of next week. I would very much
like to see the president. I have something that I want to tell him
personally. Of course, I'll be there at his convenience, whenever
he says so."

I think they said, "We'll make it Tuesday at seven o'clock at
night." So I walked in, and it was just the president and me there.
He was very, very pleasant and courteous and said, "How are things
in California?" I said, "Fine. And this is the message that I was
told that I should tell you personally, because it apparently was
not getting through to you." Then I told him — gave him what these
figures were. I said, "Here's a piece of paper — here are the figures."

Then I pointed out to him where he had gotten his delegate votes
from California. He got about three-quarters of his delegate votes
in the '60 convention from northern California.

Fry: This is really interesting. You're pulling together a lot of things
here from northern California.

Kent: One of the things that happened was — and this was another one on Unruh—
I had told Kennedy that I was going to be for him, but I wasn't
announcing it publicly.

Fry: In '59?

Kent: No, in June of '60. Of course, he'd been after me, and some of his
friends had been after me. I was such a close friend of Stevenson's
that it was a terrible wrench to go the other way. But then I
determined that Stevenson didn't have any chance, from talking with
a great many of my friends around the country — Dick Dilworth and the
people from Minnesota and Meyner from New Jersey, and others.
Stevenson had done worse in '56 than he had done in their states in
'52, and they felt sure he would do still worse in '60, if we went
forward with his candidacy.

Then I talked to Mike Monroney, who allegedly was putting
together a Stevenson campaign. It later became apparent that this
was purely and simply a Johnson operation, which was to deny Kennedy

Kent: votes and prevent Kennedy from getting the nomination on the first
ballot. Then all these fine Southerners that Mike Monroney was
putting together were certainly going to go for Johnson.

My conversation with Mike Monroney was very, very funny. I
said, "Mike, for Christ's sake, what have you got going for
Stevenson?" He said, "Well, we've got the whole South, when Johnson
is out." I said, "All right, now come on, be a little explicit.
What have you got in the South?" He said, "We've got Georgia." I
said, "All right, all right. You say you've got Georgia — I'll give
you Georgia. What else have you got?" He didn't answer. Then he
said, "But when Johnson is knocked out of the box, we've got the
votes that will move to Kennedy and to Stevenson, and we'll nominate
Stevenson. "

Well, from looking Mike Monroney in the eye, I knew that I was
getting a snow job, and that he didn't have anything. I put that
together with what I'd gotten from these other politicos — political
leaders in other states. I just said, "Well."

Kennedy came to San Francisco, and he made a speech. In the
middle of the speech, to a bunch of us, maybe a hundred or so,
somebody asked the question: Will you appoint Stevenson secretary of
state? He said, "I think any Democratic president would appoint
Stevenson secretary of state." And then Bill Orrick, in a private
interview — because he saw a lot of guys privately, at that time —
asked him specifically if he would appoint Stevenson secretary of
state and he said yes. I told you this story.

Fry: Oh, no!

Kent: I don't think it's on tape.

Fry: No, we didn' t.

Kent: So then I went home, and I said to myself, what the hell, maybe
there's something I could do to promote what I think would be a
hell of an idea, and that is that Stevenson gets to be secretary of
state. I'm convinced he's not going to get to be president!

I called up Stevenson in New York and told him what Kennedy
had said, and then Stevenson said, "Well, this would have to be a
two-way street." He said a little bit more, but I understood exactly
what he meant. In other words, it couldn't be that Stevenson was
coming begging to be secretary of state. It should be that Kennedy
was going to come out and say, "I am asking Adlai Stevenson to be
the secretary of state because he's the best qualified guy to be
there."

Kent: So I called up Kennedy's office. Three or four months before that

[Kennedy] had gotten Libby and me in there together and had produced
polls that he had had taken all over the country, which showed that
he was winning in Iowa and he was winning in Georgia and he was
winning in this place and winning in that place. He was trying to
get us signed up. Pretty soon Lib signed up. (She signed up long
before I did.)

I said, I wanted an appointment with Senator Kennedy. They just
said, "Fine. What time would be convenient for you?" I said, "Well,
I'm getting to Washington at night, and I'll come down there at ten
o'clock in the morning if that's all right." They said, "Fine, you
have an appointment at ten o'clock." So I went in and I said, "Okay,
I'm your man. I'm going to go for you. I want you to know of my
conversations with Stevenson, and how I feel. I sincerely hope that
you will appoint Stevenson secretary of state because, hell, he's
on a first-name basis with every political leader all over the world.
He is respected all over."

Now this you'll find in my papers. This is in great detail in
my correspondence with Teddy White. That I'm sure I sent over to
you, because I've made these long comments on the '60 election,
after reading The Making of^ the President 1960. I had this delightful
letter back from Teddy White.

Fry: Yes, I read both of those.
Kent: And I replied again.

Anyway, all Kennedy said was, "I certainly would not announce
it now, if I did it. I want Nixon to be running against me, not
against Stevenson." He said, "Stevenson isn't helping me much, and
Bowles is helping me every day." (Well, of course, he didn't appoint
Chester Bowles either.) This, anyway, was before the convention that
he was asking me.

I said, "I think I would be of more use to you and be more
helpful if I don't make any announcement about this because so many
of my friends are just as ardent Stevenson people as I am, and it's
going to take some time to soften them up and persuade them that
Stevenson doesn't have any chance, and that you're the best bet."
He was, apparently, a little disappointed at that, and he said, "Well,
I've got to get some support out." I said, "Sure, I understand that,
but please respect my political judgment as well as my wishes, and
let's handle it this way."

Fry: In other words, you felt you could be more effective in convincing
other people —

Kent: In convincing other people, which turned out to be the case down at
the convention. A couple of labor leaders who had been ardent
Stevenson people came to me about two days before the vote, and said,
"We decided we're going to ask you what you're going to do, because
we'll take your judgment." I said, "I'm going to go Kennedy, much
as I like Stevenson — and I know you like Stevenson — but this is the
way I see it." And they said, "Well, we think you're right. We'll
put down two votes for Kennedy."

We were having our caucus, the night before the convention — do
you have this story?

Fry: No, I don't. That was a pretty stormy caucus, though, wasn't it?

Kent: It was. Some delegates moved to take a vote that night, as to how

their votes should be cast the next morning at the convention. Then
we Kennedy backers went through some parliamentary maneuvers to get
that motion rescinded, to postpone the binding vote until the next
morning, just before the vote at the convention. This was to give us
Kennedy people overnight to work on a half-a-dozen waverers.

At this point, an argument developed, and Unruh in one of his
typical arrogant, surly statements, said, "Move the previous
question; let's have a vote now." So at that point, it appeared
that what we were trying to do was to cut off the opportunity for a
vote. Engle [who was heading the delegation] counted the votes, and
he said that the motion lost. There was a storm of protest, because
he was wrong .

Fry: He really was?

Kent: Yes, he really was. So they had a recount, and the motion passed,

which would mean that the vote be taken right then. That was Unruh' s
maneuver that did that. So what happened was that people were kind of
angry at Engle 's action in giving a bum ruling, and some other things.
They immediately voted to have the binding vote right then, and then
they went ahead and immediately voted. I'm sure that Kennedy lost
ten to a dozen votes to Stevenson that afternoon that we would have
had by the next morning, because things had gotten damned unpleasant,
and they hadn't been worked on in a proper way. The proper arguments
had not been made to the people who were sensible.

I'm just sure that that cost Kennedy ten or a dozen votes.
Fry: From the California delegation?

Kent: In the California delegation, right. [laughs] Then the California
delegates set up a system — there were about four different ones.
There was Kennedy, Johnson, Symington, and Stevenson. There were

Kent: supporters for all of them. So they set up a table at which the votes
that were taken in the caucus were laid on the table at each corner.
Anybody who wanted to change his vote had to come in at a time when
there was a representative of the candidate that he had voted for
and the candidate that he wished to change to.

[laughs] They were just, I suppose, a Macy's basement. People
were changing their votes all the time.

Fry: After the vote — ?

Kent: After the vote in the caucus. Right up to the time when we voted
at the convention.

Fry: So you did have a chance to work on these wavering people?

Kent: A little bit, but a number of people are like me; if they've voted,

they're not apt to change. They figure they made a commitment; they'll
stick with it.

Fry: This brings up an interesting question, because it relates to the
1952 Republican National Convention, in which Nixon made so many
people mad because he changed his commitment to Earl Warren, and
pushed for Eisenhower after the delegation left California. I'm
asking you this because you're a lawyer. How important is the paper
a delegate signs before he's ever voted on as a delegate, saying
whom he's supporting?

Kent: That, to my mind, is an affidavit. It's an absolute breach to

violate it. It shows a man of little character and a man whose word
is no good. But he's never likely to be prosecuted for it. Now that
would not be the case in '60, because in '60, we were a Pat Brown
delegation, and we had been freed by Brown. So you see, we were not
violating any affidavit that we filed.

But, for instance, in '48, Jimmy Roosevelt signed an affidavit
that he would be for Truman, and we went across the continent on a
train [laughs], and Jimmy Roosevelt would get off at every station
and try to drum up a vote for Eisenhower, and then for Bill Douglas,
[laughter]

Fry: That's right.

Kent: With that utter disregard of the fact that he'd signed an affidavit
in order to get on the ballot as a delegate that he would support
that candidate, so long as it appeared that person had any chance of
being nominated. You could hardly say that the candidate didn't have
any chance to be nominated when the delegate changes before the first
ballot! [laughter]

Fry: And also in 1952, it was different because Earl Warren never released
his delegates before the first ballot. So those who were committed
to him then, according to their affidavit, legally should have
stayed committed to him through the first ballot?

Kent: At least. Then afterward their consciences could be their guides,
probably, when it appeared to them honestly that he couldn't be
nominated and, therefore, they were at liberty under the law to
change their votes. Now these election laws change all the time, and
I knew them like a book, you know, in that period of time in '56
and '60, and probably in '64. I would be accurate then but I wouldn't
know what the hell they are now.

Fry: Let me see — do we have everything, the points that you wanted to make
about the Unruh's claims to fame and claims to power in '60?

Kent: Well, I think I've covered it. There's a fascinating story when we
get to '64 on Unruh.

Fry: Good. We'll pick that up then.

Imminent Problems in the Department of Defense

Fry: In the last interview, we talked a lot about your experiences in the
Department of Defense, and I noticed in Elizabeth Smith Gatov's
papers that there was a list, which you had copied and sent her,
called "Imminent Problems in the Legal and Legislative Area," which
numbered twenty problems. This was a list made out for the head of the
Department of Defense. You said (in your note to Libby) , "These are
only the unclassified ones from my office. There are probably at
least a hundred more from other offices. How would you like to quit
making Chevrolets in January and face this list in February?"
[laughter]

I thought I'd show that to you, and see if there's any of those
particular problems that you wanted to add to your chapter on the
Department of Defense.

Kent: This number eleven — "Congressional efforts to restrict treaty-making
power and power to enter into executive agreements" — that was the
Bricker Amendment.

Fry: All right, fine. That came closest to passing later, I think. But
what was going on in your time?

Kent: When Eisenhower came on, [Ohio Senator John] Bricker thought that he
was going to be able to put it over. But Eisenhower came in and
Eisenhower wanted to preserve this power of the executive. So he
would not give Bricker support. And then some of the other people who
came in with Eisenhower were so goddamn naive that they said, "We'll
take care of Bricker. We'll say he can't name a postmaster for
Cleveland."

Well, Bricker, you know, had such a real deep commitment to
this issue that if anybody had said that to him, they'd better duck,
because they're liable to get shot. [laughs] But anyway, this was
awfully close. It was that drunk Senator from West Virginia that
came in and cast the deciding vote that defeated the Bricker Amendment.
They got him out of a bar across the street.

Fry: A drunk? [laughs]

Kent: Yes. This was a notorious fellow who stopped being effective at ten
o'clock in the morning. I've forgotten his name now. Anyway, on
the things that I had to do with that — this is where I served on that
committee with Herman Phleger, and with this guy who was the secretary
of commerce, and who became the chief judge of [U.S. Court of Appeals
for] the Fifth Circuit.* I think I told about it. He was a guy who
led the opposition to Carswell. (Haynsworth was bad enough, but
Carswell was just absolutely impossible.) This fellow, the chief
judge of that fifth circuit court, proceeded to sign a paper to the
United States Senate, in which he got something like eight out of
nine judges of that circuit to join with him, saying that Carswell
was unfit to be a Supreme Court judge, that he was unfit to be a
district judge, that his record of being reversed was worse than
perhaps any district judge in the circuit.

This was a delightful fellow that I worked with on that thing.
I'm sorry I can't remember his name.

Fry: You can fill that in later.

Kent: He was secretary of commerce and then he moved to the judiciary.

Fry: Just a minute — I think that you have more to tell about the way your
committee functioned.

*Albert Parr Tuttle was general counsel and head of the legal division
of the U.S. Treasury Department from 1953 to 1954 before becoming
judge of the fifth circuit, U.S. Court of Appeals. He was chief
judge from 1961 to 1967.

Kent: The Bricker Amendment committee?

Fry: How did you get along with Herman Phleger —

Kent: Oh, we got along fine!

Fry: — who was one of our leading Republican in California. [laughs]

Kent: A leading Republican, and I had been on the opposite side of many
questions with him. He's a very, very smart man, and as I say, it
was a great pleasure to be on the same side with Mr. Herman Phleger,
because we were under instructions from President Eisenhower to be
on the working committee to help defeat the Bricker Amendment. We
met, oh, once a week, and when this was getting hotter, maybe once
in two weeks. We had congressional liaison guys out who were giving
us a count on how we stood, and whose vote we needed to get and what
was an argument that might work with him. Then one of us would try
to reach the person who would presumably be able to influence this
guy's vote on the issue. I appeared before a Senate committee.
Wilson wouldn't go down there on it.

Wilson was actually for the Bricker Amendment. I've forgotten
the name of the dean of Notre Dame law school, who was a real right-
wing fellow, and who had written some "scholarly" articles in favor
of the Bricker Amendment. The first time that I was in the presence
of Charlie Wilson when this was mentioned, he said, "Oh yes, I know
all about that. That's so-and-so. We're certainly going to be able
to pass that now." That's when this fellow, Frank Nash, who was a
very, very smart man, and who was a holdover from Truman, said,
"Mr. Secretary, that isn't the way it's going to be. When you're
on the team with the President of the United States, we all sing the
same song. The President of the United States wants this defeated,
and that's the way we've got to go, or we resign!"

So Wilson soft-pedaled his real feelings about it, but he was
supposed to go down — He was invited to go down and testify before
this subcommittee, I think, of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
I'm not sure. But anyway, old Langer — Bill Langer — the Senator from
North Dakota, was a real eccentric guy. When I was testifying, all
of a sudden Langer turned to me and he said, "How about those
coconut trees, Kent? How about those coconut trees?" I said [laughs],
"I'm sorry, Senator, I don't know what you're talking about."

Eventually it turned out that what he was talking about was that
an executive agreement had been made with the French that we would
move into some of the equatorial areas down in the Solomons and
Espiritu Santo, and cut coconut plantations and make airfields out
of them. Then some U.S. executives had agreed to pay these Frenchmen

Kent: for the coconut trees. This made Langer awfully mad that we'd saved
their goddamn islands for them and then we had to pay for their
coconut trees to put an airfield in.

Then he said, "How about these Canadians and landing airplanes?"
I just didn't know anything about this and what he was talking
about, but again there seemed to have been some arrangement that
after building airfields , we had to pay the Canadians some fees for
landing airplanes, and this made Langer mad. [laughs]

I had one other experience testifying before a committee, but

this was a real rough one. Langer was for the Bricker Amendment,

and was citing what he thought were abuses of the use of the
executive agreement.

Fry: What had triggered the Bricker Amendment? Why did Senator Bricker
want this?

Kent: Do you know that it might really be as simple as that he was mad
about the migratory bird law treaty with Canada?

Fry: [laughs] Really?

Kent: He was an ardent duck shooter, and the first of the executive

agreements that became treaties and became law and affected domestic
operations within the United States was the migratory bird treaty
with Canada.

Fry: Was that one that Eisenhower —

Kent: Oh no, this was way before.

Fry: You mean in history, the first one.

Kent: This was way back in the early thirties. Or it may have been some
before that, but this was the famous one, where all of a sudden you
execute a treaty with Canada, and then, bang! The season on ducks
becomes sixty days, and the limit is ten, and the species that you
can shoot are such and such. These regulations are all clearly the
kind of things that are usually handled by internal law, but by
virtue of a treaty, they get the force of domestic law. That was
what Bricker didn't like.

They said that Bricker was an ardent duck shooter and used to
shoot a great many ducks on the lakes there in Ohio, and he didn't
like this. I don't know whether this is true or not. You should
give the guy credit for higher motives than that.

Fry: Did the vote line up in committee pretty much on the conservatives,
who were for the amendment, and the liberals against it? Or did it
seem to be a lot of different interests?

Kent: Certainly it would swing that way. The liberals thought that things
could be accomplished by executive agreement and by treaty that were
desirable that perhaps couldn't be accomplished by legislation.

Fry: I probably should just put in a footnote here so that readers will

know what we're talking about — "The president's power had been upheld
by the Supreme Court to be chief negotiator and spokesman of the
nation in foreign relations, and to conclude executive agreement
with other nations, such as President Franklin Roosevelt's destroyers-
for-bases exchange with Great Britain just before World War II. Such
executive agreements do not require ratification by the Senate, and,
thus, the degree of control that is politically available to the
states through their representatives in Congress" — meaning Senate —
"cannot be used in these instances."

Kent: Very good, very good.

Fry: It is now four o'clock, do you want to take off and try to beat the
traffic to Marin County?

VI FORCES SHAPING THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY: THE NORTH, THE SOUTH,
THE CDC

[Interview 4: March 25, 1976] H

Campaign Financing

Fry: We were discussing the California Democratic party and the differences
between the north and the south in methods of financing. One
commentator said that on both sides, there was a conspicuous lack
of big donors. I don't know what the south had, but up here in the
north, there were the Hellers, who were considered big donors in
those days, and Benjamin Swig — was he a donor?

Kent: Yes, pretty big. Later Swig came on stronger, but he would give a
good bit of money in those early days.

Fry: Pretty steady.

Kent: Cyril Magnin was pretty good. And George Killion used to shake down
all the suppliers of American President Lines for money. [laughter]

Fry: Were they Democrats?

Kent: He wouldn't care. He'd just tell them, "I want money."

Fry: There was an Ed Lasker in Los Angeles. I think Richard Graves

mentioned that he was someone who could be depended on for money with
no strings attached. [Kent murmurs affirmatively. ] Richard Graves
made an interesting statement on the money raising.

He said that it was a "degrading, immoral, humiliating experience,
being a supplicant for money while a candidate for a great office.
It is the sickness of our whole political system that we must make
compromises which are totally adverse to the public interest. There
is a subtle corruption of our political system — not after you get into
office, but before." So this is a continuing dilemma that anybody
in your position had, and I wondered how you managed to walk that

Fry: tightrope, when someone was offering you great sums of money, and
you knew that once the election was over, if your candidate won,
the donor was going to be there asking for a favor.

Kent: Yes. Well, they never put it bluntly in that manner to me. I said,
"I want money for Engle" or "I want money for Brown." Then some of
them would be candid enough to say, "We want to be able to walk into
Engle' s office, and we should give him a hand. We think he's going
to be elected, and we will donate."

The times that somebody would really put strings on money were
oftentimes for the most laudable purposes. One lady gave Engle
$25,000 because he promised that he would sponsor a bill for humane
slaughter of animals. Well, of course, this was easy.

Fry: It wasn't anything he opposed.

Kent: That's right. There were cases of that kind, where people would ask
you for support. I suppose many, many times they'd ask Engle to
support that dam at Trinity, or a deep-water canal, or to fix a
harbor or something of this kind. Engle would take a look at it and
say, if he thought it was desirable, "Sure, I'll do what I can for
you." And that would be an indirect quid pro quo for money but,
again, in the public interest — nothing private.

Southern California Factions

Fry: Roger, tell me now more about the differing characteristic between
the north and the south, and their operations.

Kent: Well, in the first place, Liz Snyder was the child of big labor.
And her husband also — Nate — had been indicted for some chicanery
involving a savings and loan, or something of the kind. A lot of
these big labor guys — they weren't going to be any pals of mine.
That was her base of organization. She was opposed by Paul Ziffren
and by a guy named Don Rose, who was the chairman of the Los Angeles
county committee, and by Ben Schwartz, who is now a very successful
lawyer, and by Joe Wapner [spells it], who was later the presiding
judge of the whole superior court judge system in Los Angeles. And
Sally Syer [spells it] from Pasadena, Goldie Kennedy from Ventura
County, and their friends. They had a pretty tight organization that
worked very, very closely with us. We just about saved them from
being run out by Liz Snyder and this horrible organization that she
was also in, which was the Dime a Day for Democracy.

Fry: Oh, that's the next thing on my list.

Kent: Sure. That's one thing that this guy — Dell Smith — was running,

Dime a Day for Democracy. He had at one time been administrative
assistant for Sheridan Downey, Senator Downey. Downey canned him
for selling postmasterships when he was Downey's assistant in
Washington. So when Downey heard that Dell Smith was running Dime
a Day for Democracy, he said, "God help the Democrats and God help
the dimes!" This was just a thoroughly bad man, and it was a bad
operation.

For several years, it presumed to have equal status with CDC.
It would send delegates to the CDC conventions. As a matter of
fact, I didn't know anything about it. I was just back from
Washington — these [Dime a Day] guys were talking about the fact that
they'd come up there, and they wanted to participate. I backed them
up the first time before I found out how bad they were. Then
gradually, we just kept the pressure on, and they just gradually
disappeared.

They were a Liz Snyder adjunct. They were her answer to the
[Democratic] State [Central] Committee having CDC.

Fry: Was that at all connected with Unruh's developing organization down
there?

Kent: Really, I don't think so. Unruh finally, of course, moved into the
assembly and got the chairmanship of Ways and Means Committee and
then he just put the heat on all of his colleagues and said, "You
won't get your bill, unless you pledge to me for speaker." He got
to be speaker, and then he said, "Well, I've got to have a base in
Los Angeles. I don't have one now." At which point they started
out. It's a very easy thing to rig the electorate for the county
chairman. Pretty soon, Unruh had the votes, and he threw Don Rose
out and put somebody else in. I forgot who it was.

Then he began playing ball with Gene [Eugene] Wyman. Gene
played with him for several years, and then Gene got too strong for
Unruh; he had built himself a base that Unruh couldn't touch. That
was, Gene had access to big money and it talked to these senators
and congressmen and others, but Unruh was always able, by virtue of
the image of being the boss, to persuade some of these easterners
that he was a boss and that he could deliver all of these things.

There were a great many things that he could deliver. If you
wanted a bill defeated, Unruh could defeat it because he had
appointed the chairman and all the members of the committee that
would hear it. There wasn't any problem about it. If you wanted
to get a bill passed, it was much more difficult. He did become a
very, very powerful man.

Ideological Differences

Fry: What about ideological differences between the Democrats in the south
and the Democrats in the north? Were there any?

Kent: Really not anything very serious. I mean, we all opposed cross-
filing, and we were all for FEP [Fair Employment Practices Act]. Of
course, it was an ideological difference on reapportionment, but
that wasn't what they [the south] did; the Supreme Court did that (the
one-man, one-vote decision that threw control of the state senate from
north to south). I argued with Warren, Douglas, Goldberg, e_t jl. that
if a state voted to have a different system (particularly, four times
by heavy majorities) that its wishes should be respected. That
decision unseated a dozen quality guys and threw their seats to
southern California.

Fry: My impression is that southern California Democrats have heavier

membership in both extremes in the party. I wonder if there would
be a heavier membership, or more influence in the south from the
extreme left wing of the Democrats than there would be in the north.

Kent: I think that is probably true. Also, there was a very heavy

influence from the right down there — more from the right than from
the left. 1 remember Don Bradley and I went to talk to Bob Kenny.
But we talked to Kenny during the '54 campaign about Graves. He had
compiled some exceedingly interesting statistics about voting
patterns in the various counties in California. He picked three or
four issues which were clearly right-left and he showed how the vote
had gone in the preceding three elections.

Los Angeles was first, second, or third on the right in each
of those elections. At the time when my father ran for the Senate
in 1920, Los Angeles was a hotbed of liberalism.

Fry: Did this make any functional difference to you in running elections?

Kent: You see, what I did was — and it was the only way in which I survived
to be sitting here talking to you — when I had the title of state
chairman, I didn't do anything except attempt to be the chairman for
the, say, eighteen northern California counties. That was where I
had an organization, and that was where I had representatives, and
where I moved around. I would sometimes go down to southern
California, and some of those guys or gals would get hold of me, and
they'd say, "Look, you aren't just the chairman for northern California;
you're the chairman for the whole state. You come down here and run
southern California."

Kent: By that, they meant that I should come down and cut the throats of
their enemies! Then their enemies would come to me and say exactly
the same thing, and they had exactly the same meaning, except I
should go cut the throats of the guys who talked to me first,
[laughter]

So I just stayed out of the southern California fights. When
I was chairman of northern California, and somebody down there had
the title of state chairman, they never bothered me. They never
tried to. That's the way we worked it. We ran it as two states,
except that we met every three months to try to agree on positions
on certain issues and perhaps on certain candidates, and other things.

But as far as organization is concerned, I didn't try to run
them, and they didn't try to run me.

Fry: I found a memo — actually it was a press release in your own hand

writing — in 1954, regarding a resolution of the Democratic State
Central Committee for amending bylaws. Wait a minute — there was a
resolution which amended the bylaws, by the executive committee,
to provide for two vice-chairmen, one north and one south,
alternately for two-year terms. That's not a quotation. That's my
summation. I'm not sure that it's accurate.

Kent: That _is_ accurate. That was done.

Fry: Is that right? Here's a list of the state chairmen and the northern
division heads and the southern division heads, year by year, of the
Democratic party. It changes; there are more people after 1954.

For instance, in 1954, Elizabeth Snyder was elected state
chairman. You were the northern division — what did you call
yourself — vice-chairman?

Kent: Well, what I always used to put on the letterhead was, "Northern

California Democratic State Central Committee. Roger Kent, Chairman."

Women's Division

Fry: Then there was the women's division. How did that fit in?
Kent: I don't remember when the women's —

Fry: What was the status of the women who are listed there in italics as
state and regional chairmen, compared with your position?

Kent: Well, this Dorothy Donahoe's [vice-chairman, northern division] the

first one that shows up in my time. She was, I think, a schoolteacher
from Bakersfield. She never got to any meeting, and she wasn't very
smart. She didn't do anything. Goldie Kennedy [women's division
state chairman] was a pretty sharp and attractive gal from Ventura
County, who shortly after ran for the assembly and was defeated.
Pauline Rowland was one of these people that was one of the grave,
grave disappointments to me. I'm sure you've seen it. I mean, at
first we had her in charge of a certain segment of a campaign or
Dollars for Democrats or something of that kind. She performed just
absolutely brilliantly, and we made her our women's chairman [1956-
1958] in the north, and she just came apart. Literally just came
apart! I think she really ended up in an institution.

Fry: Oh, dear.

Well, what I'm having trouble understanding is when we want to
go to these women and ask them questions, what were the women party
officials' responsibilities, compared with the men listed here. Were
they equivalent, or did women just deal with women and the women's
clubs?

Kent: Well, I have to say they did most of that. But take Jane Morrison,
who was a real sharpie (with a big job with a TV station) and a very
good friend. (This is where I got into a run-in with Phil Burton who
was backing another women for vice-chairman of the northern division.
Jane was my candidate.) It wasn't that she had a particular place
carved out for herself. If she wanted to go talk to a women's club,
or organize a women's forum, or organize a forum in which she was
going to invite men, or anything of the kind — she'd just go right
ahead with her plans. She'd just bring it to me, and say: This
is what we're going to do on April 3. I hope you'll be able to come.
(You know, something of this kind.)

Or she might mention it a little in advance of that. Or if we
had a project where we were going to divide up money between candidates,
or we were going to start in the Dollars for Democrats, or we were going
to start up a tabloid or something of this kind — I'd call a committee
meeting. Jane would always be there, and Libby and Ann Eliaser and
Don Bradley and people like Martin Huff and Martin Rothenberg and
maybe some other East Bay people. There' d be a committee meeting,
usually held in my office, and everybody 'd have their say, and we'd
reach a conclusion as to what the hell we were going to do and what
everybody else was expected to do.

But there wasn't any really rigid division between what were her
responsibilities and what were mine, except that primarily there was
no question that I was not going to get into any matter involving
women without her leadership.

96a

CALIFORNIA DEMOCRATIC PARTY
State Central Committee Officers

Vice Chairmen,

Term

State Chairman
Maurice Harrison

Northern Division

1932-1934

1934-1936

1936-1938

•

1938-1940

Paul Peek

1940-1942

William Malone
Mrs. Robert McWilliama*
Julia Porter

1942-1944

1944-1946

Alfred W. Robertson
Helen G. Douglas

William Malone

Julia Porter

George Reilly

Julia Porter*
• Mr a. Earl J. Rook

1946-1948

James Roosevelt
Mrs. Glad Ball Jones

John McEnery
Mrs. Ada Dodge

1948-1950

Oliver Carter

Ruth Dodds

1950-1952

Glenn Anderson
Liiaa Branson

Fred Trott
Ruth Dodde

1952-1954

George Miller, Jr.
Patricia Mooaer

•

1954-1956

Elizabeth Snyder
Goldie Kennedy

Roger Kent
Dorothy Donahoe

1956-1958

Roger Kent
Goldie Kennedy

Lionel Steinberg
Pauline Rowland

1958-1960

Wm. Rosenthal*
Wm. Munnell
Virginia Foran

Roger Kent
Jane Morriaon

1960-1962

Roger Kent
Carmen Waraahau

Gordon Winton
Jane Morriaon

1962-1964

Eugene Wyman
Jane Morriaon

Roger Kent

Ann Alonaon Elioaer

1964-1966

Roger Kent*
Robert Coate

Trudy Ouena

Leo Ciobetti

Ann Alonaon Elioaer
Eleanor Foule

1966-1968

Charles Warren
Eleanor Foule

Robert Coate
Charlotte Danforth

1968-1970

Roger Boas
Adele Leopold

Joe Holsinger

Eleanor Foule

Vice Chairmen »
Southern Division

Helen G. Dcuslas

1971-1973** Charles Manatt
Eleanor Foule

Jack Brooks*
John Merlo

Patricia Neabit

Alfred J. Robertson
Mrs . V. E. Vinebrenner

George Luckey
Esther Murray

Clinton McKinnon

Elisabeth Snyder

Wm. Rosenthal
Rudd Brawn

Lionel Steinberg
Carmen Varaahau

William Munnell
Diane HoOuineas

John Kerrigan*
Diane McGuiness

Carmen Varschau

Carmen War sc haw
Diane HcGuineas

Alfred Song

Jane Tolmach

Leon Cooper

Jane Tobruch

Larry Lawrence
My r lie Ever 8

Women'* Division officers in Italics
*Resigned mid-term.
"Date of DSCC shifted from August of even-numbered years to January of odd-numbered years.

Fry: Was this the first time that you alternated between state chairman and
northern division chairman? Was this the first time that was done?

Kent: The first time that that was done was this '58 —
Fry: In '54.

Kent: [puzzling] Elizabeth Snyder, then the southern division — well, they
had Diane McGuiness. But they didn't have any permanent northern
division man until _I became the state chairman in '56.

Fry: Why was that?

Kent: Well, that was a change in the bylaws. I wanted to have more chiefs
than this. I wanted to break it down into four sections — San Diego
and counties outside of Los Angeles, Los Angeles, the San Joaquin
Valley, and northern California. At this particular time, at this
very beginning of this time, this Lionel Steinberg was a real
chauvinistic bastard. He was from the San Joaquin Valley, and he
would get up and he'd make these ringing speeches about how the
Valley was going to be represented; it was not going to be just the
crumbs from the table, or this, that or the other thing.

So I was very anxious that the Valley have representation, but
I also was very anxious that the location of the chairman should
remain, probably, in San Francisco — certainly in the Bay Area, because
you'd have had a hell of a time trying to run a party from Fresno, at
that time. Maybe you could do it today, I don't know. But I always
talked very strongly about the fact that the state chairman should be
here, and I felt very strongly that there should be a vice-chairman
in the Valley. But, I didn't want that to be an autonomous outfit,
unless we could really set it up so that there was a vice-chairman.

We came down here to Ann Alanson. In the northern division,
she became the women's chairman, with me as the chairman of the
northern division. Then we had always had this problem that if the
state chairman was from San Francisco, the women's chairman was
supposed to be from the Valley. So I called Leo Giobetti, and I said,
"Look, Leo. Hell, you know Ann. If she's elected women's chairman,
you'll see her down in the Valley just as often as you'll see your own
people, if you elect a woman down there."

He said, "No doubt I'd see her more often. By all means, I'll
propose her as the women's chairman in the north."

Trudy Owens was Carmen Warschaw's cousin, or something of that
kind, or her sister-in-law.

Fry: Oh, really?

Kent: Yes, she's related. I don't know exactly how. So Trudy became

southern California women's chairman. Diane McGuiness was from San
Diego. You'll notice there in '64 and '66 that Carmen became the
southern California chairman — not women's chairman — and Diane
McGuiness became her women's chairman.

Relations with the CDC##

Fry: I want to take time here and get you to explain the Democratic party,
its structure and relationships within the structure, so that as
we go on and talk about the subsequent campaigns, we'll have a better
understanding. At least I will.

I wonder about the relationship of the party to the CDC. Now,
in your papers, there's evidence of some hostility toward the CDC on
the part of the county Democrats around the state. I gather that
some feared the organization would become a Frankenstein, that it
would be uncontrollable and unpredictable, and that it would be run
by amateurs who would unwittingly sacrifice elections. Who held
this attitude, for the most part?

Kent: Well, I suppose I made a dozen speeches. I've got some other papers
in here, which are my cards and some outlines of talks that I made.
But what I usually pointed out was that these critics on the county
committee side were quite apt to be people who weren't doing anything,
and hadn't done anything for twenty years. They are really the base
of the Democratic party, when you come down to selection by the voters.
They run as Democrats for the Democratic county committee, and are
elected by the voters. Then a great many of them never do anything
else. In the old days, it was much truer than it has been the last
ten or fifteen years. In that time, these people have gotten quite
active.

Fry: Were they resisting because they were reluctant to relinquish some
patronage?

Kent: The congressmen just cut 'em off at the pockets. The congressmen
were just awful, as far as I was concerned, with the Democratic
committee. I mean, for instance, one time I tried to persuade a
congressman that sure, if there was a postmastership open in his
district, that of course he ought to fill it. I strongly suggested
to him that they consult their county committees, so that the county
committee would gain some stature in the community as having something
to say about some appointment.

Kent: Almost without exception, this was not done. Then Engle was excellent
when he was the Senator. He would say to the congressman: You have
the appointment if it's in your district. But if it isn't in your
district, then it's my_ appointment. At that point, he would consult
the local committee, or committees, and get them to come up with
several names. Then he would winnow those, and he'd try and pick the
best guy.

And that, of course, contributed to the strength of the county
committee in that congressional district. After his death I tried to
persuade the congressmen by saying, "Now look, this is nothing but a
pain to you to go through the applications of dozens of people for
postmasterships. And you don't gain anything for it (if this is a
job outside of their district), and you will help strengthen the party
organization in that county, and you'll help strengthen the state
organization, if it appears that the county organization and the state
organization has some muscle."

Well, they just almost unanimously tossed me out of the meeting.
They said, "Oh, no, it's a terrible thing. We hate to accept this
responsibility, but with Engle gone, it's going to have to be we who
decide that. That will be the congressman whose districts border on
the one where the vacancy exists."

I suppose that they just didn't want to let loose of anything
that might conceivably be a prerogative, that might possibly be of
some use to them in case any one of them might decide later to run
for the Senate or something. I can't imagine why they would want to
burden themselves or their office with appointments that were outside
of their congressional districts, but they took a very firm, adamant
position on that.

Then — now back to your point. There's the county committee, and
the county committee would say, "We don't want the CDC clubs to
form an organization in this county, and try and take over the functions
of the county committee" (even though maybe the county committee
wasn't performing any function at all).

Then the leaders of CDC would come to me. They might be very
smart and vigorous people, as they were in a number of places. They'd
say, "Why do we have to do business with those stumblebums on the
county committee who've been there for twenty years, and who don't do
anything, and who don't know modern politics, and don't know how to
campaign, and don't even know how to raise money?"

My answer to each of them was, "Dammit, the only strength that
we've got in the Democratic party is if the county committee and
the state committee get together with CDC. This is what we're doing
on the top level. You can see this with the joint office and the
employees who work for each other and so forth. You guys do it here
in your county."

100

Kent: And then I would say to a CDC guy, "Well, you say you've got the votes.
All right, you've got the votes. Why don't you use them to elect CDC
people to the county committee, if you're so damn powerful. There's
no reason why you shouldn't do this, and you can do it. Then you'd
have some say in what the county committee had to do."

And I'd say to the county committee, "How many of you guys
belong to the clubs? When it comes time for Dollars for Democrats
or any other mass distribution, or mass effort, where are you going
to get the people? You're going to have to go get them from the CDC,
if the CDC is any good, and is working with you. How many of you
guys are members of a club? If you're not, why aren't you? Get in
there, and go to the club meetings, and give the clubs some direction,
if you think they need it, and tell them what the county committee is
doing, and how it proposes to do it, and that it should be a joint
effort, and what can they do to help?"

Well, this was a regular litany that I would put on all over
the state for many, many years. I don't know whether it ever did
any good or not, but that was the story. Of course, it is the truth.

Fry: What parts of the state were problem areas? Can you give some

indication of where you had to do the most work along these lines?

Kent: Of course, I always had favorite places I liked to go, where things

were nice. [laughter] Things were always very nice up in the north,
in Humboldt, Mendocino, Butte, Yuba, Sutter, even Glenn County.
Pretty good in Sacramento. Pretty good in Yolo. Excellent, really,
in Solano, and super excellent in Contra Costa. And Alameda was so
big that I had many, many good friends over there in both county
committee and in CDC. They worked together quite well, but it was
so big that you couldn't really get a hand hold on it.

Well, there were difficulties just because of the size of the
thing, and the scope of the duties that I had as northern California
chairman with so many counties to work with.

Then we ran into problems where an elected representative was
getting elected by a big majority, and he had a very safe seat. I
think particularly, in this case, of Byron Rumford, who was one of
the first blacks elected to the assembly. Byron had a district which
was absolutely safe for him. We would go to him as well as to the
other people, and we would try and get registration in his district,
which would be of enormous help to candidates running for state
office, candidates running for state senate, candidates running for
Congress. The more Democrats who were registered in that district —
which was a pocket of Democrats — the better for us. [laughs]

101

Kent: Well, Rumford was more than satisfied with the tallies that were

coming out of that district, and he just about ran the CDC and the
county committee people out of his district. He said, "Get out of
here! This is my district! I don't want any registration effort in
here!" [laughter]

Fry: Because he liked it the way it was.

Kent: Because they might possibly register some people who would vote

against him. We ran into that attitude in several other places, but
never with the pungency and the strictness that Byron Rumford showed.
As I said, Alameda County did have some very good CDC people. Of
course, very largely they would have been the university community.
There were a good many in the university community — there were several
representatives of the university community — that were on the state
committee.

If, for instance, we had been able to get the party loyalty vote
out of Alameda County that we got out of Marin. The Marin Democratic
vote might approach 90 percent of Marin Democratic registration, and
once in a while it would go over 100 percent! That was Johnson versus
Goldwater. If that percentage of Democrats voted statewide, as
contrasted to the number of registered Democrats — we'd have carried
the state overwhelmingly for every office. But we never got that,
because we'd have a poor turnout, and we'd have a good deal of
defection and whatnot.

San Francisco was interesting for quite a while. I've forgotten
who the first chairman was. Then they elected John O'Connell, who
later went to the assembly. O'Connell didn't do anything, and so it
was very simple. We just ran San Francisco as if it was a part of
the state committee. He was followed by an Irishman, a lawyer, whose
sole idea (I may think of his name a little later) of politics was to
get drunk and sing at rallies. He wouldn't do anything. [laughter]
I'd say, "All right now, you get four buses of people down to meet
the candidate coming in at the airport." And he never would do
anything. Just strictly nothing. So we just really ignored him again.
That went on for four or five years.

Fry: Well, who was handling San Francisco in the meantime? You?

Kent: We were. Our office was, to a very considerable extent. We had some
very good help. I mean, for instance, Jack and Jane Morrison were
in the middle of it, and Van Dempsey. Then there was that fight
between — it wasn't a real fight, we weren't fighting the Burtons,
but the Burtons thought we should be just a part of their team. We
just didn't see it that way. That's when they dubbed us the "212
gang," because we were not in the Burton machine at all.

Fry: How far along was that? After the Kennedy administration?

102

Kent: This would have been, yes, this would have been that first period
of John O'Connell and that singer. It lasted about five years, I
guess, from '54 to '59, perhaps. Then there began to be a little
friction. Still and all, a good many of the people with primary
loyalties, perhaps, to the Burtons, also had loyalties to the state
committee, and would come in and work at the state committee. But
as I told you, I'm sure, at the last taping, we worked together.
You wouldn't know who was a state committeeperson and who was a CDC
person over there in the office.

The CDC Endorsing Convention

Kent: Then, of course, the CDC endorsing convention was in '54, wasn't it?
The first one, the one we at which endorsed Graves?

Fry: Yes.

Kent: I guess just about every CDC endorsed candidate was nominated. So
it was perfectly obvious that the regular party took the CDC
convention very seriously. And we had a lot of votes, because of
overlapping membership. For example, the county committee members
each had two votes at CDC. Then we had many nominees who had
appointments to the state committee, and the state committee were
all members of the CDC convention. Many of those guys [CDC-elected
Democrats] were beholden to us for a good deal of help in getting
elected. Many of them were influenced by their colleagues who liked
the operation that we had. The voting strength at the convention
was not going to be straight CDC delegate strength at all. It would
probably be in the realm of between a half and two-thirds CDC, that
is, delegates who would have no credentials other than CDC.

Many, many others would have CDC credentials (they'd be elected
by their club) but in addition, they might be a member of the state
committee, or they might be a member of the county committee, or
selected by the county committee. But clearly, that endorsing
convention was a terrifically important step in the ambitions of any
politician who wanted to be elected to office in California.

Now you've got the story about how CDC was organized. I mean,
first the whole crowd would vote for every statewide office. We
had a pretty slick method of voting, where they [delegates supporting
a particular candidate] would all sit together, and then they would
have monitors that would poll that delegation, and one guy would be
the spokesman, and then roll would be called, and that delegation
would vote, and tell how many votes were cast for each of the
candidates for nomination.

103

Kent: Then when you got down to assembly, the delegates to the convention
from each congressional district would meet (in the case of Engle's
district, the second district, that was maybe twenty- two counties)
I've forgotten what it was — they would meet, and vote to endorse —
No, I'm not sure; sometimes they did that, and sometimes they waited
until they had a [party or Democratic Club] endorsing convention,
back in their own assembly district.

But I think on the congressional candidates, they pretty well
had a CDC caucus of delegates from each of the congressional districts ,
and usually there was very little fight there. In most cases, there
were incumbent congressmen or well-recognized challengers and whatnot.
For a statewide candidate to be endorsed by CDC, I suppose, would be
worth somewhere between ten thousand and twenty-five thousand dollars
in every district and every town because where there was a decent CDC
organization, a central headquarters would be opened, and the candidates
would be told, "Look, you can come in here, you can put a telephone
in here, you can get desks, you can put your literature in here, and
you can meet people here, and you can distribute literature."

That sort of thing, of course, cost a tremendous amount of
money. That was all paid, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred,
locally by the local CDC which, in turn, was helped by the county
committee. So you were very apt, when you did get the CDC endorsement,
to receive the nomination. Then, presumably, this was the nucleus of
the political organization. This was where you would go for your
precinct workers, and this was certainly where you'd go for your
precinct solicitors for Dollars for Democrats, and where you'd go
for small-money affairs and dinners and cocktail parties and that
kind of thing, and the whole gamut of a political campaign.

It varied widely in effectiveness from district to district and
town to town. But where it had good leadership and good people, it
was just tremendously effective.

Fry: There was some mention, I think, in Libby Smith Gatov's interview that
the county committees were supposed to charter the local CDC clubs,
and some of them refused to do that. I wondered then how you, as the
northern California chairman, dealt with this.

That is true. They were supposed to be chartered by the county
committee. If the county committee wouldn't do it, and some CDC guys
sometimes objected to me, I would lean on the county committee and
say, "What the hell — you don't have to love everybody that's involved
in the Democratic party. I wish you'd charter these guys." And then
there was some procedure — and I've totally forgotten as to what it
was — whereby we, the state committee (and that meant the executive
committee of the state committee) could charter a club. I'm quite
sure that that was the case.

104

Fry: Yes, Libby mentioned that too.
Kent: It was done very, very seldom.

Minority Participation

Fry: There seemed to be some concern about the lack of minority participation
in the CDC — the fact that clubs were lacking in places like Hunters
Point and the Mission district in San Francisco, which were black and
Chicano.

Kent: That is true. I suspect that the major reason for that was that most
of those people were hard-working people, and they just didn't want
to get out in the evening and go to a club meeting. Now there were
a number of blacks that were in some of these clubs, but I know that
I was never involved with any personal effort to organize clubs in
minority districts, but Van Dempsey, who was a great campaigner
(assistant to Don Bradley) lived over in Alameda County near the
black area, and he tried. He would just really be unable to get the
interest of the people. It certainly was not an exclusionary policy
of the state committee. It was just that it was very difficult —

Fry: To get the blacks interested?

Kent: — to get them interested in a club kind of thing. You could,

particularly if you had good black leadership, get them to come out
and vote, and get them to stay in line, if the lines were long. I
remember they had Joe Williams and Willie Brown and a couple of
other black guys down there at one election when the lines were a
hundred yards long. They were just down there and they were saying —

Fry: To vote?

Kent: To vote, yes. They said, "Friends, stay in line! Your brothers in
the South are being killed for fighting for the privilege here that
you have. All you have to do is stand in line here about fifteen
minutes, and you will be able to exercise that privilege."

They held them very well —
Fry: Where?
Kent: Down in Hunters Point and some in the Fillmore.

Fry: I understand that a D.G. Gibson was in the Second Assembly District.
Was that Byron Rumford's area, too?

Kent: Yes, that was.

105

Fry: As I understand it, he was a black —
Kent: That's right.

Fry: — and was one of the founding members of the CDC. Was he at all
concerned about this? Did he run into Byron Rumford? [laughs]

Kent: He really was a part of the Byron Rumford apparatus. I never got
along too well with him, rest his soul, because we just couldn't
get him to do anything that I can recall. He was a nice guy.

Fry: Was he then more or less an ally of Rumford' s, and wanting to kind
of hold back the development of CDC?

He was strictly Rumford' s guy, and he would do what Rumford wanted
him to do. I don't know whether Rumford ever communicated to him
that he didn't want CDC people in there registering people, but I
think he must have, because D.G. never took any interest in seeing
the people registered over in that district, which was a gold mine
for Democrats.

Fry: It's interesting that the Berkeley area was the one that hung back.

Operational Differences

Fry: I have some questions on the different ways of operating in northern
and southern California. There are various patterns that emerge
from the forties, the fifties, and of course, again in the sixties,
where we all were for Richard Nixon to the south. [laughs]

I just wonder how this was played out within the Democratic
party?

Kent: Those [southern California] people are different from the northern
people in every conceivable way.

Fry: Oh, really? Then I'm not far off! [laughter]

Kent: Of course, there are just some wonderful people down there, but

actually, you talk to lawyers or businessmen or politicians or whatnot,
and you do business down there very differently from the way you do it
up here. I suppose the most astounded man in California was Jesse
Unruh on a CDC Dollars for Democrats deal. Matt McCloskey was the
treasurer of the Democratic party, and he said to us, "Look, your
quota from California to the Democratic committee is," we'll say,
"twenty thousand dollars."

106

Kent: Of course, Democratic National Committee is entitled to half of what
you get from Dollars for Democrats. So we went out, and in the north
we raised about eighteen thousand dollars in Dollars for Democrats.
In the meantime, I'd had a conversation with Matt. I'd said, "Matt,
look. If we get you the twenty thousand dollars from California, how
about washing out any obligation we have to give you money from
Dollars for Democrats, because very frankly, it's an impediment to
us to raising money if we honestly have to tell the people half of
this is going national, because they're much more interested in having
it go local." He told me — he said, "Look, you get me the twenty
thousand and that's it. You're done."

So Gene Wyman put on an affair in southern California. He was
just an absolute premier fund raiser. There was nobody like him. He
sent the national committee, as their share of that dinner, about
twenty-five thousand dollars. So I heard about that, and I verified
that with Matt McCloskey, and he said, yes indeed it had. I said,
"Then therefore California's obligation is discharged?" And he said
yes. So I just turned around and wrote a check for nine thousand
dollars to Gene Wyman, and sent it down to him. [laughs]

And as I said, it just caused Unruh to fall off his chair. He
said, "He sent you nine thousand dollars? Why would he do that?"

Anybody who would do a thing like that must have some nefarious
purpose. Not that it was just fair — Wyman had paid my share of what
had to go to the East and, therefore, I was giving him half of what
we raised in the north. But I don't think Unruh ever got over it. I
mean, he still was looking for the angle. It just couldn't be that
I was only being fair. [laughter]

Fry: What did you want from that nine thousand?

Kent: Nothing but to tell Wyman —

Fry: I mean, this was what Unruh was wondering.

Kent: Unruh was wondering — yes, yes. He probably put a watch on Wyman to
see what Wyman was doing for two months.

Fry: There was a little note that I picked up in your papers that got me

starting to speculate on the 1954 campaign. You have a memo that
southern California agreed to pay half the cost of the state office
for this campaign, but you note that this was not fully expected,
[laughs] "So the south instead will pay for and ship north all bumper
strips, buttons, stickers, and campaign literature, and produce all
radio and television spots."

107

Kent: I don't have a recollection on that. I do have a recollection on

this , though, one of the reasons why I despise Yorty. That is that
we agreed that we would have a slate mailer, and that it would be a
tabloid, and every candidate would have his picture and his blurb,
and we'd have a separate edition for every assembly district, you
see, featuring the Democratic nominee. It was all agreed that this
was going to cost us about, oh, twenty thousand dollars, let's say.
Pat Brown would put up four thousand, Mosk would put up four thousand,
Engle would put up four thousand, and Yorty would put up four thousand.
Then we'd try to collect the rest from George E. Johnson, running
for treasurer, and from these assembly and senate candidates, where
we'd try to get fifty bucks or a hundred bucks. We wanted to get
that money to pay for that mailer.

Yorty sent up his picture, he sent up his text. He approved
the text and he approved the picture. We sent it out to be produced,
about a million and a half copies, I guess. And then it turned out
that Yorty didn' t have any more intention of paying that four thousand
dollars than you do! Just absolutely! Just plain fraud. He got
us into the position where we had printed a million and a half with
his pictures and his text on it. Bradley would call his [Yorty 's]
man, and his man would say: Oh, we're getting that together.

All of a sudden it got to within about two weeks of the election,
and we just realized that he didn't have any intention whatsoever of
paying that. He never did. There was not a thing we could do about
it, unless we went through a million and a half copies and stamped
out Yorty.

Fry: In the meantime, Yorty was in trouble because he had sent out

eight million pamphlets entitled, "Let's Build a Better America,"
under his congressional mailing frank.

Kent: That was in '56.

Fry: Oh, it was. Okay. I found a note of that in your papers, but it
wasn't dated. So that was a later escapade, then. [laughs]

Kent: Yes. One of the ones that I liked the best on this slate mailer
was a very good one that I pulled. In that election, '58, there
were three propositions, 16, 17, and 18. Eighteen, I think, was
right to work. Seventeen was labor's answer to 18. They put that
on, and that was to abolish the sales tax, practically, and double
corporate taxes. Sixteen was to tax parochial schools.

Clem Whitaker was running 17 — no on 17. In the meantime, up
in Sacramento — and I think I had some part in this — the state
committee passed resolutions going on record as no on 16, 17, and
18.

108

Fry: I'm sorry, who passed the resolution?

Kent: The state committee, the Democratic State [Central] Committee. So
all of a sudden, I said, "Why don't we make some hay out of that?"
So I picked up the telephone and called Clem Whitaker. I always
liked Clem Whitaker — you might say we were thieves in the same business-
and we could talk absolutely objectively about campaigns and dirty
tricks and everything else. He, of course, was capable of doing
anything.

At this point, [no on] 17 was in some trouble. The polls were
showing it winning. This was in early September. I said, "Clem,
what would it be worth to you if a message went to every Democratic
home that the Democratic state committee had voted — had urged them to
vote no on 17? Would that be worth something to you?" He had the
asthma, and the wheezes, and he said [mimics], "That would be worth
a good deal of money! What have you in mind?" I said, "Twenty
thousand dollars." He said, "That seems a little high. I'll see
what I can do." He came back to me in about fifteen minutes and he
said, "The best I can do is ten." I said, "You're on."

So then I called the labor guys who were no on 18, and said,
"We1 re thinking of putting on a slick mailer going to every Democratic
household, that the state committee urges a no vote on 18. I have
one party that's putting up ten thousand dollars on it, and how
about ten from you?" They thrashed it over for an hour or two, and
they came back and said okay.

Then I called the guy that had the no on 16 campaign — a real
tough fellow that used to be Brown's hatchet man in a lot of ways.
I said, "I've got this situation. How about this mailing going
into every Democratic home, with the Democratic committee saying
vore no on 16? The 17 and 18 people are putting up ten. I'm sure
you wouldn't want to put up less."

He came back to me in a little while and he said okay. So that
slate mailer didn't cost us a nickel. All we put at the bottom of
the slate mailer was, "Your Democratic State Central Committee urges
you to vote no on Propositions 16, 17, and 18." We got thirty
thousand bucks for that, which paid for all the printing, and about
a third of the postage. [laughter]

Fry: And Whitaker thought he was bribing you?

Kent: Oh, no, no. He knew exactly what I had in mind. He knew. Obviously,
I wouldn't have put this in there if we hadn't passed it, but we
passed it, and so, I told him, "It's perfectly in line for me to put
it in if you want me to put it in. If you don't want it put in, and
you're not going to come up with any dough, then just forget it."
(Harry Lerner was the guy who was the parochial school fellow [running
no on 16 ].

109

Kent: This brings up another very interesting thing that's out of context
here. That concerns the 1960 presidential election, when Kennedy
was ahead by about 140,000 votes and Engle was on the horn telling
Bobby Kennedy that it was made. I said, I'm sure it's made. I had
been relying on the absentee ballots that had counted so heavily
in '58. (I wasn't really familiar with what happened in absentee
ballots in other elections, because the results were such that the
absentee ballots didn't have any difference. So my only experience
in looking at them closely was '58.) In '58, the absentee ballots
made elections all over the state, which Republicans normally won,
just as close as the paper on the wall, and the Democrats won a good
many of them.

The reasons for this were that the labor unions got every railroad
man and every seaman and every bus driver and every guy who might be
out of state to vote absentee and vote no on 18 before they left.
The Catholic fathers went in to every Catholic establishment in the
state, including a great many of the nursing homes and hospitals and
everything else, and they got every Catholic to vote no on 16.

When you came to 17, the effort was not as finely directed, but
17 began to lose because it didn't really make any sense anyway.
The vote that was turned out — a no vote turned out on 16 and 18 —
was an extraordinary phenomenon, entirely different. If you went
through all the voting in California from the beginning of time, I
bet you'd never find anything like it, the absentee ballots were so
important, and so many were Democrats.

Normally, the people who go and vote absentee are Republicans,
and so that's what happened in '60. Here we were, 140,000 votes
ahead, and we lose the election. I mean, when they closed the polls,
that's where we were, and we lose the elections by 35,000 votes!
There were 175,000 absentee votes more for Nixon than there were for
Kennedy .

Fry: Was that then because it reverted back towards the normal pattern?

Kent: It reverted back to the normal, yes, where the Democrats were lazy
and no pressure was put on them to vote.

Fry: Getting back to southern California, there seemed to have been a

big turnover in campaign workers for almost every office in the
south, in contrast to northern California. Is that right? Libby
Gatov was telling us that it made it very difficult to work with
southern California always having new personnel.

Kent: That's right, that's right. It was. Of course, my tenure here for

eleven years was rather unique in California. We did have continuity.

Fry: And others, too. You had others up here who stayed on.

110

Kent: Oh yes, oh yes. Martin Huff and Martin Rothenberg and Don Bradley,
as my executive secretary, and the secretaries who stayed, and Lib,
of course, who stayed, and many of the CDC people — Nancy Jewel, who
stayed on forever in CDC. The Hellers were always involved, and
Martin Huff stayed on as treasurer, and Bill Roth was always in
there. There were various gradations of work that they did, but
they were always on the team that was the "212 gang."

Then we did the very sensible thing. We started off, and we
had one secretary for us [the party] and CDC. Pretty soon, we got
money enough to get another secretary. And then Engle paid part of
another secretary. So we kept those secretaries. We bought
mimeograph machines and we got plates and we bought other stuff.
We'd do that one year, and we'd do something else the next year, and
we'd buy a desk the next year, a new typewriter, and that kind of
thing. We went along, paying as we went.

Fry: And gradually building it up?

Kent: And gradually building it up. The people in the south would go

from rags to riches and then back to rags and then up to riches again.
One guy would be elected, and he would all of a sudden decide that
he had to have five people working for him, at ten thousand dollars
apiece. So he'd go out, and he might be able to raise fifty thousand
dollars one year, and he'd spend it, and then they'd all be gone,
and there wouldn't be anybody that you could talk to. I mean, this
happened quite a number of times. It would go from a very heavily
staffed, very well-paid staff down to the chairman and two volunteers.
So you had a hell of a time doing business with them, as we've said.

Of course, this Gene Wyman — when he became state chairman and
national commit teeman, and he took an interest in the thing. He,
as I said, was the damndest money raiser that yo.u could ever see.
He was a very, very successful lawyer. When he died, he had I guess
two hundred fifty lawyers working for him in five cities, and he had
a great many of the movie people in his pocket. That would be the
producers, theater owners, and whatnot, and he could just go out and
get a hundred thousand dollars the way I could get a hundred. So
southern California didn't have that problem after he came in. But
before that, it was just chaos.

Fry: Was that the shift in the relative success in fund raising between
southern and northern California, with the south becoming the big
money raiser?

Kent: Yes, I remember —
Fry: Is that right?

Ill

Kent: Probably. It began to move a little before Gene got in there,

because quite obviously there was so much more money down there, but
Gene is the one who really moved it. I can remember before my time,
even, Ed Heller and Bill Roth talking about going down south, on
some campaign, and being asked for money by the south, that the north
should help support their campaigns.

112

VII CAMPAIGN ANECDOTES AND INSIGHTS
[Interview 5: April 21, 1976] ft*

Kent: You, Chita, have just shown me a file about the '56 election. This
is a memo from Bill Malone, chairman of the dinner committee to
Engle, who was chairman of the Stevens on-Kefauver campaign committee,
and to me, chairman of the Democratic State Central Committee. It
told about the meeting, the dinner that we were going to have for
Kennedy at the Fairmont on September 21.

Fry: Oh, yes, you said that you'd finally gotten up to a fifty-dollar-a-
plate dinner. [laughs]

Kent: We finally got up to a fifty-dollar-a-plate dinner.

John Kennedy's 1956 Fund Raiser Is a "Poor Show"

Kent: This was in '56. Bill and I and others had signed up John F. Kennedy
for a dinner at this particular time — not this particular date, but
during the campaign.

Fry: This is September 14 —

Kent: In 1956. So I contacted the good Senator in Los Angeles two or three
days before this dinner, and I said, "This is the biggest thing we've
ever had in San Francisco. We're going to have around fifteen-hundred
people at this dinner at the Fairmont [Hotel]. I am hoping that you
will do your customary good job. I particularly ask that you have a
statement — I don't care if you have a full text — a statement which
will contain two or three paragraphs which will be a text which you
will use in your speech, and then some other stuff to give the press
when you get off the airplane."

*Daughter Molly Kent Schardt sits in on the interview.

113

Kent: So the Senator was still somewhat an irresponsible young man, and he
had his dear friend Red Fay and some others here in San Francisco.
When he got off the plane, he didn't have anything [for the press]!
Then we wanted him to meet the fat cats before the dinner, which is
customary, at a cocktail [party]. He just went off with his friends,
and he didn't even meet the fat cats.

Then he came back. He kept saying that somebody (and I've
forgotten this guy's name) was going to write the speech and going to
give it to the newspapermen. Well, the newspapermen were hounding
me and saying, "Where is the speech?" I said, "Well, the Senator
told me that so-and-so is going to have the speech for you, and I
thought it was going to be ready. I'm very sorry, I expect you will
get it."

Well, something like five minutes before he was supposed to
deliver the speech, they gave the press about a one-page handout, and
then the Senator got up, and he gave a very amusing introduction to a
speech, because he was a very sharp guy. He said about three things
about what might be the issues, and at the end of about ten minutes,
he said, "And I am certainly glad to have been in San Francisco again.
It's a wonderful town, and I wish you all well." And with that, he
got up and left with his friends.

I want to tell you that I was really teed off! A lot of people
clapped and cheered and whatnot for it, and there were some of the
thoughtful people that came to me and said, "Well, that was one hell
of a poor show." I said, "Don't talk to me — I realize it." I think I
saw many of Kennedy's supporters. They, at this point, had totally
given up on Stevenson being elected. I think that probably as far as
Kennedy was concerned, he wasn't entirely disappointed. I mean, I
think they did have their eyes, a good many of them, on '60, right at
this time. Although, as I said, I liked a great deal about Jack
Kennedy, and he was always very, very pleasant and very kind to me, I
did feel very badly about this particular show in San Francisco.

What was Bill Malone's role in this? Was he a strong Kennedy person?
Oh, yes, a very strong Kennedy person.

Maneuvers by Bill Malone

Kent: In 1960 — this was one I really wish I'd sued Bill Malone on — I was

still chairman — No, no, not '60. This was '56. Yes, it would have
been '60.

Fry: When Kennedy first ran? In 1960?

114

Kent: When Kennedy ran. I talked to a lot of people about who should be

chairman of the dinner for Kennedy. Libby Smith, with her customary
good sense, said, "Bill Malone wants this, and wants to help. Bill
Malone's got about seven gaits, and the primary gait that he'll
go on is if he's the chairman of this dinner." So I said, "Okay,
let's get the maximum out of this dinner that we can, in terms of
cash."

So we had to use the formula that is a very, very good formula,
and which we had used with some success in the past. We had a dinner
at the Palace. That was a hundred-dollar dinner, and then we had
buses to take people out to reserved sections at the Cow Palace.

Malone and Lynch and some of these others — they wanted nobody
on the platform [at the Cow Palace] except, I think, Tom Lynch, or
Engle or whoever was the statewide [campaign] chairman. This whole
thing was going to be an introduction, by Lynch, and then Kennedy's
speech. Lib and I and a half-dozen others were sitting off in the
boxes. And hell, they put about six people on the stage. And not me,
the state party chairman, and not Lib, the national committeewoman!
You know, it was customary that the dinner chairman would make these
arrangements. But never — before or since — was any such thing as this
[keeping party leadership off the platform] ever done.

It was a very good speech, and very well received. Of course,
it was the first mention of the Peace Corps , to tumultuous applause.
We got back, and we'd made a lot of money. I said to Bill Malone,
"Where's the money?" It was obvious, by the time we got this money
in, which was only a few days before the election (maybe a week) , that
there wasn't going to be any useful way in which it could be spent.
It had always been our custom that if we had money left over from a
statewide campaign, that it went to the Democratic State Central
Committee.

So I said to Malone, "I want the money." And he said, "Well,
you know, there has been some question about whether or not we could
give these people seats at the convention. We've promised that we will
give them seats, and if we don't give them seats, we'll have to give
them back their money." I said, "That's all right, we'll do it [give
them seats]. Give me the money." He said, "But you can't assure that
the money will be there to pay these people back." I said, "I don't
think there's going to be very many, and I can assure it." He said,
"How can you assure what's going to be in the state central committee?"
I said, "If there isn't money in the state central committee, I'll
put it up myself." He said, "You can't do that!" [laughs] I said,
"Why can't I?"

Well, anyway, as I said — that's where I really should have sued
him, because he kept that money, and what he did was, he made a hero
of himself with Engle with that money. He used that money for Engle

115

Kent: [to give to the Democratic National Committee]. If he had come to me,
it would have been very nice, but I mean, Engle was just unduly
grateful to Malone for the vast amount of money that he got. [laughter]
I explained to Engle on several occasions that this wasn't Malone's
money, that this was money that he'd stolen from me. Engle said,
"Never mind, he got it to me."

Fry: Could you give me the underlying reasons for that? Was Malone also

very, very enthusiastic about Engle?

Kent: I think Malone was genuinely, as an Irish Catholic, enthusiastic about
Kennedy. I think otherwise, Malone was enthusiastic about power. He
had realized that money was power, to a very considerable extent. For •
instance, he raised money for Cranston in '58, and the story was that
the money was raised on the basis that a certain number of inheritance-
tax appraisers would be appointed by Cranston, as named by Malone, if
he put up the money. I never had any verification of this, but
Malone's friends were the ones that got the jobs [in San Francisco].

Fry: So what was his interest in Engle?

Kent: In Engle? There are just a vast number of jobs that are lying around
that the Senator has control over. Malone actually came to me one
time and said, "Has your firm done a lot of finance work and mortgage
work and this kind of thing?" And I said, "Yes, we have, we have
done quite a bit of that." He said, "How would you like to be
counsel for the RFC [Reconstruction Finance Corporation]?" I said,
"That would be something that we feel thoroughly capable of doing."
So next thing we knew, we were counsel for the RFC. That's the only
thing I ever got out of anything like that. But this was what you
might call the clean graft, because this was a well-respected firm,
and it had plenty of experience in that manner, and in the four or
five years that we represented the RFC, I think they were sued twice
and we sued four times on their behalf, and we won every case for them.
Then we did their routine work as well.

Then there would be the question of who's to be the collector of
customs, and then there 'd be the question of who's to be this and who's
to be that. There's much less of that now. Malone just gloried in
being able to influence the guys who had the appointment, and the guy
who has the appointment is, to a considerable extent, the guy who puts
up the money.

There was no doubt that I had a great deal of say with Engle
because of my political activity with him, and traveling with him
and getting support lined up for him. He did make a good many
appointments that I asked him to make, where I said, "These are the
best guys that I know."

116

Kent: But Malone had done that for so many years — this is all on some of

your other tapes — where he was persuading the guys in Washington that
he had a machine in California, and he was persuading the people in
California that he had influence in Washington, and he was getting,
I think, his way. He's a very, very pleasant guy. We never came
close to an open fight on anything except the money for that dinner,
and he won, because he just sat on it. He wouldn't give it to me,
and the only way I could have got it 'from him was to sue him, which
would have really blown the Democratic party pretty sky high.

Fry: This has brought up a couple of other questions in my mind. One,

just for the benefit of this series that we're doing, when did Malone
begin to be eclipsed?

Kent: He either was the state chairman or the San Francisco chairman, or he
named the state chairman, through Oliver Carter's chairmanship. Then
there was a kind of a revolt. Carter had the title of state chairman,
so that the title of state vice-chairman went south — and I've forgotten
who got it. Then this revolt took place as to the northern California
chairman. A guy named Fred Trott from the San Joaquin Valley was
promoted by some of the Valley people (and I wouldn't be surprised if
it hadn't been Lionel Steinberg and some of the very chauvinistic
Valley people) who were damn tired of being run by San Francisco and
by Malone.

So they got together, and they got the votes, and they put up
this guy, Fred Trott. Then they just proceeded to cut his pants off,
because Trott was down in Visalia or someplace, he didn't have any
office, he didn't have any money, he didn't have any way of raising
any money, and they wouldn't give him a dime's worth of support. So
that was the end of Malone' s actual political control over the
organization.

Then, he had just broken his neck. I think he supported Trott,
that's what happened. He supported Trott, because Trott 's opponent
was George Miller, Jr. George Miller, Jr. , was a powerful man, and
he was not Malone' s man. So they [Malone and Carter] had two guys
in mind to run against George Miller, and then it turned out that the
guy that had the votes, other than what Malone could generate, had
these Valley votes, and that was Trott. So Trott had the best chance
to beat Miller for vice-chairman.

Miller always said that if he'd demanded a recount and a roll
call vote, that he would have been elected, but he said to hell with
it. But then the next time around, the chairmanship went north. So
Miller ran for chairman, and that time, he had all of our support.
I think Malone saw the handwriting on the wall and so Malone supported
him, as well, So Miller was elected state chairman.

117

Kent: Then Miller and Don Bradley and some of the state senators that we
had helped to elect during Miller's incumbency and Dick Graves (I
was his northern California chairman) decided that they wanted me
to run for vice-chairman. So I ran and succeeded Miller. Miller
was state chairman, and I became vice-chairman.

Fry: So this started right about 1950, I gather, some time in there,
probably.

Kent: That would be about it. In 1950 was when Trott was elected, and '52
was when Miller was elected state chairman, and '54 was when I was
elected vice-chairman.

Fry: You want to go to my outline now?
Kent: Sure.

Fry: Wait a minute, not yet. Was there a sort of a subtle cabal of Irish
Catholic Democratic political people? Did they depend a lot on each
other and tend to stick together?

Kent: Well, San Francisco was run for many years by Malone. Malone and his
group were elected statewide as delegates to go to the convention for
Garner, the '32 convention. Then when Garner threw in the sponge
and said that they could go for Franklin Roosevelt, then they all
became wildly FDR Democrats. Malone was the leader from '32 on, to
the best of my knowledge. He had the background — the backbone of his
county committee was Irish Catholic. Then he had a lot of others —
old Doc Ertola, the father of the Judge Jack Ertola, was one of his
guys. Then he had a good many of the North Beach Italians and what
not.

Bill Newsom was one of the early ones. This old doll that's
just had her eightieth birthday the other day with a big party for
her — Julia Porter — was one of his gals. Jimmy Smyth, who was the
collector of Internal Revenue here, and his wife Madlyn, who is now
Madlyn Day, and who still runs most of the parties in San Francisco,
were all part of the Malone (quote) "machine."

People took so little interest in those days in the county
committee that it was an absolute lead-pipe cinch to elect a slate
of people to the county committee. It only took a few hundred
dollars. I mean, it was the time of the penny postcard, saying,
"These are the Democrats pledged to the re-election of Franklin
Delano Roosevelt." (Well, so was everybody else, but that didn't
appear.) The Democrats got this card through the mail with the
instructions, "Take this card with you to the polling place." So
they did.

118

Kent: I remember Madlyn Smyth telling me that Jack Goldberger, who still
is this truculent labor leader in San Francisco, what a fine help
he'd been for them in the old days. I said, "Come on, Madlyn!
What did he do?" Well, she said, "We'd send him down to the Republican
headquarters with a truck, and he'd then pick up all their material
and take it down and throw it in the bay!" [laughter]

Fry: To which headquarters?

Kent: He had to go to Republican headquarters and get all the Republican
literature and what not and take it down and throw it in the bay.
I mean, he was a very valuable Democrat! [laughter]

Fry: What about Pat Brown, who was Irish Catholic? Was he part of this?

Kent: Pat had a much broader base than Malone. Pat had a base from Lowell
High School, from, I guess, University of San Francisco law school,
and then as district attorney of San Francisco. He may have had —
this was before I had any cognizance of the thing — Malone 's help in
getting elected DA. There is a Yugoslav lady who always takes the
greatest credit for that.

Fry: Who's that?

Kent: She's gotten awfully stupid and boring in her old age, but she was
pretty sharp at one time. She's still in the PR business.

Anyway, Pat had a much broader base in San Francisco than Bill
Malone. He probably had Bill Malone as part of it. Bill also had
his favorite Chinese. He had this one Chinese fellow [Jack Chow] who
he introduced to Truman, and Truman insisted that he come and see him
in the White House. They became real good friends.

Then in 1948, Malone had an Irishman from San Jose named John
McEnery.

Fry: Yes, I want to know more about him.

Kent: Well, I don't know much about him, except that he had one of the

loudest voices that ever was. I'm sure that he was Pat's selection
for vice-chairman of the state central committee. That was the
system in the old days, where the county chairmen appointed X and
the Democratic nominee, and he in turn had four appointments. They
were all pledged to whomever Malone told them to vote for at the
convention. McEnery got elected unquestionably that way.

He was a great big guy — I think fairly successful in business —
but I'm sure he was a Malone guy. One of the times we were with
him — he was vice-chairman at the time I was running for Congress

119

Kent: in '48 — they had a meeting in quite a good-sized room in San Rafael.
This was when Libby was married to Fred Smith, and Fred Smith sadly
needed a hearing aid. They were in about the third row, and when
McEnery was delivering his speech, all of a sudden Fred Smith reached
up and pulled the plug out of his ear! [laughter]

Fry: Didn't even need it!

Kent: Not only didn't need it, it was murder! [dispatches daughter to
answer door]

Preprimary Campaigning for Stevenson

Fry: If you want to go back to 1955 to the pre-1956 campaign shenanigans,

what about the telegrams that were sent to all county chairmen to
appeal to Adlai to run. They've signed by you and Pat Brown,
Elizabeth Snyder, Paul Ziffren, Elinor Heller and Alan Cranston.
This was in October of '55.

Kent: Isn't it also Libby Gatov? Libby Smith? I didn't even know that
Ziffren and Snyder signed it. This telegram actually was my doing.
We got Engle on there. I think I told you about this.

•

Fry: No.

Kent: When we sent these wires out, I, as a vice-chairman, holding an

official party position, could have been severely criticized for taking
a position for one Democrat in the primary as against other Democrats.
You know, I'm running an office that's supported by all Democrats, and
all of a sudden, the Democrat that's for Kefauver and has bought a
ticket for a hundred dollars to a dinner that I gave, and who's
supporting me, finds that I'm supporting Stevenson.

This is when Engle said, "I'm in the same position, and if
we're wrong, I don't know what you guys are going to do, but if
Kefauver wins," he said, "I'm going up to Lassen County and paint
my ass white and run with the antelopes." [laughter]

Fry: Which fortunately he didn't have to do! My real question about that
is, what brought on the telegram ploy?

Kent: As a matter of fact, I can't take too much credit. What brought that
on was, that Carmine De Sapio was coming to San Francisco. Ziffren
called me up, and he said, "Look, I'm going to have to greet
Carmine De Sapio when he comes to Los Angeles, and I want to make it
crystal clear — as, I think, you do — that you are not supporting Harriman
when you are polite to De Sapio." I said, "You can say that again!"

120

Kent: Then between us, we kicked it around about getting a wire supporting
Stevenson signed by all of the state party officials. Maybe Libby
wouldn't have signed that, because I don't think she was national
commit teewoman at that time. 1 think Clara [Shirpser] would have
been out [because she supported Kefauver]. Libby would have been
elected in '54. No, no, she wouldn't have been elected until '56.
But she was at this press conference, I know.

Fry: Libby was?

Kent: Libby was at the press conference that we had at the Sheraton Palace
Hotel. Cranston's name was on it, because it not only went to every
county chairman, but it went to every president of every club of CDC.
We had this press conference, and we had a basket of telegrams — not
one negative response — that we showed the press. We said, "Here's
what kind of support Stevenson has in the press." Clara, who was a
great buddy of Kefauver's, wanted to participate in the press
conference. I said, "No, if you want a press conference, you go
call one of your own. This is a press conference called by these
people who signed this letter."

One of these guys said, "How about Mrs. Shirpser, national
committeewoman? How does she stand on this?" I said, "Well, you'll
have to ask her, but not here." She was right there. She wanted to
answer. I said, "This is a press conference of people who sent this
wire." So Clara started to talk, and I said, "No, you're out of order.
If you want to call a press conference of your own, you can do it, and
explain why you didn't want to sign this letter and who you're for.
Nobody's preventing you from doing anything, but this is not that
kind of a press conference."

I think I told you about this — about a crack that I made to
one of those political writers. "De Sapio said this morning to
some newspapermen that this was too early to make a choice, and I
said, 'Did anybody ask De Sapio if it was too early for him to make
a choice, and had he made a choice?'" Because, of course, what he
was doing when he was out here — he was running for Harriman. He was
just an advance man for Harriman.

Fry: So you were trying to show a solid front to De Sapio, so he would
give up California early in the game?

Kent: That's right, that's right. We wanted to show a solid front to

De Sapio, and we also wanted to use that, perhaps, as an excuse to
show a solid front to anybody else. There was one very funny thing
that happened. I have a law partner named Jack Bradley, and this guy
who was the principal Stevenson pro (I may think of his name later)
called up our office. He said, "Could I speak to Mr. Kent?" The
reply was, "He's not here." The pro thought he was talking, I guess,
to Democratic headquarters, so he said, "Can I speak to Mr. Bradley?"
And they said yes.

121

Fry: He thought that meant Don Bradley?

Kent: He thought he had Don! He said, "Don, I want you and Roger to be the
first to know that we are entering California, and that we were going
to make an all-out effort." [laughter] Well, Jack Bradley said,
"Well, gee, thanks very much. I'll pass that on to Roger when he
comes in. "

Fry: Was Jack Bradley a Republican, by any chance?

Knet: He's a Republican, but he's very moderate.

Fry: Elizabeth Snyder was in on this, too. Was she ever for Kefauver?

Kent: Oh, yes. Well, at the conventiom in '56, she was wildly Kefauver for
vice-president. Now, I don't know — this is after that business.

Fry: I kind of associated her, for some reason, with the Kefauver forces
within the delegation. I wondered, since she had signed these wires
earlier for Adlai Stevenson —

Kent: Well, that's right. She wasn't backing away from a vote for Stevenson,
but she was just admamant, as far as Kefauver for vice-president was
concerned. She was insisting on recounts and revotes and whatnot.
As a matter of fact, California I don't think ever did vote for
vice-president until the election was decided because it was held up.
Do you want to talk about that 1956 convention now?

Balloting for Vice-Pjres_iden_t at the 1956 Convention

Fry: Yes. In fact, I have some newspaper stories on a so-called "secret
ballot" within the delegation that was held, I think, even before
Adlai had been nominated for president at the convention. The
California delegation was going to save all the ballots and keep
them locked up and hand them only to Stevenson, so he would know how
the delegation felt. It was a poll for vice-president. Does that
ring a bell to you?

Kent: Well, it rings a bell. We had a secret ballot. Did you see the

picture that I used as a Christmas card or a New Year's card? I'm
pretty sure that you did. I was nominating Humphrey for vice-president
before the caucus. Jimmy Roosevelt was nominating Kefauver. This guy
Martin Huff took this series of pictures, which were hilarious, of
Miller, who'd had a very bad night, gradually going to sleep, and
being absolutely sound asleep at the time that I'm nominating Humphrey,
[laughter]

122

Kent: Did I tell you this story before, about the meeting of Bill Malone,
Ellie Heller, Libby Smith, and me with John F. Kennedy?

Fry: Is that the one at three o'clock in Ellie Heller's suite?
Kent: In the morning.

Fry: No, you didn't tell me that, but there was some reference to that
in some of these papers. So I wanted you to tell about it.

Kent: Well, I've forgotten who led it off. It was clear that Libby and
I were for Humphrey for vice-president and that they were for
Kennedy for vice-president. There was no animosity between our
groups at all. It was well agreed that if one didn't get the nod
on the first ballot, that the two forces would join in favor of the
guy who got the most votes.

In the meantime, as he did later with great political astuteness,
Kennedy told us just what was going to happen. He said, "What's
going to happen is that Hubert has got this vast strength diffused
all over the country. It's two delegates here, and ten there and
four there and seven here and the rest of them. He doesn't have any
concentrated source of strength.

"I_ have New England," he said, which John Bailey had, to a very
considerable extent, put together. Kennedy went into some detail
about Mr. Bailey, and what eventually happened to him last time.
Bailey had these votes, which were eighty or ninety or more, in a
block locked up, plus a good many other votes lying around the
country.

The general people in the South just hated Kefauver, because
Kefauver, in trying to become a national figure and a viable candidate
for president, had had to do things in favor of the black folk that
were just utterly intolerable to the South at that time. They
regarded him as just a tried- and- true traitor. So they were not
going to vote for Kefauver, and they were going to make damn sure
that Kefauver didn't get the nod.

As a result of that, they took a look around — and this is what
Kennedy told us: He said, "The southern delegates are just not going
to go for Kefauver. The next thing they're going to do is, they're
going to look around and they're going to say, 'Who's got the best
chance to beat him? Humphrey or Kennedy?' And they're going to see
this bloc of votes that I've got, lying in New England that will go
for me, and they're going to say that Kennedy has the best chance to
beat Kefauver, and they will all go for me, or 98 percent of them."
This is exactly what happened.

123

Kent: As you ran through Alabama and Arkansas and so forth, and the votes

went for Kennedy, it became apparent that he was going to be elected,
and very shortly he was .

No, no, no. We've got it all screwed up. It became apparent
that this deadlock developed, and then utter chaos took place on the
floor. Liz Snyder, for instance, at that point took over and tried
to get California to go for Kefauver, but meantime, events just
passed us by. By the time we finally got around to voting, Kefauver
had been counted in and Kennedy counted out.

I don't know what the hell happened to Humphrey at that time.
Humphrey actually just disappeared, for this same reason that he had
no base, and as they began to count the votes, the people said,
"Well, it's no sense casting the vote where my heart is. I'll just
choose between these two guys."

Fry: I see. California didn't come out as a deciding factor in that vote,
you mean?

Kent: I'm positive that finally Pat Brown got up and announced a vote of
thirty-eight for Kefauver and fourteen for Kennedy and eight for
Humphrey. These are all fictitious numbers, but the real numbers
just bore no relation at all to the way the delegation voted. I
mean, there was some possibility of having people go down the lines
and having the monitor at the end of each aisle find out how many
people voted for each of these three candidates, and then try to put
slips together and then hand them down to somebody else down below.

I was there, and I know damn well that it wasn't accurate at
all, because really, in a delegation in a convention — and this is a
lesson for what's likely to happen in '76 — if you have a group of
independent delegates, as you have in California and always have had,
it is just absolutely next to impossible to have a second vote
without a caucus. I mean, a second vote on the floor. What you can
do is have a caucus and record the votes that everybody wants, and
then you can set up machinery whereby everybody can change their vote,
which we did in '60, as I told you, I think, last time.

We had a representative of Johnson and Stevenson and Kennedy
right there with the list. Some guy would come up and say, "I want
to change from Stevenson to Kennedy, and it would be done right there
in the presence of a representative of each. Without that kind of a
formula, it can't be done in a caucus, where all of a sudden everybody's
free. I don't know what's going to happen in '76, if the convention
busts wide open.

Fry: Pat Brown had also said that he didn't think that he'd turned

in the right figures on that count either, and that he was really
relieved that JFK didn't get it, because Brown, as a fellow Irish

124

Fry: Catholic, he didn't want to see Kennedy as vice-president, because
he felt that the ticket was going to lose. He didn't want it to
lose and have everybody saying, "Well, it was because there was a
Catholic on the ticket." Does that make sense to you? From his
point of view?

Kent: Well, yes, it does. Let me quickly give you this name — Hy Raskin.
[spells it] He was the guy that called my office and got Jack
Bradley.

Fry: Okay, fine.

Kent: I think there were an awful lot of second guessers. And there were
a lot of first- guessers on Stevenson, too, who didn't think he was
going to make it. I mean, political guys that I knew around the
country, who didn't think that Stevenson would make it in '56, and
who would be, if they had any preference between Kefauver and Kennedy
(which a great many of them did) , would much prefer to see Kefauver
go down to defeat than see Kennedy go down to defeat. I think Pat
Brown's feeling there was — sure, that could reflect an absolutely
honest view, in his point, that it would do damage to the future
prospects of an Irish Catholic.

Fry: You were for Humphrey until you met at Elinor Heller's suite?
Kent: No, no. We stayed with Humphrey.
Fry: You stayed with Humphrey.

Kent: Oh, yes, sure. We had this meeting, which was either before or

after that meeting at Ellie's at which Ben Swig spoke for Kennedy,
Jimmy Roosevelt for Kefauver, and I spoke for Humphrey. It was very
evenly divided. I think Kefauver had a two- or three-vote margin
over Humphrey, and Humphrey had a two- or three-vote margin over
Kennedy in our caucus. That was to be our first vote. That first
vote we cast was just that way. But then the chaos came when there
was no winner.

Fry: [laughs] You couldn't find out who had changed the vote very well.
Kent: That's right.

Fry: In the early days, back in October of '55, there was a lot of

juggling over who would run for Senator, and of course, Yorty was
in the game at some point, but Brown was saying that maybe he would
run.

125

Kent: Yes, Pat made some noises about running against Kuchel for Senator.
But I'll say this, that I and my best friends were strongly against
this move, because we knew how tremendously strong Kuchel was,
particularly in bipartisan support. We wanted Pat to run for
governor. So we were very much relieved when he finally came out
and said that he would not go for Senator.

Sam Yorty's Exit from the CDC

Kent: Then we had the CDC convention, which Yorty stamped out of, saying,
"This has been rigged and stacked," and so forth and so on.

Fry: Yes, I read that statement in the newspaper. He said he really

hadn't meant for his name to come up anyway in the convention. He
realized it was rigged, but somehow it did come up. I guess he got
voted on or something.

Kent: Oh, yes, he did.

Fry: Or voted down. [laughs] How can a candidate not allow this? Can
he say, "Do not bring up my name"?

Kent: Well, the only time I remember anything like that happening was, I
think, when the candidate did withdraw, and was permitted to
withdraw by the chairman. The chairman who was in control said,
"You only have candidates A and B to vote for; candidate C has
withdrawn." Now what happened with Yorty, I don't remember.

Fry: Just for the record, I'd like to quote from Yorty's speech that he
made shortly after the CDC convention. This is March 14, at the
San Diego Men's Club. This sort of, I guess, shows his relationship
to you. See if you think it's true. He said that CDC stood for
"Captive Democratic Clubs." He said, "They besmirch and defeat all
Democrats who refuse to knuckle under to their political bossism.
They're more like the old Independent Progressive Party, which was
infiltrated by Communists," and he said that "this awful clique was
Ziffren, Cranston, and Kent, who are naive and being used," and so
forth and so on. [laughs]

Kent: He particularly singled me out one time for being naive and amiable,
[laughter] Joe Houghteling, down the peninsula here, he said, "You
know, he's half right. You are amiable, but you are not naive!"
[laughter]

Fry: Do you think Yorty damaged the Democrats' chances in the Senatorial
race, opposing Richard Richards?

126

Kent: I don't think so.
Fry: And the way he did it?

Kent: He might have done some damage to it. He certainly damaged Pat

very badly in '66, where he ran for governor and just vilified Pat,
every speech that he made. And where he was able to attract
everybody who had any kind of a squawk against Pat, he said, "Vote
for me," and he got about 40 percent of the Democratic vote. It was
very damaging to Pat.

Fry: How was Richard Richards selected?

Kent: Well, he had been quite prominent in CDC for quite awhile. He had
been, of course, state senator from Los Angeles, and the state
senator, which was obviously one hell of an important position.
About forty assemblymen had to pass their bills through him. _!
never particularly liked his style, but it was a flamboyant, somewhat
demogoguic style of talking. He had learned to press all the buttons,
you know, and bring the people up cheering.

I always got along all right with him, and I liked him, and I
sure as hell never voted for Yorty when he ran against Kuchel, but I
did vote for Dick Richards.

Fry: But you were fairly lukewarm about him running for Senator, I gather.

Kent: Well, I certainly preferred him to Yorty, and there wasn't anybody
else on the horizon. That was that time — no. If Peter Odegard had
run that time, I'd have supported Peter Odegard. But Peter Odegard
waited until we had Engle.

Fry: That's what you said. And waited until you really had a strong
candidate.

Kent: A strong one and a good one.

What It Takes To Elect a Candidate

Fry: Your speaking of the choices that you had on people to run brings up
something else that I thought I. would throw at you. A southern
California professor wrote a political wrap-up of this campaign in
Western Political Quarterly. He says — let me find this in my notes.
I must not have copied it down, but I can paraphrase it. He said
that the Democrats felt that they were hampered by lack of funds,
and had been over the years hampered by lack of funds, which contributed
to their inability, historically, to fill statewide offices. This was
a direct result of not being able to hire enough professional help.

127

Fry: The Republicans said that the Democrats were always hampered because
they ran incompetent and weak candidates. The political analyst who
wrote this article said that perhaps there is a causal relationship
between these two, the lack of funds and the lack of professional
help, and the inability to run really competent candidates.*

Kent: Yes, there's no doubt about it. If you have a relatively strong
Republican, a reasonable man who's an incumbent, and who's got
considerable money, you're going to have a hell of a time getting a
strong Democrat to run against him, because the odds — particularly
in the old cross-filing days — the odds were so bad against him that
he couldn't possibly do it. Because, you see, before the abolition
of cross-filing, the money for a challenger just about had to be his
own or his friends'. He had no party source of funds. And unless he
happened to be in a very strong labor district, or labor particularly
hated the guy that he was running against, he had little hope of
getting any labor money. And always it was very small anyway. He
would be facing very, very strong odds.

During the period that I was state chairman, we'd say to some
really promising guy, "We'd like you to run for Congress or state
senate." The guy would give me a happy smile, and he'd say, "You
put $50,000 in the bank for my campaign, and I'll go, but I'm not
going to be around passing the hat, picking up nickles and dimes and
trying to run the campaign." So there is a causal relationship.

Fry: And that would be very difficult to break out of, because it makes
it very cyclical.

Kent: Well, then, of course, things began to change as the Democratic
party began to get more muscle, particularly as it broadened its
base in the Stevenson '52 campaign into a great many of the affluent
suburbanites who loved Stevenson and were willing to put up money to
elect people that they wanted. All of a sudden, it began to be
possible to get five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, fifty
thousand dollars.

Then, of course, success generates success. If you get that
kind of money, then all of a sudden, you can go around to the people
that owe you, that have no political philosophy whatsoever — they
just want to bet on a winner. If you show them that you've got a
winner [as a demonstrated money raiser] — this would be to a very

*Totten J. Anderson, "The 1956 Campaign," Western Political Quarterly,
March, 1957.

128

Kent: large extent, the corporations and the labor unions and other
sources of money — you say, "Look, I've got a winner," and they
say, "Sure enough, you have."

I think I've mentioned the fact that I went through all the
homes of the lobbyists in Washington for Engle when he came through
the primary so strong. I said, "Look, Engle' s a very fine guy, and
I'm working for him. I think what you're most interested in is that
he's going to win." Most of these fellows would nod their heads and
said, "I'm inclined to agree with you."

And that, of course, is when you just have to rely on some
fantastic egotistical mistake, such as we had there in '58, where
Knowland decided that the only route to be president was to be
governor. And so he kicked the incumbent governor out, and left as
majority leader of the Senate. At that point, it gave two opportunities
to two strong men — Brown as attorney general and Engle as Senator.
Brown is quite a timid fellow, in terms of his future. As you know,
he backed away from that senatorial thing. If he'd have been faced
with running against an incumbent governor, I don't know whether we
could have got him in that race or not. We might have.

But when he could see, being a very sharp guy, that the Republican
party was in shambles because of what Knowland had done to Knight.
And Engle could see that he wasn't going to be running against the
majority leader of the Senate. When he said, "I'll go for Senator,"
we couldn't have gotten a stronger guy than Engle to run for Senate,
if the situation hadn't looked so bad from the Republican point of
view.

Also, both Engle and Brown had been in very, very important
positions in the state for so long that they had sources of money
which would be unavailable to the average guy, even the average
congressman. You see, Engle had been chairman of the Interior and
Insular Affairs Committee for about five or six years, and he,
therefore, had the overseeing, really, of the delineation of where
billions of dollars were going to be spent in California.

He, therefore, had talked with everybody that had an interest
in those things, which were the most important things that there were.
He, with his regular colorful way, said, "You know, there were an
awful lot more people killed over water than killed over whiskey in
the west." [laughter]

Fry: I wish we could have tape-recorded Engle and all his Engle-isms !
Kent: He was wonderful.

129

Reflections on the "Big Switch"

Fry: Just one other follow-up question on 1958, a personal one. Where

were you when you heard that Knowland was going to try for governor?
Do you remember? The reason I asked was that it must have been cause
for great rejoicing in the Democrats to have this gift from heaven
suddenly descend on you. Did you view it that way?

Kent: Yes. I don't remember exactly where 1 was. I think one of the things
we particularly wondered was, what the hell was Knight going to do?
Because Knight disappeared out of the state. He went down to Arizona
when Knowland announced, with the help of the Oakland Tribune, the
San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times , that he was the man
for governor. Then they just passed the word to Knight that he would
have [no] newspaper support and he would have no money. "On the other
hand, if you want to be a good boy and run for Senate, we'll back
you for Senate."

Knight went to Arizona and disappeared. I can remember so
many of our discussions as to what was the wisest thing for him to
do, and we concluded that really the wisest thing for him to do
would be to come back, throw the cards on the table, say, "This is
what they did to me, and I'm running for governor." He might have
made it, might have made it.

Fry: I believe he did try that for a little while there, and finally had
to give in.

Kent: I think he said that for —
Fry: Just a short time.

Kent: This guy, Bill Lee, there on the Chico Enterprise-Record liked me,
and published this very flattering article about me as state
chairman. But when I really got mean, and gave him stuff, he didn't
publish it. (I really got mean about Knowland.) I sat and listened
to Knowland talk about Ziffren. I was no great lover of Paul Ziffren,
but I liked him, and we got along together, and we were allies, and
we fought together on the same side most of the time.

But Knowland kept talking about Paul Ziffren's nefarious
associations with the Chicago, with Jake Arvey and all those people.
He was talking about this all the time, and saying, "Can we afford
to have a governor who has as his lieutenant this man who has taken
all these favors from Arvey," and starting naming them off and all
that.

So I was up in Chico one time, and I was going to go to a
meeting up north there. I sat down in the hotel room, and I wrote
out a release, and I gave it to Bill Lee, who's the editor of the

130

Kent: giico Enterprise-Record. I said, "Knowland keeps asking Ziffren for
a list of what he got from Jake Arvey and what he got from various
other people. I, Roger Kent, chairman, would like to ask Mr. Knowland
what he or any member of his family ever received from Chiang Kai-shek,
Madame Chiang Kai-shek, any of the Soong family and the rest of them.
I'd. like a list of it. I think we're at least as much entitled to
this as Mr. Ziffren is or Knowland is."

I went up to a three-day meeting, and I came back, and goddamned
Lee hadn't put it in the paper. [laughter]

Seating the "Freedom Delegation": Unruh Is Hoist with His Own Petard

Kent: The other time, finally, I broke into print. They put on a party for
me up in Chico, and it was right after the '64 convention. I came
back with this story about Unruh 's duplicity, where he had gone
against the wishes of Brown and of Johnson on the votes on the
compromise for seating these black delegations from Alabama and
Mississippi.

The first compromise they proposed was utterly unacceptable to
me and to a few others. The second one was good, so that guy who
became chief of protocol, who was Johnson's man was there in this
California caucus. Named Winslow Christian. Did I tell you this
story before?

Fry: No.

Kent: Winslow Christian, who is now an appellate court judge, had been
Brown's secretary. The issue was framed that would California
support a compromise which would allow all of these blacks who were
on these two delegations to be seated in the hall, and would allow
them four votes — not as votes from their state but as fully valid
votes at large, in which they would be representing not only the
disenfranchised from their own state, but the disenfranchised that
might be from any and all states.

Being a lawyer and having some respect for law, I couldn't
possibly see seating this group that might have been any group picked
up off the street, and say they represent Alabama or Mississippi.
They could have picked any group in the state, the Boy Scouts or
Grade 3 at Birmingham High School or anything. But it made sense,
to say, "We'll let them .sit there, and give them good seats for the
convention, and we'll let them select two apiece who are delegated
who don't represent their states, but will be [at large delegates

131

Kent: representing the disenfranchised]. Well, it was a hell of a compromise,
a very brilliant stroke. I can't tell you how many people claim credit
for it. [laughter]

But anyway, when it came to our caucus, I spoke for it. I think
Jimmy Roosevelt spoke for it. Phil Burton, of course, spoke against
it [Burton favored seating and giving votes to the entire "freedom
delegation] and one of the black guys spoke against it. I've
forgotten which one. I was sitting up next to Pat, and, meantime,
Winslow Christian had gone down into the California caucus — this was
Johnson's wish — and communicated to Brown by Johnson.

He went down, and he heard Jesse Unruh telling his people, "Vote
no. Vote no. Vote no on the compromise, vote no on the compromise."
Winslow heard him say that. So Christian went and he got this guy who
was Johnson's man — I may think of his name in a moment. He got this
guy down, and he said, "Get behind Unruh and listen to what he's
telling these people."

So this fellow did, and he heard Unruh say, "Vote no on this
compromise." This guy leaned over, and he tapped on Unruh 's shoulder.
Unruh turned around and was just absolutely horror-stricken. Johnson's
man said, "You get the word out that the vote is yes , and you get it
out fast!" None of this was known to me. I was sitting up on the
platform next to Brown, around with Don Bradley, who was the recording
secretary. The meeting was going on over in the hall.

So they completed the roll call. They didn ' t complete the roll
call. They completed the speeches. Brown started to say something,
and Unruh got up and said, "Mr. Chairman, I ask for a ten-minute
recess. Maybe this thing can be resolved." I said, "Pat, we're
late now, for Christ's sake. Everybody's had his say. Tell Don to
call the roll." Pat just said, "Everybody's had their say within the
rules that we laid down for this meeting. Will the secretary please
call the roll?"

They called the roll, and guy after guy after guy of Unruh 's
jumped off the bridge and said no. Unruh, of course, was practically
the end of the alphabet, and when it came to him, he voted, "Present."

Fry: "Present"?

Kent: He didn't dare vote against Johnson [laughter] and he didn't dare vote
against all the people that he had told to vote this way. So I, of
course, was just in an absolute seventh heaven of bliss that probably
finally he had been nailed with this utter disloyalty to Brown, without
any semblance of idealism at all. There just wasn't any pretense of
it. He never made a speech to this effect.

132

Kent: We had some drinks up in Pat Brown's suite that time with Hale
Champion. Champion kept looking at me, and he said, "Christ, I
never saw anybody so goddamn happy in my life!"

Well, I came back, and I went up to this meeting in Chico , and
as I say, it was one of the very few dinners that was for me. It
was a one-dollar dinner, so it was pretty well attended. I told
this story on Unruh, and Bill Lee from the Chico paper was there
again, and he never put it in his paper. But Ed Davis was there
from the Willows Journal. Ed was a friend of mine, and Ed thought,
"Well, hell, this is a Chico story, I'll let the Chico press handle
it."

But when the Chico press didn't handle it, Ed put it in,
practically verbatim (he had all my notes) . [laughter] And when
this got down to Sacramento, it was spread on AP or UPI , practically
on the front page of all the metropolitan press of California.
And Pat said to me [mimics shocked voice], "Roger, you didn' t say
that!" I said, [laughs] "Of course I said it!" And he said, "I'm
not sorry." [laughter]

Fry: How are you feeling, Roger? I still have a few more questions.
Kent: Five or ten minutes more, that's all right.

Civil Rights Plank Coritrovejrsy at_1956 Democratic Convention

Fry: The '56 convention followed right after the Supreme Court decision

for desegregation. The Democrats were not looking very good nationally
at that point, because in Congress, Eisenhower had proposed legislation
for a bipartisan civil rights commission, a civil rights division in
the Justice Department, and more enforcement of voting rights in the
south.

This had then passed in the House over a southern manifesto
protest by eighty-three southern Democrats. So I think many delegates
were eager, at the convention, to prove to the blacks and minorities
that the Democratic party was still, indeed, the party for the
minority coalitions. So this big issue which threatened to tear the
convention apart on the floor was — how strong a civil rights plank
supporting the Supreme Court decision should be put into the
Democratic platform? And the most liberal plan was one supported by
Senator Herbert Lehman of New York. Do you remember that?

Kent: And even it was no good.

Fry: You mean it wasn't strong enough?

133

Kent: It wasn't strong enough. This was one of my run-ins with Phil Burton
as a real psychopath. I listened to this stuff, and I'll tell you
the plank in the Democratic platform on minorities was just about
meaningless. Some CIO delegate had it correct. He said, "It wasn't
a plank, it was a sociological observation," because what one of the
planks said was that we recognized that in certain schools in the
South, there are very serious problems. Didn't say a damn word about
what they were going to do about it. Some of my friends voted for it.
It was a voice vote. Of course, it was Sam Rayburn's voice vote.

Fry: This was the plank approved by the majority opinion of the national

platform committee. Then there was a minority report that was
stronger.

Kent: Well, anyway, it was a voice vote. Old Sam Rayburn was this old
man, seventy-five, eighty years old, standing up there just hour
after hour after hour, stiff as a ramrod, with the gavel like that.
When he called the voice vote, you couldn't tell who won the voice
vote. He said, "The motion is carried. That is, the plank is
approved." In the meantime, they had taken this draft plank over to
Harry Truman, who was sitting in a box. Harry said it was just a
great plank.

Well, I went outside, and I was standing there and looking kind
of discouraged. Phil Burton came up to me, and said something to me
about it, and I said, "You know, I'm so enthusiastic about Stevenson
that I would do just about anything to see that he was elected." He
said, "And so you voted for the plank!" and left. I was just about to
tell him, "No, I voted no." Which I did. My voice was one of those
that said no, but —

Fry: But didn't get counted. [laughs]

Kent: Well, that's certainly no way to take the vote on a thing like that.

Fry: Was this a serious split within the California delegation, or did

you ever really determine how much of a split it was? I think there
were several attempts to take a poll.

The California delegation, you can be sure, always would have voted
a strong civil rights plank. I mean, that's the history of convention
after convention that I presided over, of the state central committee.
If it had ever come before the California delegation, I'm sure it
would not have been approved.

Fry: So you felt the majority of the California delegation, then, would
definitely have been for the stronger minority report, and probably
voted that way?

134

Kent: [nods yes] I think I told you about arriving in Chicago with Marietta
Tree, having flown in all those models from New York.

Fry: I don't remember that.

Kent: Well, of course, we came in on an airplane. And here we were met at
the bottom of the ladder by a bevy of the most beautiful dolls you'd
ever want to see, fifteen or twenty of them, maybe. The first one
that greeted me said, "Welcome to New York." [laughter] Marietta
Tree brought in a whole bunch of models from New York, and —

Fry: [laughs] You mean she just forgot it was Chicago? [laughter]

Kent: I don't think she had any more interest in who was going to be elected
president than my dog! I mean, she had a fancy new dress and a lot
of food and booze and a chance to travel.

Barnstorming for Stevensson

Fry: We have not yet recorded your saturation campaign with Stevenson on
October 11, 1956, when Stevenson flew out for the barnstorming of
fifteen cities by a team of political luminaries.

Kent: I don't think there were as many as fifteen. I think there were

seven or eight. They started from San Diego and from everywhere,
and they ended up in Los Angeles , down at the Los Angeles Airport
I'm pretty sure, for one place. Or maybe that's where they went to
take off from. Then they met again at the end of a long hard day.
I went with Orville Freeman, and we went to Petaluma, which had been
the egg basket of the world.

I would have felt very badly for Freeman about the crowd that
we had for Freeman at Petaluma, which was about a dozen, except for
the fact that a guy there, a Republican, said, "Don't feel bad. We
had a big, well-advertised reception here for Kuchel last year, or
two years ago, and one person came!" Petaluma at that time was not
an active political —

Fry: Center. You said yesterday on the telephone that you had a cocktail

party here at your Kentfield estate for Adlai. Is that when you had
it?

Kent: No, no, no. That was a very, very successful thing. It was Memorial
Day, just before the primary. We had several hundred people here in
the afternoon at ten dollars a head, and they put up a lot more money
for drinks and whatnot (we were still shy on dough). Of course,
within a week, Stevenson just beat the daylights out of Kefauver
nearly two to one in the primary.

135

Fry: How did this come about?

Kent: How come that he did?

Fry: Yes, as you look back on it.

Kent: Well, of course, Stevenson was so much more of a man than Kefauver

was. And I think it finally began to get to the people that Kefauver
was something of a phony. I mean, Kefauver would make one kind of
a speech down in Memphis, Tennessee, and he'd make a very different
kind of a speech out here in East Oakland. Stevenson had made this
vast impression on a very large number of Democrats in the '52
campaign. He had a terrific carryover of loyalty and affection and
respect and admiration. Kefauver had nothing like it.

Now for instance, I don't know how it went in some counties,
but in the counties that I was familiar with — say, Marin and Alameda
and, to a considerable extent, San Francisco and then upcountry in
Glenn and Colusa and the rest of the small ones — Stevenson was just
so far ahead that there was nothing to it. And all the [county]
leaders were for Stevenson.

Fry: Well, these people on the saturation campaigns that came out to be a
part of that were Governor George Leader of Pennsulvania and Governor
Robert Meyner of New Jersey and Senator Hubert Humphrey and Senator
Albert Gore. Was that when you traveled with Stevenson?

Kent: No. That's the time that I traveled with Orville Freeman. He was
the governor of Minnesota.

Fry: When were you traveling around with Stevenson? We don't have that on
the tape. You went down to Santa Barbara?

Kent: I went down to Santa Barbara on primary election night. We were
there when the results were coming in. Of course, it was a very
happy night.

Was that at San Ysidro Ranch?

Yes, San Ysidro. Bill Blair was down there and a couple of other
guys, and Marietta, Marietta Tree. Then I met Stevenson at the
airport and rode up with him. Of course, I introduced him at one
of the dinners in San Francisco. You see, it really wasn't
necessary for me to travel with Stevenson, because he had so damn
many people that he could travel with. I was then state chairman,
and I had responsibility for the assemblymen and the state senators
and the congressmen as well. Of course, I was always primarily
interested in the Stevenson campaign. I think, Bill Orrick was
chairman, or at least treasurer. They had headquarters over opposite

136

Kent: the Palace Hotel, and I would go over there every afternoon about
three-thirty and stay until about six- thirty or seven, and we'd
see what we were going to do.

The actual itinerary of going from here to there — everybody
who knew me knew I was for Stevenson, so it didn't do a damn bit of
good for me to be on the train or on the plane or something else.
Don Bradley would be along with him and protecting him and so forth.
I did some traveling with him, but not much.

I'd better quit.

Fry: I think we've pretty well covered this. If you want to answer one
last question, what did you see as the impact of the Suez Canal
crisis just before election day in November?

Kent: There isn't any question in my mind but that we would have carried
California if it hadn't been for the Suez crisis. We were running
a very good campaign. The campaign was enthusiastic in support of
Stevenson. The people were for Stevenson. It was going our way.
It probably would have been fairly close, but I'm as confident as I
could possibly be that California would have gone for Stevenson. I
won't say what would have happened in the rest of the country,
because I have no idea.

But when the Suez crisis hit, you could just feel the whole
thing just erode. In other words, the United States was in dire
danger, and it was time to pull things together and get behind the
leader , and —

Fry: Who had been a general.

Kent: Yes, we had a general who knew about war, and this was the way it
looked. It just ran out of the tub.

137

VIII STEVENSON'S 1956 CAMPAIGN AND CALIFORNIA'S 1958 CAMPAIGN
[Interview 6: May 3, 1976]«

The 1956 Campaign Issues

Fry: We were talking at the last session about the Stevenson campaign of

1956. I had one burning question left over, concerning the issues in
that campaign. I get the idea from my reading that because Eisenhower
was the glorious president, it was difficult to criticize him for
anything.

The Democrats and Adlai Stevenson talked about controlling the
hydrogen bomb and cutting back on the draft, or cutting it out
altogether, and too much national defense spending. I didn't pick
up very much on the Democrats talking about Eisenhower's health.
It seemed to me to be, as we look back on it, a very good issue at
the time. [Kent makes affirmative noises] Was this talked about?
It doesn't appear in the papers so much.

Kent: I would think that Stevenson was not the kind of guy who was going
to be hammering on it, you know, and saying that Eisenhower is not
going to retire, and ileitis is a very serious sort of thing. There
was a lot of talk about it going around. There was one particular
joke — a sheet of paper that was being passed around. That was to the
effect that Eisenhower was the sole hope of the Republicans to get
re-elected, and that it had done him good to get whatever the first
thing he had, and it was doing him just no end of good to have
ileitis .

Finally, as it must come to everybody, Eisenhower left this
mortal scene, and they asked the Republicans what they were going
to do about it, and they said, "Why, there's no problem about this
at all." Eisenhower was their candidate, and he'd never looked
better, and he was going to continue to run. [chuckles] And he
would defeat him [Stevenson]. It was very amusing, but the subject
was hardly amusing.

138

Kent: Of course, some of the earlier issues that you talked about —

Stevenson came out for the nuclear test ban treaty, and was called
every kind of a dirty rat Communist by Nixon and others that you
could imagine, [who charged] that he was throwing away the defenses
of the United States and so forth. I think he also did come out on
toning down the draft and, again, he was severely criticized for
weakening the country. Of course, all of these things were done
just a few years later.

Statewide Campaign Organization

Kent: There was one purely mechanical thing that you might be interested
in, on the Stevenson campaign. That is that I was, at that time,
state chairman in '56. The way we had always run campaigns in
northern California would be that the state chairman (as I've
indicated, as I recall, looking at the last of your notes) took the
position that he was the chairman of the entire Democratic campaign,
and not only of the president's campaign, or in the other year, the
governor's campaign. He would take a very active part in both those
campaigns, but he would not say, "I am it," which presumably [he was],
if you critically read the code. The code said that the [Democratic
State] Central Committee had the responsibility for electing the
nominees of the party.

Presumably, that would make the state chairman the boss of the
campaign. Well, we never played it that way in northern California.
We always tried to find a guy of great stature and of brains and of
integrity and political knowledge, and persuade him to be the
chairman of the president's campaign. I think, in this case, it was
either Bill Orrick — I think it probably was Bill Orrick that was the
chairman of the Stevenson campaign in '56 for the north.

Then we had an executive committee for the campaign that met
just about every day. That was Elinor Heller and myself, and Libby
Gatov and Bill Roth, and oftentimes Bill Malone and a few others,
and the pros — Don Bradley, and say, Harry Lerner, if he was still in
that campaign, and Jim Keene , who was the PR guy. That was the format
that we used. By this time, we had an experienced and good staff.

Tom Saunders, for instance, was a northern California pro. I
went down to southern California, and those guys had one of their
regular fights going on in two different factions. The state vice-
chairman down there was a guy named Bill Rosenthal, who was not a
guy of any real stature, and not of any real political savvy. He
didn't care about the congressmen, the state senators, and the
assemblymen; he wanted to move in and just be chairman for Stevenson.

139

Kent: We had this long and vitriolic conference. My friends that I'd been
working with for years — Paul Ziffren and Joe Wyatt and Joe Wapner
and some of these other guys said, "Look, this is the campaign, and
this is the campaign that we are supposed to run." Meantime,
Stevenson and some of his people had picked Fred Dutton [to manage the
campaign in southern California (Bradley)]. This was one of the first
times that Fred Dutton emerged. Fred Dutton emerged from a law office
or a law school — I've forgotten which — and he was satisfactory to them,
and he was working eighteen hours a day. Dutton didn't have any
personal vendetta with any of these people. I just told these
southern California people on the state central committee, "Well, as
far as I'm concerned, I'm not going to take responsibility for second-
guessing Stevenson and their party. As far as we're concerned, this
kind of a format is better than having the entire energies of the
central committee devoted to the number-one campaign. We've got many,
many other responsibilities to build the Democratic party in the
state. That's the way it's going to be."

So I lost a lot of friends, but that's the way they ran it. Of
course, Eisenhower beat Stevenson in southern California much more
than he beat him in northern California, but that wasn't Button's
fault. As a matter of fact, Unruh came into that campaign — no, no,
I'm getting ahead of myself. That was '60. He came in as a pro in
'60. In '56, I was just trying more or less to keep the peace. Unruh
did have a part of that campaign, but not a very big one.

Stevenson Campaign j^trategy

Kent: I'm trying to recall the particular issues. Stevenson, of course, did
not really rally the idealism of the idealistic Democrats in the '56
campaign in the manner that he had done in '52.

Fry: Yes, some seemed disillusioned with his moving towards the middle
of the road.

Kent: Well, it wasn't only that, but that he had much advice that he had to
get into these local issues, and that he had to go into congressional
district A, and if what they wanted there was flood protection, why he
would damn well make a long speech about flood protection in
congressional district A. This did not strike the high and idealistic
note that had really brought the people to him by the millions in '52.
Again, I couldn't really second-guess him on that. I thought that he
knew that he was up against something very, very tough in Eisenhower,
and maybe this was the way to do it. The other way hadn't quite
worked, and I don't think it would have worked in '56, either. Let
me think — the closing moments of our talk last time concerned the

140

Kent: erosion of the campaign with the Mideast crisis, the Suez crisis,
that this was just axiomatic in American politics, that if the
country gets in trouble, they rally behind the leader —

Fry: The incumbent.

Kent: The incumbent. And that's what happened here. And then the figures
would show — which I didn't particularly look at at that time. I was
just terribly discouraged with the overall figures. But when '60
came along, and I was talking to leaders from other states — from New
Jersey and Pennsylvania, even Illinois, Minnesota, and whatnot — they
said that "Stevenson lost our states twice as badly in '56 as he had
in '52. Therefore, we cannot go back to our people and say, 'We
want him as a candidate in '60.'" I mean, this is one of the major
reasons why I and a great many others finally — much as we loved
Stevenson, and thought he'd be the best president — backed away from
him.

Impact of 1950 Redistricting

Fry: There was something else that you were battling, and that was the way
the Republicans had redistricted the state in 1950. In '56 and then
in '60, party loyalty was higher, due to the inclusion of party
designation on the ballot. Nevertheless, reading indicates that more
than half of the voters were Democrats, but they were able to hold
less than half of the congressional seats, because of gerrymandering
of Democrats into a few Democratic districts.

Kent: That is true, and that was absolutely nothing new. After that —
Fry: And we have '60 coming up.
Kent: And we have '60 coming up.

Fry: [laughs] If you could have gotten enough people, you know, and won
a majority of Democratic seats, the Democrats would have been in
control of redistricting.

Kent: Yeess. Of course, that would have an effect on our representation in
Congress and in the assembly, but it wouldn't, presumably, have any
overall effect on the presidential race. So we did get control by
'60. I mean, this was one of our accomplishments — that we won the
special elections, starting in '54, when I became vice-chairman. We
won eight out of nine. I think I've hit this before, but I've hit it
just briefly.

141

Kent: It had been so easy for the Republicans to win these special elections
in the primary, with a few dollars and no real interest, and a
division between two or three Democratic candidates, which sometimes
didn't happen by accident. I mean, the Republicans put a Democrat,
two or three Democrats in, until we got the endorsing process going
with CDC, and had settled on one candidate, and then gave that
candidate professional advice and a few thousand dollars. Then we
took over the legislature, which gave us the redistricting.

You asked about redistricting and gerrymandering. Pretty soon
this became, as far as we were concerned and the Republicans were
concerned, a fine science! Not only did they hit the present
population, and divide the state so that you would win these seats at
this time, but they got in the demographers and the computer guys,
and they made the projections of what was going to happen.

Fry: Which places would grow the fastest?

Kent: Which places would grow the fastest with Democrats in them, or vice

versa. I don't think there's been a reapportionment since then where
there hasn't been vast use of experts of that kind.

Fry: This started with '60?

Kent: I'm pretty sure that in '60, we had some guys that made very careful
analysis of where the people lived by party registration and then
made some projections as to what could be expected.

Maneuvering Among California_Candidates in 1958

Fry: [laughs] I noticed, I think, in your papers a letter in which you

appointed someone chairman of a committee and said, "Get a committee
together of anybody that you want, and draw up names for candidates
for 1960." Maybe it was even before '58. It was very early.

Kent: There wouldn't be any statewide offices up in '60. The statewide
offices were up in '58.

Fry: I mean '58. I'm sorry. I'm talking about '58.

Kent: Well, we had many, many conversations about who should be the

candidate. I think there was one that we've discussed before where
in '56, there were a lot of people who wanted Brown to run against
Kuchel for the Senate. And we, the inner core of the northern
California group, felt that Pat Brown was to be the candidate for
governor.

142

Fry: Why?

Kent: Because that was where he had his strength. It was much more on
local issues than on international issues. I mean, he'd been
district attorney and attorney general, and he had not been involved
at all, as far as we knew, in anything involving the issues that
would be primarily the senatorial issues. That's one reason.
Another reason is that we thought that Kuchel was probably the
strongest candidate the Republicans had running for any office,
because Kuchel was a very decent guy, and he was a very moderate
guy, and he was a forward-looking fellow. He could get a vast
amount of Democratic votes. I mean, he was right behind Warren in
being able to just grab off the whole middle, both the Democrats
and the Republicans.

Someone once made the comment that what we wanted to get from
the Warren constituency was that we wanted to get a candidate that
would appeal to the Warren Republicans. I think Don Bradley or one
of these other fellows said, "Let's forget about them, let's get
somebody that can get the Warren Democrats!" [laughter]

Kuchel was the same way, so we definitely didn't want Pat to run
in '56 against Kuchel. Then we got that terrific break of Knowland
deciding he wanted to run for president, and thinking he had to be
governor in order to run for president, and pushing Knight out and
getting the Chronicle, the Trib [Oakland Tribune] , and the Los Angeles
Times and the money people on his side and pushing Knight out. That
left a very bad taste in a lot of people's mouths. That was probably
the tip-over for Pat. I mean, Pat was a pretty cautious kind of a guy
in a lot of ways. He knew he could be attorney general, probably, as
long as he wanted to be, and it was a pretty damned good job. But
he naturally did have ambitions.

When this happened, I'm sure he and Engle must have had some
private talks, and he was pretty well satisfied that Engle would be
a strong candidate for the United States Senate, certainly much
stronger than any candidate that we had had in the near past. So,
they had those conversations, and then as I told you, about that
meeting in Kentfield, where Stanley Mosk was not there. That was
when Brown had made this idiotic decision (we felt) , that he would
run Bob McCarthy, who had been a state senator in San Francisco, and
whom he had made director of motor vehicles , and that he had more or
less promised Bob McCarthy that he would run him for attorney general.
He had pretty much promised Stanley Mosk that he would appoint him
on the Supreme Court.

Like I told you, I was commissioned as the one to go down and
tell Stanley Mosk that that was not the way it had to be. As Engle
put it, he said, "There's got to be one more run in Stanley Mosk.
We can't possibly afford to have two Irish Catholics from San Francisco
running for the two top spots, the governor and the attorney general,

143

Kent: and me from northern California." Mosk is this very, very popular

guy. Brown had had some silly idea that if he appointed Mosk to the
Supreme Court, he would inherit a lot of the Jewish money that Mosk
had been able to raise, but that just is not the way politics works.
Once Mosk's friends saw that Mosk had gotten what he wanted, which
was the Supreme Court of California, that was really going to be the
end of their interest in politics. They weren't going to be opening
up their coffers to pile out a lot of money for Pat.

Those were the names that we were discussing concerning the
statewide offices. And Cranston — I don't know what his competition
was, but there wasn't much competition there. He decided that he
would go for controller, and then the other statewide candidates
were pretty well left up to CDC. We had not — the inner group had not
gotten down into that.

So the funny one was that the treasurer was Bert Betts. The
only reason that Bert Betts became the treasurer of the State of
California was that there was a guy named Kay Williams, who was a
very engaging fellow, and who was the chairman of the San Diego
County Central Committee. He said, "By God, San Diego is a big
place, and it's going to have a statewide candidate. We'll settle
for attorney general or controller." Pretty soon it was made clear
to him that he wasn't going to get either of those. We said, "All
right, how about treasurer?"

At this point, he picked the leading accountant of Lemon Grove,
San Diego County, Mr. Bert Betts, and said, "This is San Diego's
candidate for state treasurer." Enough of us were friendly enough with
Kay Williams. We didn't think there was going to be a sweep of the
ticket, really, so we said, okay.

Fry: This was before the Big Switch?

Kent: This was at the CDC convention. I think that we, the inside group,
had already pretty well decided, having muscle enough in CDC and
particularly having Cranston on the ticket, that CDC was going to
be asked to endorse. It was quite clear that we had the strongest
candidates going. So Brown didn't have any real competition. Engle
did have competition from Kenny Hahn, supervisor in Los Angeles, and
again from Peter Odegard. But we really worked that convention, and
came out with a very definite win for Engle for the endorsement of
CDC.

So we had Brown and Engle out of the way. Anderson —
Fry: They were out in the clear?

144

Kent: They were out in the clear. Glenn Anderson had been active in many,
many areas of Democratic politics for a great many years. He started
his candidacy for lieutenant governor. There wasn't any of us that
felt too strong about this anyway, and he really went to work on it.
(He had a very beautiful wife. We used to put her on the stand at
all times. Early on, I think they had even planned to get married at
the CDC convention.) He got the nod for lieutenant governor.

There was one guy — the only guy that we lost the endorsement for
was a Chicano name who ran for secretary of state. He was from the
Central Valley. Of course, the Central Valley was an enormous source
of our strength at that time for the Democratic party, because it
was so heavily the Okies, the Arkies , the Texans — the people who just
were going to vote Democratic out of habit. But they'd be damned if
they'd vote for a Mexican! I've forgotten this fellow's name.

Fry: What was he running for?

Kent: Secretary of state.

Fry: I know who you mean. [Henry Lopez]

Democratic Primary Election Sweep

Kent: Well, then funny things happened. One fellow that became the chairman
of the board of equalization from southern California had been the
president of the Young Democrats. Literally, the only reason that he
was running for the board of equalization was that as a nominee of
the party for statewide office, he was going to be able to name three
people to the state central committee, and that was something that he
wanted. He didn't have the foggiest idea that he would be elected to
the board of equalization. I think that was, to some extent, also
true of John Lynch in the valley, who ran for board of equalization.
In each case, they were running against entrenched people. The only
person that won against an entrenched one was George R. Reilly, who
was a Democrat and who got the endorsement from CDC. There was one
other.

But anyway, with the party designation on the ballot, and the
highly successful efforts that we had made in '54 and '56 to win
special elections during that period, and to win seats in the
assembly, state senate, and in Congress in the '56 election, we had
done pretty damn well and had come pretty close to taking over the •
state.

145

Kent: There was just a great big tide that went Democratic. It hit in June,
and one of the things that it featured was, of course, Brown beating
Knowland by a million votes and Engle beating Knight by nearly a
million votes, and Mosk way out in front.

Fry: Was this a poll or the primary?

Kent: This was the actual primary election. I think I told you this story
about the fact that I was going back to Washington. I was going
back to Smith College (my daughter was graduating). I went to
Washington, and I told Paul Butler, the national chairman, that we
were going to win, and we were going to win big, and maybe the
correspondants in Washington would like to talk to me, because I was
then the state chairman. So I did have this very big press conference
back there that lasted for an hour and a half or so, and the two
hundred people there were absolutely astounded, because the Eastern
press had just not picked up what was going to happen out here at all.
It didn't have any idea. That was when Brown arrived with Button, and
that idiotic business. [laughs] I told him, "You just tell them
that you're not running for president, because," I said, "what was the
issue that we ran on in this primary? We ran on the issue that
Knowland was running for governor in order to be president! You want
to throw that one away?" [laughter]

That's when Button came back and asked Bradley, "How do we get
rid of Kent?" [lowers voice] But they didn't do it. I went up to
Smith, and Kennedy was the featured speaker up there. I had a very
nice talk with him. He, of course, was perfectly delighted with the
California results. I brought my daughter Molly in, and we had a
private talk for fifteen, twenty minutes, or a half-hour. He had
just won, of course, a smashing victory in Massachusetts.

So then we went on with the campaign. The primary had been so
big that there didn't really seem to be any chance that Knowland
could overtake Brown or that Knight could overtake Engle. Then Mosk
told me that the only thing that they wished was that they had
followed my advice, that is, have Mosk resign as a superior court
judge before he ran for attorney general. That was just about the
only issue that was being used with any effect against Mosk. I think,
generally speaking, that is a mistake. If it's going to be awfully
close, and it's your livelihood, why sure, maybe you'd better do it.
But when it [winning] was going to be as easy as this, it was a very
foolish thing to do .

Fry: So that after the primaries, you felt fairly secure?

Kent: Oh, yes. We felt very secure. And as soon as you have that kind of
security, money begins to come in. People want to bet on a winner.
They don1 t want to bet on a loser. The smart guys all realized that
Brown was going to be the governor, and so we got plenty of financial
support.

146

Fry: I noticed that Brown even had a surplus at the end of the campaign.

Kent: That's right. In those days, very often Don Bradley and these other
fellows were responsible citizens, and they ran a campaign, and they
didn't spend more money than they had. The result of this was very,
very important to the Democratic party, because the Democratic party
didn't wind up with these guys saying, "Too bad — " as did Salinger,
Cranston, Tunney and whatnot later on " — too bad we owe three-quarters
of a million dollars, or $300,000 or $200,000, and we owe it to the
telephone company, and we owe it to the big contributors of the
Democratic party that have signed notes, and if we don't pay it, why,
the Democratic party is in the doghouse." Then the Democratic party
was in the position where it almost had to pay the airplane companies
and the telephone company and whatnot for the debts that had been run
up by the candidates.

In fact, Bob Coate inherited a terrible deficit when he took
over from me [in 1965] because even the Johnson campaign ran a
deficit, if you can imagine it. It ran a deficit because George
Killion took a hundred thousand dollars out of California and took
it back and gave it to Johnson personally, instead of using it for
the debts out here. Poor ol' Bob just broke his heart raising money
to salvage the honor and credit of the Democratic party.

Fund Raising and Key Contributors

Fry: Who were your main money raisers before the primary in '58?

Kent: That was before Ed Heller's death. Ed sat over all these guys just
like a tent. It was wonderful to have him, because he was a man of
such utter integrity and reasonableness. He could call a meeting
and chair a meeting, and he could have all the diverse people who,
after his death, splintered. Each one tried to become the number-one
guy. Ed was able to hold a meeting, and say, "We're now talking
about five thousand dollars, and how about five from you and five from
you and five from you and five from you?"

I remember one time, just for Stevenson in '56, they raised a
hundred thousand dollars in one meeting.

Fry: I'm trying to think what this article said that I read. I think they

said in 1958 it was Cyril Magnin, Ben Swig, the Hellers — was William
Roth in it?

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Kent: Roth was always in it, yes. Adolph Schuman was in it. Walter

Shorenstein didn't come in until, really, later. Then there were
guys that you didn't really hear too much about, this Ray Lapin that
I mentioned to you. He would come up with a lot of money. Edith
McDonald used to be good for a thousand dollars, and —

Fry: Who was Edith McDonald?

Kent: She was a Chamberlin, and had at one time been married to Frederick
Vanderbilt Field. But we'd have these meetings at the Fairmont,
which was a pretty good formula. Ed didn't usually want to preside,
and someone else would preside. Usually it would be Ben Swig. Ben
would shake people down rougher than Ed would. Bill Malone sometimes
did it. It was a technique where they'd invite everybody up there,
and they'd give them a free drink or two, and then they'd say, "All
right, what we're interested in is we've got a good candidate. We're
interested not in pledges at this time; what we're interested in is
just getting an idea of about how much money we'll possibly have to
spend in this campaign. We'd just like you to give us an idea of
what you think you could give or what you could raise."

Twenty-four hours later, this was your pledge! [laughter]
That was the way it worked. The "pledges" would very often run over
a hundred thousand dollars, and Ed would have very efficient secretaries
there who would take the name and the amount. [laughter]

Fry: So it wasn't really a commitment, but it was, actually.
Kent: It turned out to be just that, right.

Selecting Candidates for Statewide Office

Fry: I want to back up here just a minute. When you mentioned trying to

work out who was going to run for what, who was this inner group that
made the decision?

Kent: This was the meeting they had in Kentfield, Engle flew all the way

out from — maybe I'm getting a year ahead of myself. Yes, I think I am.
I think that was before the '62 meeting. That was before the '62
meeting, which was really programmed by Engle and Brown and Button
and Champion and Bradley and myself and Libby and Jim Keene and one
or two others. The '58 decisions were not — there were many discussions
of groups. Certainly I and all my friends were urging Pat to run for
governor, and urging Engle to run for Senator. I think that at that
time, as far as northern California was concerned, we said, "Well,
enough's enough. We can't come up with anybody for attorney general.
That belongs to southern California."

148

Kent: They came up with Stanley Mosk, and Stanley Mosk was, of course, a
very good selection on paper and in fact. He was a young guy, he
had been appointed by Olson as one of the youngest superior court
judges that had ever been, he had a very good record as a judge, he
was Jewish. He had the respect of the Jewish community and the rest
of the community in Los Angeles. He could expect very substantial
financial support.

It was, again, partially the old balanced ticket, which
sometimes makes sense and a lot of times doesn't. [laughs]

Fry: Who was in this with you in '58? Was it largely the same group that
you had in ' 62?

Kent: Well, as far as my recollection of it is concerned, I said, "Okay, if
Brown and Engle will go, then let southern California people decide
who they want to have as candidate for attorney general.

Fry: And in deciding on Engle, and ruling out the two people —

Kent: Hahn and Odegard.

Fry: — who were against him. Who was — ?

Kent: Engle had a vast number of friends. He had a congressional district
that, I think, had twenty-one counties (I'm not sure, maybe it had
eighteen) , but he just about had the stature of a Senator in a great
many ways. Then he was chairman of Interior and Insular Affairs
Committee. Of all things that, at that particular time, were of the
most critical importance to California, it was the development of
water and power. Engle was sitting right there, on top of that
whole thing. He was doing business with all the public utilities in
the state, and he was doing business with all of his people, and he
was doing business with the groups of big farmers on the water and
power issues.

He was a tremendously vigorous and interesting guy. He had real
stature, and he had all this get-up-and-go to him. We felt that he
would be great. The proof of the pudding was in the eating, when (I
think, again, I may have touched on this) Steinberg, who was vice-
chairman in southern California wanted to make some money, and laid
on this tour with Engle with those four congressmen.

Fry: Oh, yes, through the valley.

Kent: They went up, with the four congressmen, through the valley. That
was Harlan Hagen and Bernie Sisk and John McFall and John Moss and
the guy that was going to take Engle 's place, Johnson. They had
these big affairs at each of these districts. At each of these
meetings, the congressman told his constituents that Engle was the

149

Kent: greatest, and they should get behind him and vote for him. So what
we did was, we worked five congressional districts better than any
way we possibly could to start him off, you see, on his road to try
to get this senatorial nomination.

Then Engle went to southern California. He said, "That's where
I've got to spend my money. That's where I've got to go. I can walk
from the Biltmore to the Beverly Wilshire till my shoes smoke, and
I won't find one person that knows Engle!" Then he spent his money,
what he had, in billboards down there and did an enormous amount of
work down there. Then he was very happy, because he said, "Hell, I
can leave northern California to you and Libby and Van Dempsey and
Saunders and the rest of these people that I know are completely loyal
to me, and very savvy, and know what you're doing."

He spent his time out of northern California area.

Fry: Let me turn this tape, and then I want to ask you one more question

about Engle.

Fry: The question I had about Engle was about his Achilles' heel, which

was the fact that he had voted for the Taft-Hartley bill. At the
time you selected him, he was going to run against someone who was
even worse, as far as labor was concerned — Bill Knowland.

Then when the Big Switch occurred, Engle had to run against Goody
Knight, who had become a sort of a fair-haired Republican boy for
labor. This looked like it would have been a difficulty for you.

Kent: Yes, but remember, there had been a very strong Graves labor committee,
which was called the Graves-Roybal committee. That was the building
service guy, George Hardy, Bill Kilpatrick of the cooks — I've
forgotten the others. There were between six and a dozen of them.
They actually represented as many union members as the group that had
supported Knight.

Fry: The group that supported Knight included Neil Haggerty of the AFL?

Kent: Neil Haggerty, who was chairman of AFL-CIO.

Fry: So this group carried over from Graves' campaign and through Engle?

Kent: They stayed right with Engle. I think a lot of those fellows were

very practical guys. They realized with Engle running in a mountain
and rural district, he just couldn't give them every vote they wanted.
He'd be very frank about it, and they'd be very frank, and they'd
say, "Thank you, we understand."

150

Propositions Get Out the Vote in 1958

Fry: The labor issues were big in the whole 1958 campaign because of those
two propositions, one for right- to-work, and then —

Kent: Well, Engle certainly opposed the right-to-work, of course.

Fry: Did this proposition bring out a lot of labor votes.

Kent: Yes, it did, I'm sure.

Fry: We talked about those three propositions once before, and how you had
managed to get out the statewide literature, and gather funds for it.
But I wondered how you assessed the nuisance value of proposition 17,
which was put on the ballot to combat the right- to-work proposition,
it was put on to draw off backing, money backing, from the other
proposition.

Kent: I think it just about died a slow death. I mean, it was really so

bad that — as soon as the backers saw that they had 18 by the throat,
they just about forgot 17. They didn't put up any money on it. It
abolished the sales tax, as I recall, and doubled the income tax.

Fry: In the higher brackets.
Kent: Yes.

Fry: Put the sales tax back to 2 percent, or something like that. It
seems like a very reasonable thing to do, in a field of taxation.

Kent: Well, it went further — now, I don't remember. You probably have a
much better recollection than I.

Fry: I haven't read the proposition, I've just read about it in articles,

so I don't know how hard it hit the higher incomes.

Kent: It would have, I think, removed about a quarter of the revenues of
the State of California. I mean, this is the way I recall it now.
But it just dropped out of sight, it really did.

Fry: Well, it did siphon off some funds, according to the figures that
I read, from the opposition.

Kent: Oh, yes, I think so, from the opposition to 18. That's right, Harry
Lerner paid us ten thousand dollars. No, it wasn't Harry Lerner.
Harry Lerner was running the parochial schools [taxation, proposition
16]. It was Clem Whitaker. Clem Whitaker was running no on 17. He
was the first guy that I approached for the ten thousand bucks.

151

Fry: The CIO didn't come out for 17, I noticed. They didn't endorse it.
I thought maybe it would have been endorsed across the board by
labor.

Kent: No, that's funny. It was regarded by just about everybody that I

knew as a phony, as something that was put on there to try and hurt
18. For a short time, in August — that was when I got my money from
Whitaker — it looked as if it might win. That caused a lot of
consternation and whatnot. Then, as you said, the very heavy labor
vote came out. As I think I mentioned before, this was the one that
fooled me about the size of the absentee vote and the composition of
the absentee vote. Because of the parochial school taxation
[proposition 16] and no on 18, the labor people and the Catholic
people got out vastly more, percentage-wise of the vote, than they
had in the normal election. They got it out for these two purposes,
or one or the other. Then these people were Democrats, and they voted
Democratic.

Campaign Strategies: Republican and Democratic

Fry: I'd like to just ask you about the effects of the Republican strategy.

After the debacle of the Republican primary, they set their strategy
to focus on Democrats who might be wooed away.

I wondered what this looked like from your viewpoint. How did
you see them going about eroding Democratic support?

Kent: I really hadn't heard what their strategy was.
Fry: It wasn't too evident to you?

Kent: If they tried to do a personalized campaign, this was just about the
first time they'd done it, because I had several heart-to-heart
talks with Clem Whitaker and Leone Baxter and Libby. We had lunch
together a couple of times. It was just four pros discussing matters
on a professional basis — no morals, ethics, anything else. It was
what would work, and how did you do it, and how did we do it.

Of course, we'd have our own feelings about it, but we'd just
have these very interesting discussions. Clem Whitaker said to us,
"You guys do so much better on getting your money and getting your
support out of the county than we do, that there's no comparison."
He said, "As I understand it — and I've talked with Don and I've seen
some of your material that you send out to your county chairmen, and
your chairmen for the candidates in the counties — you tell them, 'You
send in a thousand dollars, and we will send you roughly a thousand

152

Kent: dollars worth of buttons and pamphlets and literature and billboards.
We will give your county so many billboards, and when we get the
thousand bucks from you, or fifteen hundred or such-and-such, we're
prepared to give you a speaker to help you. We're prepared to give
you some professional help to help you with it.'"

Whitaker said, "All that happens in a Republican campaign is
that as soon as the name of the candidate is announced, and as soon
as the name of the professional is announced, the professional and
the candidate are swamped with letters, saying, "'Send us five
hundred dollars, send us a thousand dollars, send us ten thousand
dollars, and we'll win the county! We need this amount of money to
do these kinds of things and set up an office and hire secretarial
help and do this and do that.'" He said, "You guys are doing this,
having them [the county people, Bradley] pay for it, having them set
up their own offices, having 90 percent of the work done by volunteers.
You're just making so much better use of your people than we are. If
Knowland tried to turn around and say to people in various counties,
"Now you go out and get people to join together and hold meetings
and distribute literature to other people,' it was a brand new thing."

Of course, I'm exaggerating. They always did some of that but
nothing on the scale that the Democrats had done. We were getting
along now, after six, eight years to where we were prepared to answer
the big lie, and to nail it, and nail 'em fast, and have the spokesman
that would do it. We began to be able to get into the press. The
press began to be just a little bit afraid of being so completely one
sided as they had been.

Fry: Yes, you did have a 'few more papers supporting Democrats in '58, for
the first time, unlike the complete blackout that you had had before.

Kent: Sure. It was not only having a few papers for us but having a few
papers that would publish our statements, whether they agreed with
them or not, and make news so that we began to be able to get to the
public, without having to do every one on our own and with our own
money .

Fry: Well, the '58 campaign in California generated more complaints about
unfair election practices , election frauds and election smears , sent
in to the Fair Campaign Practices Committee in Washington than did
campaigns in any other state. I ran down a list of them in an article
in the Western Historical Quarterly in March of '59. It looked like
most of the unfair practices were attributed to the Republican side,
including the Knight campaign mailer that was "To Fellow Democrats,"
in southern California. Do you remember anything about that?

Kent: I don't recall that.

153

Fry: It must have been handled down there. It was signed by two men, one

of whom said he didn't know that his name was going to be used. I
think he might then have been a Democrat. The other one was a
Democrat, but he hadn't given permission for his name to be used.

Kent: Yes. Paul Ziffren was very good on that. He would follow those

things up and he would make those complaints. I don't think that I
myself ever actually participated in drawing up one of those and
sending it. In the '62 campaign, I filed the injunction suit for
the fraud. I signed it myself and worked on it, and I'm sure that
there were people in the campaign — I'm pretty sure that Libby
undoubtedly was one of them — that sent the thing back to the Fair
Campaign Practices.

But if you could nail 'em and prove the fraud, and get it in the
press and get it on TV, it was obviously so much more effective as a
campaign tool than to, three weeks later, have the Fair Campaign
Practices Committee come out and say, "They did wrong."

Fry: There is a file of some that were sent in, I think, on an earlier
campaign. It seemed like most of the smears were pink-type smears.

Kent: Yes

paign. it seemed nice most or the smears were pink-typi
Isn't it funny that they're still going on this way?

Role of the Democratic State Central Committee

Fry: [laughs] Well, I hope it doesn't work this time.

Roger, it's still fuzzy in my mind about how the Democratic State
Central Committee fitted into this campaign. Were you still working
so closely with CDC that there wasn't much distinction between what
the two of you did?

Kent: Well, it started off with the Democratic State Central Committee. We
had very good officers up here. We had Martin Huff, who was the
treasurer, and Martin Rothenberg, who was the secretary, and Libby
and myself and Jane Morrison, who was the women's chairman. All we
had to start off with was that the Democratic State Central Committee
meets up there in Sacramento, and they get drunk and listen to a lot
of third-class oratory, and they vote and they go home and they forget
about it.

There are, of course, exceptions. What they're supposed to do
is to go back home and organize the campaign in their own particular
districts. Many of them did, and they'd go back, and they'd meet with
their CDC counterparts and with the campaign structures of the various
candidates. They would, ideally, set up a headquarters, which they

154

Kent: would share the expenses of, and they'd give a desk and a telephone

to each of the candidates, and a place where they could distribute

the literature. There 'd be some focal-point that we could communicate
with.

It would be, essentially, a local campaign. It would be conducted
by the local people. But, generally speaking, for every state central
committee person who worked and did something effective, there were
three who didn't do anything. Again, I may be exaggerating, but that
was the impression that we got. Time after time, we'd have a mass
mailing to members of the state central committee in the north, saying,
"We want you to do this, we want you to participate in Dollars for
Democrats. We want you to participate in rallies that we're going to
have around the state." It was just like dropping a rock in a well,
you know. We just wouldn't get any answer at all, sometimes. Then
there were these exceptions.

The CDC usually would elect officers and, particularly, the
president. The CDC had a lot more, really, prestige positions than
[were available to] the ordinary state central committee member. Now
the other state central committee members that you could count on —
about two-thirds of them — would be the ones elected as congressional
district cochairmen, a man and a woman for each congressional district.
Those would be elected, as I told you, and as you well know, at the
state central committee meeting. (There would be time off for
caucuses for each individual congressional district. Then, with some
exceptions, every state central committee person who resided in that
district had a vote as to who was to be their congressional district
chairman and chairwoman.)

Those people were on the executive committee of DSCC and
received an invitation three or four times a year to meet, usually,
in Los Angeles or San Francisco, sometimes elsewhere. That was a
very good group. There could be about 125 members of that [executive]
committee, because it included incumbents and certain other people.
It would normally be somewhere between sixty and eighty people.
Normally, they would be interested people and they would be smart
people. As I think I said before, whenever anything difficult came
up, I'd say, "Let's wait for the executive committee, throw it to
them," and the result that came out of the executive committee was
always much better than what came out of the kitchen cabinet.

Fry: Did you have to distribute money in the campaign?

Kent: Oh, yes, yes, yes. This was one of the delightful ones that we did
with CDC. Well, sometimes some guy would give me money and say, "I
want this money to go through the central committee, and I want it
to go to Engle," and that would be it. I mean, it would just go into
the bank account, and then a check from the committee would go to
Engle.

155

Kent: But then, we had other money for awhile. We'd have these hundred-
dollar dinners, there 'd be twenty- five- or fifty-dollar dinners or
something, and we'd collect money from them. Then we had this
hundred-dollar-a-month plan that I told you, where we'd try to get
a hundred dollars a month from each congressional district. Then we'd
have the Dollars for Democrats. On the Dollars for Democrats, it
was so obvious that the only reason that we got any money was because
we had people on the street working, asking for money, and the only
place we got people to do that was CDC.

We rightfully had a share in that money, because we, the central
committee, would pay for all the receipt books, and we'd pay all the
postage of' getting these books to the people, and we'd pay for the
posters and the literature and all the advance stuff. That might be
a thousand dollars or something like that, where no particular club
would be in a position to come up with that kind of money.

So we said, "Well, all right. We're entitled to some of that
money, and we'll divide it between the candidates. This is all going
to go to the candidates. As far as your CDC housekeeping money is
concerned, you can go raise it somewhere else, but this kind of money
is candidate money."

Then we'd say to them, "You appoint three guys or gals as your
people who will divide up the money which we had for candidates, and
we will appoint three from the central committee." They always
appointed three people that were so damn good that we'd say, "It's
not only going to be the pot of $25,000 of Dollars for Democrats, but
we have $40,000 from other sources, and this committee of six is going
to divide up $65,000 among the candidates."

The principle we operated on was that we give a token payment of
a hundred dollars, say, to every Democratic nominee. Then we would
carefully appraise the chances of victory or defeat. And the ones
who would get the big money — the five thousand and six thousand and
so forth — would be a) a very good incumbent who was faced with a
very difficult race or b) an open race where we had a good candidate,
or c) a race where the Republicans had a very weak candidate and
where, perhaps, circumstances had changed. We tried to make our
money count.

A lot of the congressmen were madder than hell at this, because
they all wanted the money. Ninety percent of them didn't need any
money at all. I caught hell from them several times back in Washington
for this policy.

Fry: Is it true that incumbent congressmen hardly ever have any trouble

getting re-elected?

156

Kent: Oh, sure, you look at the figures. It's a very rare thing that an
incumbent congressman gets beaten.

Fry: Kind of like judges. Do you have any stories about the '58 campaign?
Do you remember the moment that you learned about the Big Switch?

Kent: The Big Switch on Knowland?

Fry: That Big Switch on Knowland and Knight. That must have been a moment
of instant joy for the Democrats.

Kent: Well, it kind of crept up, as I recall. We were just tight and

hilarious when it happened, but I don't remember exactly when and
where it did.

Fry: Had you heard rumors first?

Kent: Yes. There had been rumors that Knowland was going to make the break,
that he was going to run for governor. We were all, of course,
hoping that this was going to take place.

157

IX THE 1960 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN

Kent: After '58, it was perfectly obvious that about a dozen Senators

thought they might be president. They worked and re-worked California.

Fry: These were U.S. Senators?
Kent: U.S. Senators.

Fund-Raising Salute to Alaska and Hawaii

Kent: They came out here, and we laid on speeches for them. What we did

was, we got up a gimmick which was a very good one. We had something
which we — I've forgotten what we called it — some ridiculous name, like
the "Off the Record Club." For twenty-five dollars a year, or fifty
dollars a year, you became a member of this. The biggest part of this
was not a money raiser, but that we had maybe a couple of hundred
people here in the Bay Area to provide an audience if Congressman Zilch
or Senator Redford wanted to come out to California to San Francisco.
We could tell this group, "You can come and hear him for the price of
the meal." I mean, we didn't try to make any money off of it. This
was a lunch or a breakfast or something of the kind. We had a whole
series of those.

Then one night, when we were just getting up towards the '60
convention, the question was, "Who are we going to invite for our
Jefferson-Jackson Day speaker?" At that time, we still had this annual
Jefferson- Jackson Day, which was the place and time where we made the
money .

I woke up one morning with the brightest idea yet. There was
going to be no Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner; there was going to be a
salute to Alaska and Hawaii, which had just been admitted to the union.
So we had Dan Inouye and Bob Bartlett as the two speakers. Of course,
there couldn't be a better way to raise money than to have California

158

Kent: hold a salute to Alaska and Hawaii, because of the vast amount of
business done in the shipping and in the air and the other things
between California and Alaska and Hawaii, and the many, many mutual
friends that there were.

So it was a perfectly glorious occasion — two or three thousand
people there and a hell of a lot of money. There just weren't two
better guys in the Congress of the United States — Dan Inouye was then
just a congressman, but I'd known him out in the Islands, and I'd
known Bob Bartlett slightly. There never was a better guy than he.
So we had a most successful party on that. Nobody could be offended —
Harriman, Kennedy, Stevenson, whoever. We didn't have to choose one
of them. This was the answer to that dilemma.

Political Donors in Business and the Professions

Fry: [admiringly] That was a brainstorm! I've been noticing that there
are a few entities outside of labor that sometimes do donate to the
Democratic party, and that there are donating Democrats in California
shipping and there are other interests too. Could you list others?

Kent: There's a vast number of decent people. I suppose that the biggest

single group that is not in labor are psychiatrists and psychologists
and so forth. They are pretty prosperous, and they are interested in
how things run. There are a lot of businessman who understand that
the reason why they've done so damn well is because the policies of
the Democrats and the New Deal have created a middle class which has
made them wealthy, and who will support us.

Then, there are of course, a very large number of lawyers who
have some idealistic motives in supporting the party, and a great many
are thinking in terms that they might be a judge, or they might be
appointed to a board or an authority or something of this kind. (Give
me a man with an honorable ambition, and I like him.)

Fry: What about insurance companies?

Kent: Insurance companies are notable by their absence, as far as I'm

concerned. We always had a few insurance brokers, naturally. There
had to be some insurance brokers who write their policies on the
Golden Gate Bridge, you know. You're liable to find him at a
Democratic fund-raising dinner, and a lot of his compatriots who write
other insurance for state- related things. But California is so clean,
as compared to other states — I mean, I've had guys come here to me
and say, "Well, what about your architects? Why aren't you raising
this hundred thousand dollars? We in Pennsylvania get $150,000 out

159

Kent: of the architects." Well, there's a whole goddamn office of state

architecture here in Sacramento! No, I mean in Pennsylvania, they're
all private, you see.

Fry: Oh, I see. So it's not for an appointment here.
Kent: No, no. Here it's for a job!

Fry: The savings and loan people are pretty thick behind some Republicans
in southern California. Have they ever contributed much up here?

Kent: Well, savings and loan — the guy contributing on savings and loans
would be guys who wanted charters, and the same with banks. Then
once they got in, of course — I think I put Bert Betts on to this, I'm
afraid. I said, "Hell, Bert get some money into this bank. It's
down below its share, and I can get some money from [Governor] Brown."
Well, all of a sudden it occurred to Bert Betts that that's the way
he could finance his campaign. So he commenced doing that. He'd
shake the banker down for a contribution to his campaign before he
put state funds into [the bank. (Gatov)] Well, that's bad enough, if
he had kept in on a level basis, but Ivy Baker Priest — that C. Arnholt
Smith was by three times the largest contributor to her campaign. He
had something like three times as much as his share of state funds
on deposit with him without any interest.

In other states, these things are much more prevalent than they
are here.

Fry: Is there any category of business interest in which the majority of
the businesses would be Democratic?

Kent: For awhile, we had a lot of farmers and then, all of a sudden, they

got too prosperous and they began to figure that they didn't need us.
We used to get a lot of money from certain farmers. That Ralph Brody
who, I see, makes $84,000 a year representing the Westlands [Water]
District — he was one of our boys always.

Stevenson vs. Kennedy: The Agonizing Choice//?'/
[Interview 7: May 12, 1976]

Fry: Do you want to describe your own partisanship for Adlai Stevenson in
1960?

Kent: Sure. Say, can we start out that early in '59, of course, things
were very much in flux, I mean, as to who was going to be the
nominee. We had a salute to Hawaii and Alaska as a substitute for
the Jefferson-Jackson dinner, because we didn't have to, then, give

160

Kent: a dinner for Kennedy, for Symington, for Humphrey, for Brown, for

any other candidate. We had one big shot, which happily was just off
the point. That had been a great success.

Meantime, these other candidates were just criss-crossing the
state. I mean Symington and Kennedy and Humphrey and Stevenson (really
to a lesser extent). As a matter of local pride — and particularly when
I was addressing groups of Democrats early on, as you showed me this
Vallejo speech — I wasn't actually giving Brown a big buildup for the
presidency.

We — and when I say "we," I'm talking about me and my palace
guard — Don Bradley and Libby Gatov and Jim Keene and Jack Abbott
and Bill Roth and some of the others who were discussing things on a
regular basis — didn't really think that Pat should be the candidate,
that he had only been governor for less than two years, and that he
did not have the national stature and recognition. You showed me that
clipping from the Vallejo Times-Herald —

Fry: Yes, that's March 25.

Kent: March 25, that's '59. I've forgotten at the moment (and I'll probably
remember in a minute) the name of the state senator* from Vallejo who
owned that paper, and who wanted a very favorable story on Brown out
of that meeting.

The steam began to build up for all of the candidates. Of course
the Kennedys had the money, and old Joe Kennedy was still alive. Joe
Kennedy was going to see that his son became the Prez, if it could be
done. For instance, one time I saw Andy Hatcher, who was a black guy
who had worked with us on an absolute level basis — it was never a
question that he was "our" black; he was just one of our workers. He
was carrying an air travel card which was Joseph P. Kennedy's air
travel card.

They were spending money in that way, which was not ostentatious
to the public, really early on, and in large gobs. Hy Raskin and later
Larry O'Brien came in here. This is an interesting one — did I tell
you the story about Pierre Salinger?

Fry: Which one?

Kent: Well, this is really where he got his job, which was very funny.

Marietta Tree, Stevenson's great friend, was instrumental in setting
up the Democratic caucus or forum or something. It was to be the

*Luther Gibson

161

Kent: counterweight to having the Democratic party run by Texas, by Rayburn
and Johnson. For membership, it had Eleanor Roosevelt and Stevenson
and Humphrey and Marietta Tree and all these people. She [Marietta]
called me from New York and asked me if I knew a good, tough,
aggressive, liberal PR guy. We had had this long experience with
Pierre running our local campaigns here in California, and he had then
gone to Washington, and was on Bobby Kennedy's committee.

I said, "Marietta, I'm so often asked this question, and I don't
have any suggestions. But I do have a suggestion for you, and that's
Pierre Salinger." Several months later, at the Wardman Park Hotel
in Washington, there was a big meeting of Democrats, and I met this top
speech writer for Kennedy, whose name escapes me for the moment. I
said, "I'm glad to see that you took Pierre as your PR guy. I took
great pleasure in recommending him to Marietta Tree and the Democratic
caucus . "

He asked, "If you're the guy that did that, you're probably the
guy that's responsible for Pierre having this job, because we figured
that if he was good enough for them, he was good enough for us, and
we hired him!" So they started in then building this strong and
aggressive organization.

Then in ' 60 — this again is all in that correspondence with Teddy
White — the terrible problem I had in throwing over Stevenson and going
to Kennedy, because I had such a great personal affection for Stevenson,
and admiration for him. It was just that all of a sudden the blunt
facts came home to me from intelligent, honorable politicians all over
the country that Stevenson couldn't make it, and wasn't going to make
it. It was just a cloud of smoke that Mike Monroney was putting up for
his campaign.

Fry: You realized that at that time?

Kent: I realized that. Bit of evidence after bit of evidence after bit of
evidence began seeping through to me from Humphrey's people or mine,
from Dick Dilworth, from guys who were close friends and would always
level with me. Then I went and talked to Monroney, and I asked him
the critical questions and got very, very unsatisfactory answers.

Fry: You mean he was evasive?

Kent: I said, "What have you got, Mike?" And he said, "Well, we've got the
whole South, after Johnson goes down the tube."

Fry: After Johnson?

Kent: Johnson, when Lyndon Johnson goes down the tube. He said, "Lyndon

Johnson will never make it. He's a Southerner," and so forth. Monroney
gave me some of this, some of which I believed. I said, "Well, what

162

Kent: have you got? Suppose Johnson does go down the tubes? What have you
got?" He said, "We've got Georgia." "Well, all right, Mike, I'll
give you Georgia. What else have you got?" And then he just changed
the subject and went into something else. So I just said to myself,
"He doesn't have anything."

Then Kennedy came out here. I went to a small meeting of Democrats ,
and somebody asked him the question, "If you were elected president,
would you appoint Stevenson secretary of state?" He said, "I think
any Democratic president would appoint Stevenson secretary of state."
He then had a private conversation with Bill Orrick, who was the soul
of honor, and Bill asked him the question just directly. He said, "If
you are president, will you appoint Stevenson secretary of state?"
And Kennedy said to Bill, "Yes."

So I then finally said, "Well, there's something I can do for my
country," and I slept through the night. Libby had been going for
Kennedy, and I went down and talked to her. I said, "Well, I'm ready
to toss in my chips. I'm going to call Kennedy." In the meantime,
they knew that I was wavering, so I got a call from Kennedy here in
this office from Florida. He asked me whom to send into California,
Raskin or Larry O'Brien. We had known Raskin and had not known Larry
O'Brien as well. I told him that, but as it happened, I think, Larry
O'Brien came in.

Then I called up Kennedy, and I said, "Well, I want to see you in
Washington." He said, "When can you see me?" I said, "When it's
convenient to you." He said, "When it's convenient to you. " I said,
"This is Monday. I'll see you at ten o'clock Wednesday morning." He
said, "Fine."

So I showed up and told him, "I'm your man. But there's something
I want to tell you, and that is that after you made these remarks in
San Francisco, I called Stevenson and told him that I was going to go
talk to you, and I was going to toss in my chips with you, and that I
was going to say that I wanted you to appoint him secretary of state.
Stevenson said to me, 'This is a two-way street.' I understood him
full well to mean that he didn't want this to come as a great favor
from Kennedy. He wanted Kennedy to say that he was proud and happy that
he had persuaded Adlai Stevenson, the best qualified man, to be
secretary of state."

I said this to Kennedy, and Kennedy said, "If I do it, I'm not
going to do it now, because I don't want Nixon to be running against
Stevenson. I want him to be running against me."

I said, "That's well understood," and he said, "Well, I'll be
talking to you later." Then I said, "I wish you would postpone any
announcement of my support for you of this, because I think I can be

163

Kent: more use to you working on the Stevenson people with the information
I have that he can't make it than I would be if, all of a sudden, I
am identified as a Kennedy partisan."

He said, "Well, I want you to come out as soon as you think you
can." So meantime, as I understand it, there were several offers. I
guess this is history — and may be confirmed by these guys and they may
deny it — Ed Heller talked to Kennedy about Brown, I think, and about
Stevenson. The idea was that if Kennedy was able to win the next
primaries, that Brown would go along with him. (Brown would go along
with Kennedy.) I'm not sure whether Kennedy carried Oregon or not,
I've forgotten, but anyway, Brown did decide to toss in with Kennedy
buj: kept it quiet. He did not make any announcement.

Fry: You mean before Kennedy won the primaries?
Kent: Oh, no, this was after the primaries.
Fry: So Ed Heller said, then —

Kent: This was after the California primary, but before the convention.
Roger [L . ] Stevens, who was a tremendously well-known guy in real
estate and in the arts (he's the boss of the performing arts in
Washington and so forth) had been Stevenson's treasurer and campaign
finance chairman in '60. No, in the '56 election. I had seen a good
bit of him at that time. The Kennedy people went to him. He told me
that they made him a proposition to carry to Stevenson, that if
Stevenson would come out for Kennedy, that Kennedy would appoint him
secretary of state. If Kennedy did not make it on the first, second,
third or fourth ballot, and it appeared that Kennedy couldn't make it,
that then Kennedy would throw his friends to Stevenson for president.

Roger Stevens said, "I felt that was a pretty fair deal, and not
a bad one," but a great many of the real Stevenson aficionados — Jane
Dick and a whole lot of others who were just mad for Stevenson — felt
that Roger, by being an honest broker, had betrayed Stevenson. They
were sore at Roger for having carried this message. Anyway, the answer
came back that no, Stevenson would not go for that deal. (We're
talking about brokers' convention now.)

Of the other candidates, of course, Johnson was the principal one.
Stevenson, I suppose, had a really very small group of actual Stevenson
delegates who actually were going to vote for him — certainly not over
two hundred, and probably less than that. A great many of the other
Stevenson, quote, "delegates" were creatures of the Johnson campaign,
who were engaged in using Stevenson to stop Kennedy.

Fry: And they were going to go for Johnson once they got to the convention?
Kent: Once they got to the convention. The same was true —

164

Fry: That was Mike Monroney's organization?

Kent: That was Mike Monroney's for sure, that's for certain. A good many
of the people going for Symington were also in the same category. I
would have to suppose that Engle was in that class because Engle was
very ambitious to be on our Appropriations Committee and be an
important Senator. He had all of the qualities and credentials to
become just a giant in the United States Senate. Engle wasn't going
to become a giant in the United States Senate if Lyndon Johnson was
the majority leader, and Lyndon Johnson would continue to be majority
leader, if he didn't get to be vice-president. Lyndon Johnson would
be a power in the Senate, obviously, if he was vice-president.

I don't know how many of the Symington supporters felt the same
way. I don't think that many people thought that Symington had any
real chance to get the nomination. Probably a good many of them were
a part of the "Stop Kennedy" movement at the convention. There were
two or three people going to vote for Bowles , and two or three people
going to vote for others.

At that time, Brown had named Engle chairman of the California
delegation. He had named Gene Wyman and me as the vice-chairman of
the California delegation. I used to go sit in the chairman's seat
when Engle would go out and take a nap in one of the trucks. I always
could envision myself saying, "California casts X number of votes for
such-and-such," but I knew in my heart that that would never happen,
and Engle would get word and he'd get back there, and he'd cast
California's votes.

We had alternates up in the balconies, and we had walkie-talkie
communication with them. Jim Cobey, who was a very competent and
delightful state senator, was in charge of coordinating getting the
alternates down into the seats of the delegates and pushing delegates
out and making room for alternates. So I think that operation ran
very smoothly. In the tally, as I recall, Kennedy had slightly more
than a majority of the California delegation.

Fry: He came out with 67, and the nearest one was Symington with 16,
Johnson 15, and Stevenson — oh, no, Stevenson had 63.

Kent: That's what I thought. He just edged out Stevenson in the California
delegation. Then of course, Kennedy went on to win. I think I may
have told you this before. I don't know if it would have changed
anything in my life, but I was getting just bombarded with wires and
letters and special deliveries under my door and whatnot from all my
Stevenson friends, urging me to go for Stevenson.

Fry: When was this?

Kent: This was before the California vote.

165

Fry: But at the convention?

Kent: At the convention. One more wire was shoved under my door, and I didn't
open it. It was an invitation from Bobby Kennedy to go to a strategy
meeting to plan the campaign the morning after the election that night,
[laughs] And I didn't go.

I, at that convention, had put in an enormous amount of time in
advance with an amendment to the rules of the national committee,
which would admit state chairmen to be members of the national committee.
It was kind of a forerunner of what they've done now. (I think that
they may have even gone too far now, and opened it up so that it may
have become an unruly mess.) But it had always seemed to me utterly
ridiculous that the national committee [members], many of whom had
just bought their positions and were kind of a self-perpetuating group,
would meet and allegedly make policy, and decide where they were going
to spend money, and then they'd send [the decisions (Gatov) ] back to
the states and say to the state chairmen, "Now you raise the money."

Well, there was a slip-up, and the guy who was supposed to notify
me of when I was to appear before the platform committee did not do so,
and did not make an appointment for me. A guy from Texas — they had
been knocking him down all day on his segregationist views — took this
ball. The amendment was beaten, and I never got a chance to do
anything about it. I was very disappointed, because I had wires and
letters from perhaps 30 or 40 percent of congressmen and Senators saying
that in their view, this was a good idea.

The Kennedy-Nixon Debate

Kent: We didn' t go to the big speech at the Coliseum, because we were just
all so exhausted, and [because of] the problems of getting there and
getting back — We listened to it on TV.

Fry: Kennedy's acceptance speech?

Kent: Kennedy's acceptance speech. I think it was in Teddy White's book,
The Making of the President I960, that two people listened to that
speech with the greatest of interest. One of them was Nixon and the
other was one of Nixon's closest friends. They were evaluating whether
Nixon should accept the challenge to a debate or not. Kennedy was,
quite clearly, so totally tired and drained. His speech was not too
damned good. They turned and smiled to each other and said, "We go.
If that's the kind of impression that he'll make on television, why,
we have nothing to fear. We will murder him." Of course, the exact
opposite was true.

166

Kent: I don't know whether I mentioned this before. One of my very good

friends, who's a good moderate Republican, spoke to me the day after
the first debate. We, forty of the faithful, I guess, had taken a
bus and gone up to Sacramento. We had had dinner with Pat in the
Mansion and listened to the debate.

Fry: Oh, at the Governor's Mansion?

Kent: Yes. We all agreed that Kennedy had put across the basic feeling.

This fellow called me up the next morning, this Republican, and said,
"What did you think about the debate?" We each made some points, but
I said that it seemed to me of critical importance that Kennedy came
across not as any young, naive, college student who didn't know what
he was talking about; he came across as a mature, tough, knowledgeable
guy. Then this fellow said to me, "Yes. And Nixon and his people had
to arrange that seventy million people saw that." [laughter]

Fry: So even he felt that it had become a — ?

Kent: He thought that Nixon was the greatest mistake that ever happened.

Fry: Who was this?

Kent: This was a fellow named Phelps Hunter. He was not actively engaged

in politics, hardly ever. But he's got very good sense. That was just
it, the issue of this campaign could clearly have been that Kennedy
was young, inexperienced, naive, and soft. And bang! came the impact
of the debate, of this sharp guy who was not going to be intimidated
by Nixon at all, and when Nixon made a particular ass of himself, why,
Kennedy would just smile. It really was a devastating experience for
the Nixon campaign.

Fry: What was the reaction of the audience at the Governor's Mansion?

Kent: They were not ready to just say, "Kennedy murdered him." They said
they thought it was thoroughly satisfactory. They thought that
Kennedy had come out ahead. This by-product—the appearance of
Kennedy — was not particularly discussed, as I recall. It was a long,
long time ago. And when I said palace guard, this means my friends
from headquarters. They also were many of Pat's friends, who were judges
and attorneys and supporters and whatnot. We used to hire a bus from
San Francisco with a bartender aboard and we'd stop at that fancy
seafood restaurant in Oakland — you know, that enormous one just off
the highway in Oakland?

Fry: In Oakland or Berkeley?
Kent: Berkeley.

167

Fry: Oh, Spenger's.

Kent: We'd stop at Spenger's, and the east bay group would get on at Spenger's,
and then we'd go into the Mansion and have a drink and dinner. This
time we saw the show.

Fry: I see.

The Anti-Catholic Vote

Fry: What else do you recall about the election?

Kent: Much of this is in that Ted White book. Coming down the San Joaquin

Valley in that campaign train was where I got my first real fear of the
religious issue. Guys who had been with me in campaigns who were for
Catholics for state senators, for congressmen, for Pat himself for
governor and whatnot, just said, "Look out! The pastor next door is
inveighing his flock every day that they cannot put a goddamn Catholic
in the White House. There is the dirtiest piece of literature that you
can imagine going out about the Catholics and about a Catholic as a
president."

This was in our heartland, in the San Joaquin Valley, in Fresno
and Tulare and the rest of these counties, where we would normally pick
up somewhere between 80 (and usually better than 80) percent
Democratic vote. It went down to where we lost some of these counties.
In other counties, we just barely carried him. I would have Catholics
come to me and say, confidentially, "This is really, really bad."

I think I may have said this, again, but the last gasp was a
couple of parties in Los Angeles — one out west in fancy Beverly Hills
and one way out east in the Chicano area. I was lucky enough to get
shoved into the automobile with Kennedy and Stevenson and Bill Blair
and one or two other guys. That's when I said to Kennedy, "It looks
awfully good to me. But obviously there's just one thing that bothers
me, and that's the religious issue."

To me, he said, "If it wasn't for the religious issue, obviously
you all could have gone home two weeks ago." Then I talked to Stewart
Udall afterwards, and he said, "Everywhere west of the Mississippi,
the religious issue cost us dearly." For instance, Alaska was more
Democratic in registration and in voting than Hawaii but Hawaii didn't
give a damn about the religious issue, and went for Kennedy.

Bob Bartlett told me that he was just scared to death of what
was going to happen in Alaska, and that it was all because of the
religious issue. No doubt it was.

168

Kent: I mentioned Bob Bartlett the other day, and I was thinking about what
an absolutely wonderful, charming guy he was, and how he deserved what
he got. It was the greatest transformation — like kissing a frog and
having him turn into a prince. That is, for many years, Bob Bartlett
was the nonvoting member of the House of Representatives. His office
was just next to a door which was an exit to the House of Representatives,
It was only about ten doors or so from Engle's office. I was seeing
Engle very often when he was a congressman, before he was a Senator.

I had met Bob, and I would usually stick my head in and say,
"Hello, how are things going?" Of course, there was nobody else
there. Nobody gave a damn about a nonvoting member of Congress,
[laughter] But then Alaska becomes a state, and he becomes the
senior Senator, and he had all these friends everywhere. The first
thing you know, Johnson puts him on the Appropriations Committee. Engle
was really put out. He would have been awfully put out, if it hadn't
been somebody he liked as well as Bartlett.

"My God," Engle said, "I've been pulling every wire there is in
this place to try to get on the Appropriations Committee, and Bartlett
just sits there and he goes on!" Bartlett went from absolutely nothing
to being a very important Senator!

Fry: Because he could build so many friendships when he had no power?

Kent: Well, yes. He just was such a hell of a nice guy, and he was a very,
very bright guy.

Fry: [laughs] And he was on the scene for years?
Kent: Sure.

Selecting a Balanced Delegation

Fry: I have a few pickup questions.

Kent: Well, I'd like to knock off in about ten or fifteen minutes, if I could.

Fry: Fine. That's just about when our tape will run out. We might go into
that delegate selection flap. As I understand it, Roger, the whole
point was to make it a representative delegation in order to have a
united Democratic delegation.

There were, let's see, ten people on a committee to select a
hundred and sixty delegates and eighty alternates. Then in addition
to that, about three hundred would be chosen at county caucuses, from
which your committee would also pull.

169

Kent: Our committee would also pull from those caucuses. As I recall, we

gave those caucuses a fairly sound commitment that we would give them
one out of five, or something like that, of the guys that they chose.

Fry: What criteria did you use for the selection? You might want to read
this letter from Stanley Mosk to Libby Smith. While you read that, I
want to read onto the tape the members of the committee of selection.
William Munnell, Roger Kent, Paul Ziffren, Libby Smith, Joseph Wyatt,
Harry Sheppard, who was dean of California congressional delegation,
and another congressman, also Ralph Brown, who was speaker of the
assembly, and Hugh Burns, who was president of the senate. Then there
was also a twenty-nine—member advisory committee.

Kent: This business of Stanley Mosk very definitely did not get into the
inner circles of congressmen and Senators. Stanley Mosk wanted to
have his chauffeur made the United States Marshal. This was a very
good guy, and a very competent fellow. Libby and I said yes, we would
help. Boy, when we tried to put this over with the congressional
delegation, and Engle particularly, Engle said, "By God, I get the
United States Marshal. As Senator, that's the kind of guy I want to
have running around the state [representing me (Gatov)]."

These congressmen were just furious about Mosk. They said, "What
the hell business has he got sticking his head into this?" I mean,
it's almost as if he was a stranger, as he points out in this letter,
that they excluded all his people from it. And it was clearly unfair,
in that two years later, they were going to go and insist that Stanley
Mosk run again for attorney general, because he was Jewish and from
southern California, and that they were not going to let Brown go on
this —

Fry: Oh, he'd promised it to —

Kent: He promised Mosk that he'd put him on the bench, on the Supreme Court.

Fry: Why was there opposition to the Supreme Court appointment? Was that
because he was a Jew, do you think?

Kent: No, no. I don't think so. I don't know what. There probably was

some jealousy there with Brown's people, because I think at one time
Mosk ran ahead of Brown. Then, much to my surprise, Stanley Mosk was
not — I thought he was going to be twice as good as attorney general as
Pat Brown, and he wasn't as good an attorney general. He was really
not as good. He was not acting as the chief law officer should act.

But anyway, I didn't see where you said this thing took place. It
took place down there at that Highlands Inn, didn't it?

170

Fry: That's where you met, in Carmel. I wanted to also show you another

couple of letters. One's from Miriam Deinard Golf, who said that their
material, after their county caucus, was returned unopened, so that
obviously the committee never did even see the people that they had
chosen from their county caucus.

Then there's another here from Mrs. Robbins Milbank that sort
of says essentially the same thing. I wondered if this was the typical
reaction.

Kent: Mrs. Robbins Milbank — Helen Milbank — she was a great Stevenson friend,
and so she would have been very much upset about anything that she
would have considered —

Fry: I'm sorry, she doesn't really go into that in her letter — this is a

later issue. But Miriam Coif is complaining about the lack of county
representation.

Kent: Lack of what?

Fry: The lack of county caucus representation in the delegation.

Kent: I really think that this would have been a mistake and not deliberately
done. You know, there were so many papers. We had a pretty damn good
staff of these gals that worked all year long. They were very smart,
and they were experienced, but something like this can happen. I
would bet anything that it was a mistake.

Fry: Unfortunately, I don't have any copy of the letter that was written to

her in answer. I didn't know whether this complaint was typical or not.

Kent: No, I don't think so.

Fry: Was your perception that the people selected for the delegation were
satisfactory to everybody?

Kent: Well, what we tried to do, as I've told you before, we tried to say,

"We are going to present a balanced delegation. We're going to present
a delegation which is made up of party workers. We, unfortunately, felt
we had to include a good many of the elected officials, which is a
great mistake. They should never be on there. And then we would have
to put on some contributors. We would certainly have women and labor
and minorities — blacks and chicanes and Orientals. It was a terrific
picture puzzle to put together. After you got through doing this, and
you would have achieved this balance pretty much, then all of a sudden
someone would come in and say, "Throw that guy off and put this one on,"
and you just disturbed the entire picture.

It is not as easy to do as that, and we were very conscientious
about trying to get a balanced delegation.

171

Fry: Did you have a lot of officeholders, and especially legislators, on
the delegation because of Brown's eagerness to get his legislative
programs through and mend some fences after the Chessman controversy?

Kent: I don't know whether anybody gave us instructions that any senator
or congressman or assemblyman that wanted to should be on the
delegation; we did our best to dissuade them. We said, "This will
just put you on the spot. You've got your own election coming up,
and you're just nutty if you want to get on here. But if you want to
get on, we'll put you on."

Now we wouldn't do that with a minor, rookie one-year assemblyman,
or something of that kind. We'd just say, "No, you're not going to be
on." But we would try and get people of substance and of character and
of participation in the political process.

Fry: At this point, you and most of the palace guard were pro- Kennedy

people. Did you pay any attention to who was for Kennedy and who was
not for Kennedy on this uncommitted delegation?

Kent: We tried not to. We tried to get just people who were good workers
and who were contributors. An awful lot of people in California had
not chosen their candidates yet [in February] . But, of course, we
were having real trouble with the Kennedys again, because they had
gotten themselves a little Watergate of a telephone booth. They were
talking to Unruh and to certain others every day, and probably several
times a day.

Fry: You mean down at Carmel?

Kent: Down at Carmel. They were off in a cottage somewhere.

Fry: That's what I have down here, that they were at the Pine Inn in Carmel
while you people were at the Highlands Inn outside of Carmel. [laughs]

Kent: That's true. When we heard about it, we didn't like it at all, even
though at that time I had decided to go to Kennedy. But I just said
that they should not be interfering with the selection of the
California delegation.

Fry: So they were sort of giving suggestions to Unruh, and getting feedback
from him on who was on?

Kent: And they were saying, "We don't want so-and-so, and we do want so-and-
so."

Fry: I see. I wondered if any of the other candidates had something like
that going on.

172

Kent: We never heard of anybody else having anything like that going on. They
may easily have had it and been more secretive about it.

Fry: So at any rate, you did come up with a fairly balanced delegation.
Kent: I think so. You can see from the vote that it was.

The 1960 Convention picket. Controversy

Fry: Yes. The other controversy was over who would get tickets to the
national convention. What do you remember about this?

Kent: 1 didn't have anything to do with this — absolutely nothing. I just
washed my hands of it. I said, "To hell with the tickets. You guys
can fool with the tickets. I've got other things to do." It was
claimed that they [Stevenson people (Gatov)] either printed phony
tickets, or that they stole tickets and turned them all over to wild-eyed
Adlai supporters. They had these Adlai demonstrations inside there.

Stevenson deserves everlasting credit. There was the wildest
demonstration when he walked to the podium, after he walked into the
convention. If he had been a different kind of a guy, he just
absolutely could have stampeded that convention. He could have done
it, and he didn't do it. He spoke in very measured terms, and he just
said that they were there to do their duty, and to get on with it.

Fry: The ticket controversy seemed to revolve around whether the Los Angeles
County host committee could have several thousand tickets, in order to
sell them and make money.

Kent: Sure. That's where they sent Pauley.
Fry: And that was Edwin Pauley?

Kent: Pauley felt that he had a commitment to receive five thousand to seven
thousand guest tickets for a fund-raising drive to help pay off the
dollar pledge for getting the convention located in Los Angeles. That
was a nice one for Pauley, because Pauley had made that pledge without
[noise on tape] ever having in hand any commitment from the national
committee that he would get five thousand of the seven thousand tickets,
in the first place.

Paul Ziffren and Paul Butler said Pauley had no such promise.
Now Butler as the national chairman, and Ziffren as the California
national committeeman would certainly have a very large say about

173

Kent: where the tickets were going. They would certainly be in a position
to either make such a promise to Pauley or not make it, and they said
they didn't.

Ziffren wanted the biggest share of tickets for himself, and he
shouldn't have them. Ziffren was probably trying to do himself
some good with Kennedy, because the reason we threw Ziffren off [the
Democratic National Committee (Gatov) ] was — you probably have this
from Libby .

Why Ziffren Lost the National Committee Post

Fry: No, I don't. I didn't know what side Ziffren was on, Kennedy's or
Stevenson' s.

Kent: The reason why we did it was that Ziffren urged Kennedy to come into
California and run against Brown. This, to our way of thinking, was
one of the most heinous personal-ambition, knife- in- the-back things
that could possibly be done. Meantime, he had arranged — he and Butler —
that the national committeeman and commit teewoman would sit on the
delegation of whatever delegation represented that state, so that the
first thing that would happen, if Ziffren was successful in getting
Kennedy to come in and run against Brown (and we had very grave
misgivings that Kennedy would beat Brown, because we'd had experience
that a live body is going to beat a proxy, and furthermore, Kennedy was
very popular, and he could easily have done it).

At that point, all of the leadership of the Democratic party,
going back for eight or ten years, would be on the defeated slate going
for Brown. There would be one man, and one only, with experience and
leadership potential that would be on the winning delegation. That
would be Mr. Paul Ziffren.

Kennedy told Libby that Ziffren had urged him to come in and run
in California. At a later time, Hy Raskin, who was Kennedy's right-
hand man, told me the same thing, that Ziffren had asked Kennedy to
come in and run. That was one of the few times in all my life when
I got together with Unruh. We were coming back from New Mexico. That
was that big national meeting in Albuquerque, in January or February of
'61. I was riding back to Las Vegas and San Francisco with Unruh.

Fry: This was after Ziffren was already thrown out?

Kent: No, no. It was before, because we decided at this point that we were
going to throw him out.

Fry: Oh, really?

174

Kent: Then maybe I've got my dates mixed up. But anyway, I said, "I just

can't tolerate a man that we've been doing business with in good faith
all these years doing a trick like this to us . It just can't be. As
far as I'm concerned, out he goes!" So I came back here, and Unruh
went to southern California to line up votes for Mosk. They finally
had some back-and- forth, and Mosk agreed that he would run against
Ziffren [for the office of national committeeman. (Gatov) ]

Then I got Van Dempsey and Don Bradley and — 1 don't know whether
Salinger was still in it, or Andy Hatcher — and Libby and myself. We
just divided up the delegates. We said, "This is what Ziffren has
said he wanted to do. I have got a piece of paper in front of me —
can we count on you to vote for Mosk in this thing or not?" We got
about a 95 percent return that they would vote for Mosk.

Fry: Were these letters or phone calls?

Kent: Phone calls. Meantime, Ziffren was down in southern California just
scratching his butt and doing a few things. But when they started
counting the votes, the votes for Mosk just came in a torrent from
the north, and Ziffren didn't lose by more than 60 percent, 55 percent
in southern California. But this again led to a Bobby Kennedy-Zif fren
problem, because when I landed in Los Angeles with Bobby and Teddy just
before the convention and were met by Unruh, and Bobby said, "How's the
thing going?" and Unruh said, "Well, we've got a count on it. You've
got 85 percent of the votes."

I said, "Well, that's very interesting, because we haven't taken
that kind of a poll in northern California. I couldn't tell you how it
was going to go that close." Unruh said, "Well, we have. Do you remember
the count on Mosk and Ziffren?" And I said, "I well remember that and I
well remember who was responsible!"

Fry: And he was equating that with a vote for Kennedy?

Kent: He was equating that with what he was going to get in votes for Kennedy
at the convention. And they hadn't done their homework, and they hadn't
even asked us to do our homework, and we hadn't done it! We didn't say
we had. Then Unruh began to say that things were slipping a little,
because Brown had not come out [for Kennedy], as he promised he would
come out. Bobby said, "Every time I talk to you, you come down in your
estimates." About that time, I should have told Bobby, "Just forget
this bastard's estimates, because he doesn't know how to count votes
except in the assembly. He can count votes in the assembly, because he
can destroy the man that doesn't vote with him, but he can't do it
otherwise."

175

Fry: I guess we better stop right there. We can take up a little bit
more on 1960 next time, and then go on into 1962.

Kent: Very good!

Ifreprimary Maneuvering////
[Interview 8: May 20, 1976]

Fry: On the 1960 campaign and election, do you recall the primary and the
delegation that George McLain put on the ballot — a kind of rival
delegation to that pledged to Pat Brown? I wonder if you tried to
dissuade him from running this delegation, because this was the first
time since 1912 that there had been an unpledged Democratic delegation,
one that tried to make use of all the elements of the Democratic party
in one delegation.

Kent: Now wait a minute. How about the Truman delegation that Brown took
over? That became an unpledged delegation when Truman withdrew.

Fry: Yes, when Truman withdrew.

Kent: You know, when you brought this up, I couldn't get any flash or

recollection about it at all. I don't have any flash or recollection
about it now. It was a matter of so little import to us that we just
laughed at it. There was going to be a primary slate put together
with Brown as the favorite son. That was going to include all of the
elements of the Democratic party that we could have room enough to put
on the ballot, and that we considered to be important enough to be on
in the various categories that I've gone over with you many times.

Fry: It turned out that the McLain delegation did get 600,000 votes. At any
rate, this was not considered anything that was terribly threatening?

Kent: No. This probably represented that anti-Brown vote that almost

anybody who is a governor is going to pick up, because he's going
to appoint somebody that nobody likes, or he's not going to appoint
somebody that a lot of people want, or he's going to take some position
that people feel violently about. You're just going to pick up that
many enemies. I don't know what this would be. This would be in the
range of 15 to 20 percent, probably. You just can't miss getting that
many people who don't like you.

Fry: It says here that this was all senior citizens, so I wonder how — ?

Kent: Oh, probably that was an issue that Brown was not doing enough for
them. They felt that they should give 'him a kick in the pants.

176

Fry: So you don't remember whether this particular McLain bloc would have
been considered pro-Kennedy or pro-Brown or pro- Johnson or whatever?

Kent: No, I don't think so, I don't think so.

Fry: There also were "Viva Kennedy" clubs in southern California to register
Mexican-Americans. I gather it was one of the really early efforts
in this direction. I wonder how that happened.

Kent: Well, I think it happened with some guy who was pretty smart. This
was the first time that I can recall that a Catholic had been at the
top of the ticket for governor, and as we all know, Kennedy acquired
as president just enormous enthusiasm and prestige in Latin America.
I think that was latent here in California, in the Mexican-American
population.

Fry: There was some problem, because some of them, after they registered,

were challenged at the polls, on the grounds that they were illiterate.
Do you remember any problem like that?

Kent: There have always been those problems, of the challenge of ghetto and

foreign nationalities, but particularly the poor and disadvantaged folk
are going to be pretty much registered Democratic. The Republicans
are very apt to challenge them. We had some Democrats who found that
the most effective method of countering the Republican objection to
these people voting was not to get out the rule book and the law but
to bring in very large and very strong and very ugly black or Chicano
people, who would walk up to the objector and said, "And what are you
objecting to?" [laughter] The objector usually left without staying
there for the rest of the day to object to people who voted.

Fry: [laughs] Just a little gentle persuasion there. Another event in the
primary on the Republican side was that Rockefeller dropped out.

Kent: Right.

Fry: How did this change the picture for the Democrats? Did you think that
Kennedy would be better then, or Adlai against Nixon?

Kent: I think that we thought that Rockefeller would be a more formidable
candidate. Can you stand a little vulgarity?

Fry: Yes.

Kent: The story was about when Rockefeller pulled out, he said, "The wrong
man withdrew. It should have been Nixon's father!"

Fry: Oh, no! [laughter] I think that deserves to be preserved. At any rate,
this didn't change anyone's mind in the Democratic circles about who
would make the better candidate against the remaining one, which was
Nixon?

177

Kent: That's right. I don't think it changed anybody's plans. I think it

might have helped, even; there were some Republicans who disliked Nixon
so much that Brown or Kennedy might have gotten a few extra votes. But
in California, this nearly always happens — that the minor party running
against the candidate usually gives 10 percent to the opposite party.
Around 10 percent, as a minimum.

If there's a Democrat running against a Republican in the primary,
he's liable to get 10 percent of the Republican vote. That was in the
old cross-filing days, when it could be determined.

Fry: I thought that the Democrats sometimes lost more than the Republicans.

Kent: The Democrats would lose more than that. The Democrats would lose up
to 20 percent.

Fry: Did you always take this into account?

Kent: We figured that this was almost certain to happen.

Democratic National Committee Rivalries

Fry: I want to ask you some more about Democratic party business. This

was the time when the national committeepersons were selected and Libby
Gatov won. Now who backed her? Or maybe I should phrase the question,
who didn't back her?

Kent: Well, Carmen Warschaw and Carmen's friends did not back her, but Gatov
was firmly backed by Brown, and I think Engle was still alive at this
time — I'm sure he was, yes, because this was in the '60 campaign. She
had the backing of substantially all of the northern California
congressmen and state senators and assemblymen who were on the
delegation. She had just an absolutely solid support of those who
were not officeholders on the delegation. Then in addition, I think
I told you, for the years [1954 to 1956] when Liz Snyder was [State
Central Committee] chairman, there was a fight going on between two
factions, the Northern California State Central Committee and CDC on
one side, and the Southern California State Central Committee, also
headed up by Liz Snyder, and this Dime a Day for Democracy on the other.

Now as we hoped and believed, and as eventually happened, Dime
a Day for Democracy just folded up and disappeared. But Libby Smith
Gatov at that time [1956] had the support of CDC, as far as both north
and south were concerned. And she had the support of the Northern
California State Central Committee. She had great popular support
based on her own friendships with many, many people.

178

Fry: Was it the custom then to alternate south and north for national
committeewoman?

Kent: It had been.

Fry: I gather there was some feeling that the committeewoman had to be from
the south in 1960 and, therefore, it should be Wars chaw.

Kent: Let's see, who did we have from the north this time? We had Stanley
Mosk, didn't we?

Fry: Yes.

Kent: Wasn't that when we threw out Ziffren?

Fry: That's right.

Kent: So that preserved the north-south alternation.

Fry: Yes. Libby — let me look here in my notes. [goes through papers]

I guess I only brought the state chairman list. I thought that this
would make it two times in a row as national committeewoman for the
northern California person, for Libby — 1956 and 1960.

Kent: Well, she was then re-elected in '64. That was an even more bitter
fight with Carmen Wars chaw and Carmen's friends than the '60 one.

Fry: Well, on the business of throwing out Ziffren and bringing in Stanley
Mosk, I wanted you to tell me what forces were at work there, and why
they wanted him out?

Kent: I think I told you that last time.

Fry: You did mention it, but a newspaper article suggested a whole combination
of forces, like Pat Brown and the Washington delegation wanted him out,
the LBJ people wanted him out, because he had publicly opposed Johnson,
and the law-enforcement groups wanted him out because they didn't like
his stand against wiretapping and so forth. Does that make sense to
you?

Kent: This is a very friendly article towards Ziffren. I think it is true.
When you say that the Washington people wanted him out, that certainly
wo-uld not hold for Paul Butler, because Ziffren was Paul Butler's
guy. Ziffren was Paul Butler's brains. Paul Butler was not a very
smart man, and Ziffren was very smart. Ziffren was a great maneuverer
in that national committee. But of course, the national committee
didn't really have any effect on who was elected in California, except
that Ziffren headed up a fight.

179

Kent: There was a guy named Gravel who was from Louisiana, and was a liberal
from Louisiana. He also, unfortunately, was a drunk. He was a kind
of a gadfly to the Louisiana Democrats. They held a meeting, and they
said that they were going to throw Gravel out of the job of national
committeeman. Ziffren headed up the fight — I don't know where he found
the rules that he located — that when Gravel was elected to the national
committee, he came under the jurisdiction of the national committee,
and Louisiana didn't have any right whatsoever to throw him out, except
in the regularly and duly constituted manner provided by law, which was
by the convention, as far as California was concerned. But you know,
that was not uniform across the United States. There were other ways
in which the national committeeman was elected.

But Ziffren would have been unpopular, certainly with the South.
I suppose he would have been unpopular with Johnson. But the reason
that he was unpopular with me and with my friends was what I told you
last week: We had this straight contradiction, because Ziffren denied
but Libby told me that she flat-out asked John Kennedy, if Ziffren
had urged him to come into California and run. Kennedy told her yes.

Kennedy's chief lieutenant in the West for awhile was Hy Raskin.
Hy Raskin told me this [same thing]. Now Ziffren, as I said, has
denied this. But I chose to believe Kennedy and Raskin ahead of
Ziffren, because Ziffren was a terrifically ambitious guy and, as I
pointed out, this would have left him really the one man at the top of
mountain, because all of us [on the losing delegation (Gatov)]
would have been watching the convention on TV, and Ziffren would have
been there with a bunch of nondescript people who didn't know anything
about politics, and the only leader, if Kennedy had entered and won
and Ziffren had been a member of his delegation.

The rules of the national committee had recently been amended to
provide that the national committeeman and commit teewoman were members
of whatever delegation was elected to represent that state at the
convention.

Fry: There was another change that Ziffren had sought. When one of our
other interviewers was talking to Elizabeth Snyder, she couldn't
remember. Ziffren, back in 1955, apparently had wanted the Democratic
national committeeman and commit teewoman appointed by the Democratic
State Central Committee, rather than by the delegation. Do you remember
that? Do you know why?

Kent: I don't recall that.

Fry: Here's the correspondence on it. The long sheet is the bylaws. You

might want to flip through this. I can turn this off for a second

while you read that. That might renew your memory. [they go through
papers]

180

Kent: Liz Snyder was close to Harry Sheppard.

Fry: And he was what?

Kent: He was a congressman.

Fry: Oh, the chairman of the Democratic delegation.

Kent: Then I think he died or retired and Cecil King came on. But Liz

Snyder was also very close to the Harvey family, which was Warschaw.
She was about ready to go, if Harry Sheppard or the Harveys said that
they'd like her to go one way or another, why, I'm quite sure that
that's the way she'd go. I don't say that with any great criticism.
I mean, if Engle and Brown said to me, "This is the way we want to go,"
I might give them an argument, and I might disagree, but I of course
would be inclined to go along with them.

I don't recall this business of having the national commit teeman
and woman elected by the executive committee. It seems to me that I
do have some faint, faint recollection of it, and the recollection is
that it had some merit, because the executive committee, under Liz
Snyder and under me, met every three months and discussed practically
every problem that affected the Democratic party in California. The
members of the executive committee would really have a hell of a lot
better chance to appraise the viewpoints and the capabilities of the
candidates for national committeeman and woman than would the delegation,
which was selected as I've outlined.

Fry: So they would be more knowledgeable.
Kent : Yes .

Fry: I have a final question on Ziffren. Did this cause a really bad split
in the Democrats then? Did it lead to some antagonism against Brown,
and to packing the galleries with demonstrators for Stevenson?

Kent: Well, I've heard this. I didn't have anything to do with the seating
down there. There is that — some correspondence that you showed me
last time, where Pauley had made this pledge that he would raise half
a million dollars or more, wherever it was to be, to have as his part
of the pledge, to bring the convention to Los Angeles.

Then, he claimed that he had this commitment to receive these
tickets. I think that then there was a big fight between him and
Ziffren about who was going to have all these tickets. As I said,
I was just totally out of that. I wasn't involved in it at all.

Fry: I was wondering about lines of advocacy here, and if the anti-Ziffren
people were the pro-Kennedy?

181

Kent: There was no question about the fact that this was divisive, and it
was divisive of the factions which had been a part of the coalition
of which I was a part, of Brown and Engle and Libby and Don Bradley
and Joe Wyatt and Cranston — the coalition that had really been in
control of the Democratic party. Ziffren had been a part of that.
To a very considerable extent, he had been a part of that.

Now, Bill Malone once made the remark about Ziffren. He said,
"That man is so smart that you've got to bring him all the way in and
have him right in the middle of whatever you're doing, or you got to
throw him all the way out." You could have no middle ground with
Ziffren.

Then when this gambit of Ziffren urging Kennedy to run came up,
it was just decided that the second alternative was the only alternative
that we had, and that was to get him all the way out.

I remember that I had gone to bed, and two or three of my very
good friends, the night before the convention, at the meeting of the
delegation to vote on this, came to my room and urged me. One said,
"Don't go down the drain, fighting this futile battle against Ziffren,"
because I'd announced that I was not going to vote for Ziffren. I
said, "You guys had better start counting. You're not going to go
down the drain, because we're not going to be vindictive about you. If
you want to vote for Ziffren, go ahead and vote and for him. But
Ziffren is just going to get laid like a rug."

That was when we had that very, very good count that was made by
Bradley and Van Dempsey and Libby and me and two or three others, in
which we had talked personally with every member of the delegation
from northern California. We knew exactly how they were going to vote,
and none was going to vote for Ziffren.

Fry: Was this at the national convention or at the state Democratic
convention.

Kent: No, this was at the meeting of the state delegation.

Fry: After the primary?

Kent: After the primary.

Fry: The June eighteenth thing.

Kent: It was in Sacramento, yes.

182

Delegate Balloting at the Convention

Fry: We haven't really talked very much about the delegation at the national

convention. I'm sure that you have a lot to tell about it. I can

throw out a question to start you off, or do you have a running account
in your mind?

Kent: No, you have the count of what the vote finally was. It was very
close between Stevenson and Kennedy.

Fry: Yes, 67 to 63, for Kennedy.

Kent: And then there were a few scattered votes for Johnson and Symington
and I don't know — I remember that one idiot who wanted to vote for
Bowles, and I had to bring Chester Bowles around to see him and say,
"Look, I don't want you to vote for me. I want you to vote for
Kennedy," and the guy finally did.

What we did was — I don't know whether I told you this, the mechanics
of the way we handled it, of how the vote was to be finally announced.
It was agreed that this vote that we took the night before was not to be
final, and that people were going to have the opportunity to change
their votes .

So we sat at the table, and we had a representative of Kennedy
and a representative of Stevenson and a representative of Johnson and
of Symington and of who-all else might have been there. And they had
lists there of whom each one was going to vote for. A guy [who] wanted
to change his vote would come up and he would identify himself, and he
would present his credentials, "I am Joe Doaks , and I said that I was
going to vote for Stevenson. I now wish to change my vote from
Stevenson to Kennedy." His name would be stricken off the Stevenson
one, and the Stevenson representative and the Kennedy representative
would initial that, and then his name would be added to the list of
those going for Kennedy, and the Stevenson and the Kennedy
representatives would initial that. That was going on on the floor
right up to the time of the announcement of the vote.

Fry: This was on the floor?

Kent: Well, it was first outside, and then we had it right on the floor.

Fry: Wasn't there some misunderstanding about when the final vote would be
taken of the delegation — when the final polling would occur?

Kent: Oh, yes. That was a big fight. Unruh just screwed up completely.
We were going to vote the night before the convention. Then it was
the consensus of the Stevenson people and the Kennedy people and others

183

Kent: that we would not vote the night before. We would permit the night to
go by in further campaigning. Then I started in to untangle the
motions that had to be untangled before we could change the date from
then to the next morning.

We were just in the process of getting a vote which would have
passed, and which would have gone that way. Meantime, the vote that
was on the floor — the one that had not been voted upon that was to
change this — the motion that was on the floor was the motion to have
the vote then. I've forgotten exactly how it went, but it was that
Ziffren made — not Ziffren, but Unruh — made two highly objectionable
and completely undemocratic moves that were going to prevent and
thwart the will of what the people wanted to do.

One of them was that he was going to move the previous question
requiring the vote, and the next was he moved to adjourn. He made
them at about the same time. So the vote went — 1 figured it cost
Kennedy ten votes, at least. But anyway, that's the way it went. We
had the vote perforce, right then. Then that was the vote. But that
vote was subject to this change, that somebody got in a safety valve
that you could change your vote by this elaborate procedure.

Fry: I see. So that was why all the changing was occurring up to the last
minute. I thought Unruh was a Kennedy man? Why would he want to do
that?

Kent: He was, he was. But he was so enamored of his image as "the boss."
And the Kennedys were very foolish in that. They had been used to a
boss, and they figured that Unruh looked like a boss, and acted like
a boss, then he must be a boss. Well, [laughs] the first part was
true, but he wasn't a boss. He couldn't control. He could control
the legislature. If you wanted a piece of legislation killed, it
would be killed, if he wanted to kill it. Or if he wanted it passed,
you'd have a very good chance of having it passed, because he had the
power and the clout over those guys, where he had the complete say
over what their committee assignments were going to be, and whether
they were going to be allowed to go someplace or not.

But when it came to the Democratic party at large, he was not a
boss and did not have authority over these people.

Fry: He was just trying to preserve his image in doing that?

Kent: I think so. And I think that he had a bum count. I mean, I told

him this when we met with Bobby Kennedy at the airport, and he said,
"The count is such-and-such." I thought at first that he had a count
that was as good as the count that we had had on Mosk-Zif f ren. But
he didn't have a real count at all.

Fry: In the delegation?

ISA

Kent: In the delegation.

FryL Even the night before, you don't think he had a count?

Kent: Well, I don't think he did. I don't think he had an accurate one.

Fry: Who was the real leader of the Stevenson forces in the delegation?
Was it Glenn Anderson?

Kent: Glenn Anderson was one of them. One of the ones in northern California
was Joe Eichler [spells it]. I'm pretty sure that Dick Richards was
with Stevenson. You see, that again was quite a bit a north-south
division. If you were to tally up those votes that Kennedy got, he
would have gotten between two-thirds and three-quarters of his votes
from northern California.

By the same token, Stevenson's votes would have come mostly from
southern California. A lot of it is hindsight and information that I
got later. I don't know about it. But a lot of the Stevenson votes,
as were the Symington votes, were this Monroney operation, and the
business of denying Kennedy the nomination on the first ballot, and
these would have switched to Johnson. There were a number of Stevenson
votes that I'm sure were in that category.

Kennedy's Early Try to Enter the California Primary

Fry: Moving on to the election, was Jack Abbott head of the Kennedy northern
California committee?

Kent: Jack Abbott was a pro. He's a wonderful guy. He died only about two
weeks ago. He was a perfectly delightful guy, and he was a pro.

Fry: For Kennedy, northern California?

Kent: Yes, probably, probably for Kennedy. Bill Malone was very active in
the Kennedy northern California operation.

Fry: What did the pro do in this campaign? Have their roles changed?

Kent: There are always these thousands of letters to write, and telephone
calls to make, and contacts to make. I suppose that one of the jobs
of a Kennedy pro in this kind of a deal would have been to determine
from the eligible lists that were being considered for delegates who
would be likely to go for Kennedy, and then see that the scales were
tilted towards the Kennedy supporter as against somebody they didn't
have a count on then.

185

Kent: But there was an extraordinary number of people who had not made up
their minds. That's what we were actually trying to do, I mean.

Fry: In the delegation, or you mean voters?

Kent: In the delegation. Did I ever tell you this story of the call that I
got from Joe Alsop, or is that in the letter to Teddy White? Well, it
was a very funny call. I was state chairman, and I got a call in, I
guess, January or February from Joe Alsop in Washington. He said,
"Kent, old boy! You know, this thing in California's not over. Do
you know, Kennedy may come into the primary?" I said, "Yes, I'm well
aware of that possibility." He said, "You know, he might win." I
said, "I'm well aware of that possibility."

He said, "What would you do?" I said, 'Veil, I think you must
realize that what we have done is that we have put together in this
delegation now, and we haven't finished the process, as many of the
people as were responsible for switching the state from Republican
to Democrat as we could. I'll tell you what I'd do, and I think I
could get the people to go along with me. The first thing I'd do is
we'd find out everybody on the delegation who was for Kennedy, and
we'd throw 'em off. Then I would go and get the people who were for
Johnson and Symington and for others, and I would put them on, because
we just would not like to throw away everything that we have put
together on this business."

He said, "That's pretty tough, old boy, isn't it?" I said, "Yes,
it is, it is. But that's the way we feel." I've got to think of the
name of this guy who confirmed this. I told this story to some guy
who was a Democrat and a friend of Alsop's. He said to me, "What day
was this?" and I told him. He looked at his watch, and he said, "I've
got to go over and see Jack Kennedy. We've got to put in a telephone
call." He said, "That was the day that you're talking about. That call
to you was made from Kennedy's office." And Kennedy no doubt heard
on one of these loudspeakers exactly what I had said.

All I could say about it afterwards was that I hoped Kennedy would
feel that he would like to have a guy as tough as I was on his side who
was going to be as tough on the other side.

Fry: I don't remember having heard that story before.

Kent. It's somewhere in my papers, and the name of this guy who confirmed it
to me.

186

Stevenson's Unlikely Supporters

Fry: Another person whose vote in this is not quite clear to me, because
I haven't run across it anywhere, is George Miller, Jr.

Kent: I don't want to malign my close personal friends and my — of course, I
succeeded him. He was state chairman, and I was his candidate to
become northern California chairman. But he had certain interests that
were of exceeding importance to him.

Fry: Oh, this was his oil connections. Just a minute. Let me change this
tape .

//#

Kent: That was absolutely critical, his entire economic livelihood, I'm sure.
It was exceeding strange to find dear old George Miller heading up for
Stevenson, and using all his powers of persuasion to get a bunch of
guys to go for Stevenson who had been people that he had no use for at
all. And all of his friends — his close friends — were over on the
Kennedy side.

Fry: He had been anti-Stevenson in '56?

Kent: Oh, I don't think so. It was just a question that he was under

pressure to line up votes for Johnson in '60. He used this as a way
to line up votes for Johnson, and to line them up for Stevenson.

Fry: Because he saw that Johnson would be more amenable to taking care of
oil interests?

Kent: I think Johnson told him what he wanted done. Now this again is

conjecture, and probably libelous, but it was so well accepted that
Miller was acting in the interests of Johnson, rather than in the
interests of Stevenson, although I think that they were probably really
quite ambivalent. He liked Stevenson very much. I think he'd have
been happy if it had gone that way, and Stevenson had made it. I think
that he was also realist enough to know that Stevenson wasn't going to
make it.

Fry: Does this mean that some of the California oil interests that would
normally have supported the Democratic party — I guess there 're not
many of them that would — were for Stevenson in this?

Kent: Oh, yes.

Fry: Is that typical of what happened in '60?

187

Kent: Let me see. The guys like Harry Sheppard — I think Harry [R.] Sheppard
was out-and-out for Johnson. But several others were ostensibly for
Stevenson. As I said, it was much easier to get a vote for Stevenson
in the delegation than it was to get a vote for Johnson.

Fry: So that they were rarely for Johnson.

Kent: Because Johnson, you know, really made quite a run at that thing. I
read one time an article that said that so many of the writers just
missed the boat completely when they talked about the galleries
yelling for Stevenson, and this enthusiasm for Stevenson, when in
fact Stevenson didn't have any chance at all, and there was a great big
powerful bloc going for Johnson, with a lot of delegate muscle.

Fry: For Johnson by name, not through the Stevenson group?

Kent: That's right. And then, also, they figured that a great many of these
other ones were going to go for Johnson.

Fund Raising for Kennedy

Fry: In the funding for Kennedy's race, did you find that this time you
didn't have the help of any oil monies, which you might have had
before? Or once the convention was over, did all donors fall in line?

Kent: Again, the oil money would be almost entirely southern California
business. We had this fantastically successful rally here for
Stevenson at the Cow Palace, and made a lot of money in the campaign
itself. I'm sure that we had money from the oil companies that were
based in San Francisco in that pot, but I didn't go around and check
out what the names and numbers were.

Fry: In Ben Swig's interview with us on the Warren project, he describes a
fund-raising dinner for Kennedy after the convention when Kennedy was
on route from Los Angeles to Alaska. There was a fund-raising dinner
at the San Francisco airport for Kennedy while he changed planes. Do
you remember that?

Kent: Very well. I rode that airplane from Washington to San Francisco.
They didn't change planes. Of course, in '60, the jets weren't too
much in vogue at the time.

Fry: They weren't so plentiful.

Kent: Right. But we rolled into San Francisco, and had a fund-raising lunch

at the airport in San Francisco, and Ben was that great Jewish shake-down
man. I mean, he'd say, "You sold your lot last week. We want five

188

Kent: thousand dollars from you!" [laughter] Practically, you know. Ben
shook down the crowd for a great deal of money. Then we took off.
That made rather a full day. I think there's a six-hour time change
between here and Anchorage. So what happened to Kennedy was that he
left here about, say, three o'clock, and it was nine o'clock by the
time he got to Anchorage, and then they had a parade through Anchorage,
and then they had a dinner and an affair out at the fairgrounds,
because it was still bright daylight. [laughs]

Then I think he got in a plane and flew to Denver, because it was
right around Labor Day. Why he wasn't completely exhausted, I don't
know.

Fry: Was this the time, around Labor Day, when — ?

Kent: When they were just going to start their campaign. This was the way
they were starting it.

Fry: He had flown out from Washington, is that right?
Kent: Yes. We started from Maryland, Friendship Airport.

Fry: I suppose that the usual "fat cats" were present — Heller and Malone
and Magnin and Shorenstein and Adolph Schuman — were these the major
ones?

Kent: Oh, I'm sure that all of the money people in San Francisco were there
at that lunch at San Francisco airport.

Fry: And throughout the campaign? Or did you have any problems?

Kent: Well, that campaign was pretty well financed. We had the money that we
needed.

Fry: Did you ever get money from the national Democratic committee? I

notice that you gave money to them and raised money for them. Does it
ever work the other way around?

Kent: Not really as the national committee. You're aware, no doubt, that
there would be these senatorial and congressional committees that
would be set up to help elect congressmen and Senators.

Fry: In all the states?

Kent: In all the states. There would be parties in Washington for that
purpose and so forth.

Fry: And that would use the distribution of national funds for that, right?

189

Kent: Yes .

Fry: Are you saying not so much for president, though?

Kent: Well, I expect that what happened is that there were very large

amounts of money spent directly by the national committee, in media
and in mailings and in staff and in that kind of thing. But as far
as California was concerned, they wouldn't send out a big gob of money
to the states for presidential campaigns.

Fry: I see, for local use. You do that yourself, then. That's good to know,
[laughs] There was something else that happened then, during the
election. Khrushchev, who was then the head of the USSR, later took
credit for throwing this election to Kennedy by refusing to release
the U-2 pilot, Francis Gary Powers. This is one of those "Acts of God"
that came in right in the middle of the election. The United States
had asked for the release of Powers. Apparently, Krushchev said that
if he had released Powers, that this would have been a big bonus for
the Nixon forces to use in the campaign. So he chose not to release
him, because he wanted to throw his weight to Kennedy.

Kent: I just don't have any knowledge of it at all. Ike didn't die until
after he left office, did he?

Fry: That's right.

Kent: So he would have been still president. So I don't know how much good
it would have done Nixon, because Ike certainly wasn't helping Nixon
very much .

Fry: [laughs] So you doubt that Khrushchev really did all that?
Kent: I haven't any idea.

Election Fraud Reports

Fry: Another thing intrigues me. Kennedy's win was very narrow — .2 percent
of the election. And nationally, there was chicanery reported in
Chicago, and also in Texas, where ballot boxes were allegedly stuffed.
In Texas, the watchdogs over the campaign were the same persons who
were the JFK campaign managers. The Election Board of Canvassers there
were the same people.

These appeared to be two clear-cut instances of fraud which,
statistically, would have eliminated Kennedy's .2 percent lead.

Kent: In two critical states.

190

Fry: In two critical states, and there may have been others. Do you recall
any discussion within the Democratic party about this question of
fraud and the prospect of a recount? Was there a threat of the election
being either litigated or rerun in those areas or what?

Kent: The actual polling and counting of the ballots in California is very
clean, in my experience. Some guy would come in from Pennsylvania or
Michigan, and he would talk about the fact that you immediately had
to have two poll watchers that you had to pay fifty dollars a day.
That was ipso facto, just absolutely essential. The good people in
rural California, when the guy would make a statement like this — I
mean, they'd kind of look at each other.

I'm sure that there has been ballot stuffing of a minor nature,
but also very, very little. When we have had a recount, as we did in
'58 (we had recounts in three or four races), we came out just about
exactly as the original count had been.

Fry: Do you remember any discussion in the Democratic State Central Committee
of what would happen if Nixon decided to challenge the election?
Nationally, I mean.

Kent: Of course I wasn't on the national committee, so I didn't — I mean, I
heard some of these quips that if Daley's going to steal an election,
he's going to keep it stolen, something like that. No Democrat admitted
that there had been vote stealing, or that the election had been stolen,
[laughs]

Democratic Party Fractional Disputes

Fry: Another thing that happened was that Yorty wrote a pamphlet called
"I Cannot Take Kennedy" during the election. Did that bother you?

Kent: Well, you know, I didn't see it at the time. I used it in several
elections when Yorty was a candidate thereafter. I urged in the
strongest terms that Tom Bradley 's people use it in Los Angeles, in the
mayor's race down there. I don't know whether they did or not.

Fry: In '70, or whenever that was he ran?

Kent: I wrote a blistering letter about Yorty, including this pamphlet, and I
put in many other things that he had done that were contrary to the
interests of the Democratic party. And before sending it to any
newspaper, or giving it any publicity, I sent it down to Tom Bradley
and said, "Use your judgment. If you want to use this, go ahead and
use it. But if it would hurt you to have an outsider come in and say
what kind of a bum Yorty is, then use your judgment." They never used it.

191

Fry: They didn' t?
Kent: No.

Fry: Did you have any factional disputes in northern California like the ones
in southern California between the official Kennedy organization that
was Unruh's, and the Ziff ren-Kennedy-CDC wing that Don Rose represented?
Do I have that right?

Kent: Actually, in my view, the idea of factionalism in that Kennedy campaign
has been blown up, exaggerated. Don Rose and Joe Wyatt — Don Rose was
the county chairman, and Joe Wyatt was either the CDC president at that
time, or president-designate — were working in an office with Unruh.
Unruh was working as a pro in that election. They were working very
closely together. I went down there two or three times. I was state
chairman for the Kennedy campaign. I went in, looked around, and saw
all my friends there working. They all seemed to be working together.
I asked them how things were going, and they said that things were going
fine. I said, "Any squawks or bitches?" There were practically none.

Of course, I told you I picked up this anti-Catholic feeling first.
(I think the correspondence is over there.) After the election,
somebody wrote something about the fact that Kennedy lost California for
this and this reason. Some guy called me up from Sacramento, a newspaper
fellow, and he asked me about it.

I told him. I said, "Well, we lost northern California, we lost
the [San Joaquin] Valley on the religious issue. There just isn't any
question in my mind at all. Here's the evidence I have here, what
people told me." After he put this in the paper, two or three people
wrote in and said that I was a sorehead and that I was all wrong, and
that this had not contributed, and that Kennedy was a bum and deserved
to lose the state and so forth and so on.

I then got unsolicited letters from a half a dozen or more people,
scattered all over northern California, saying, "Mr. Kent, you are
exactly right. This is what happened in our town — this is what the
Shriners did, this is what the minister did, this is what somebody else
did. This is what somebody put out, in terms of a correspondence, that
we were never able to trace."

Fry: All anti-Catholic?

Kent: All an ti- Catholic, yes. It was very, very strong.

Fry: This is in your papers at The Bancroft?

192

Kent: Yes. One of them that I do remember is my old friend Ed Davis of the
Willows Journal. He wrote me and said that I was exactly right, and
that some of the filthiest stuff that he had ever seen — he couldn't
believe that stuff as bad as this would be written by an American —
had come to his attention after the election, or just in the closing
days of the campaign.

Fry: I have two or three more questions. How are you feeling?

Kent: Let's hold it to two or three, because I did feel very bad yesterday,

and I'm getting a little tired now. But let's hit two or three, because
I'm so apologetic for not getting over here on time.

Fry: Don't let your guilt feelings damage your health! I'm curious about
Marshall Windmiller, who put out a Democratic newsletter all during
these years, I guess, for quite some time. He was a KPFA commentator.

Kent: I think so, yes.

Fry: Now what was his relationship with the regular Democratic party?

Kent: He really didn't have any. He was a good deal more radical than most

of us. Now, I was a violent anti-Vietnam person from the very beginning,
but Windmiller was much more vocal, and he was vocal on other things
as well. Oh, I don't know, and I'm just saying, but I could imagine
he would be one that would be going in for flag-burning, and really
raising holy hell. I don't think he was in SDS or anything of this
kind, but he never cozied up to us at all, that I knew anything about.

He was kind of running a super-liberal party.

Fry: Well, that whole Cuba issue was boiling, the question of whether or not
we should be active and, if so, how we should be in trying to get
Castro out of Cuba. Windmiller was alarmed about some of the things
Kennedy had said about backing the anti-Castro Cubans who were in this
country, and maybe to make it possible for them to go back and be
active in Cuba.

Kent: He [Windmiller] probably was right on a great many of the things that

he was talking about. But at that time, he was not talking the language
of Harry Truman or of Stevenson or of Kennedy.

Fry: Kennedy's position on Cuba almost put him in the Goldwater camp, because
Goldwater was coming out strongly to get those Communists out of Cuba,
too. Was that a hot enough foreign policy question to cause any splits
within the CDC or the Democratic State Central Committee ranks?

193

Kent: I don't think so. The state central committee was full of pious people
who wanted to have free elections in Vietnam, and wanted us to stay
in Vietnam to accomplish this and accomplish that, and they wanted to
put this in a platform, in a plank.

Dick Richards wrote me. He said, "I know you feel a little
stronger than this, and would you like to write a contrary platform, a
plank, that we can vote on and take our choice?" So I wrote one, which
said that everything that these guys said they wanted was something
that I would like to see happen, but that I wasn't about to see it
happening, and as far as I was concerned, it was time to accept the
fact that these things were not going to happen, and it was time to get
the hell out of Vietnam.

Fry: Would this have been '64 instead of '60?

Kent: No, no, no. I'm getting way ahead of myself, I'm sorry. This would
not have been ' 60.

Fry: In '60, I think it was Cuba. The Communists that we were concerned
about in '60 were in Cuba, instead of Vietnam. [laughs]

Kent: That's right. Well, you know, it's funny. There again, just geography.
I don't think that we on the West Coast were one-half as exercised about
Cuba as we subsequently were about Vietnam, or as the East was about
Cuba.

Fry: That's my last question, unless fallout from the Chessman case had
something to do with the campaign.

Kent: We're talking about '60. Well, of course, we see, Pat won —
Fry: And because Brown was leader of the delegation.

Kent: Pat won California, and he had thrown his support to Kennedy within two

or three days of the — I think maybe it was a week before — the convention.
I can't imagine that the Chessman case operated against Kennedy. It sure
as hell operated against — I mean, we had to have our answers for it as
best we could in '62, when Pat was running for governor.

Fry: Himself, yes. But he didn't have any trouble with getting his delegation
on the ballot in '60?

Kent: That's right.
Fry: Thank you.
Kent: Chita, thanks.

194

X THE 1962 CALIFORNIA CAMPAIGNS

[Interview 9: conducted by Walton Elbert Bean, Professor of History,
University of California, Berkeley, on May 15, 1976, on videotape
produced through the facilities of the University Television Off ice] ##

Kent: That [campaign fraud case] is clearly my favoite law case. I also
want to call attention to the fact that Libby Gatov, who was then
Libby Smith, our national commit teewoman , is here also, and will
correct me, I hope, if I make some mistakes. I think, Walt, before
I get into the post card and the fraud, just a little bit of the
background of the '62 campaign would be of some help.

The Nixon-Brown Gubernatorial Race

Kent: Nixon had just narrowly lost the presidency to Kennedy in '60. He
had carried California quite heavily, with the absentee vote. He
was behind before they counted the absentee vote, and then more than
a hundred thousand votes ahead after they were counted.

He was then doing what he has been doing all his life, and that
is campaigning for public office. Whether he was reported to be
campaigning for other people or directly for himself, it was always
the same; he was always working for himself. He'd been doing this
all over the country, and he was picking up brownie points. He still
was an attraction. He still would help the state chairman or the
county chairman or the city chairman raise money, and he was doing
this. He seemed to be making progress and making a comeback.

It's my opinion — and I know this is not shared by every politico —
that he was absolutely pressured into running for governor of California
in '62. They told him, "This was all very well, helping the Republican
party, but the way you can help the Republican party is to go out there
and knock off the governor. You beat Kennedy in California in '60,
and Brown is no Kennedy. You can knock him off with your left hand.

195

Kent: At that point, you will bring in a Republican administration to

California, and you will elect some more Republican congressmen in
California. The year of 1964 will look awfully good for the Republicans."

I think some of the rougher and tougher ones went to him and
said, "Add if you don't agree with this program, don't come back and
talk to us about running for president again, because you have this
golden opportunity to do this wonderful thing for the Republican
party, which you and only you can do." My recollection of reading
at that time is that he was really quite reluctant about getting into
that '62 race.

But he did get in, and when he first got in — I think in fall
of '61 — he was 'way ahead in the polls. I think almost two to one.
That, of course, started to slip. Shortly after that, Clair Engle,
who was one of the brightest and most astute politicians that I've
ever had anything to do with, and who was a Senator, decided that he
wanted to come out and help plan the Brown campaign of '62. He was
very, very frank about it. He said, "I do not wish to run for Senator
in '64" (he would be up) "with a Republican governor and a Republican
administration. I want Brown in there as the governor, and I want to
help in any way I can with his re-election."

So right around the corner, on that porch, we had a meeting.
Engle came out, and he had a lot of pieces of paper that he'd been
writing on all the way across the continent and before that. Libby
was there, and Pat was there and Fred Button and Hale Champion and
Don Bradley and Tom Saunders and Jim Keene and maybe one or two
others of the pros were there.

This was at the time when Pat was at one of his very, very low
points because of the Chessman case. People were mad at him because
he had spared Chessman, and then they were mad at him because he
allowed Chessman to be executed. He lost points on every move of that
tragedy. Engle made the comment, "You'll never change Pat Brown's
image before the public. You'll never make him into a big, strong,
rough, tough guy. That's not the kind of man he is. He's got many
other qualities. He's got many endearing qualities. The thing that
we've got to do, is that we cannot meet that Chessman issue and the
law and order issue — we cannot meet it head on. We've got to meet it
and deflect it."

He said, "My idea of how you do this is you say, when it comes
to matters of principle, Brown is a very strong governor. He has
very strong beliefs, and he will use the powers of governor as they
can be used. If you come to a question involving human life or human
suffering, don't expect a decision right now out of Pat Brown; you
won't get one. He is not going to make that kind of a decision on a
snap basis and say, 'Send him to the gas chamber.1" He said, "If you
want that kind of a man, vote for Nixon."

196

Kent: Essentially, we agreed with this strategy, and that was the strategy
that we used throughout the entire campaign. There were all kinds of
refinements of that theme, but that was the theme, that Pat was a man
of compassion and a man of justice, not one with utter disregard for
the lives of a human being.

At this meeting, we had one other very important thing. Pat had
made one of his mistakes. He had decided that he would appoint Bob
McCarthy attorney general when he put Stanley Mosk on the Supreme
Court bench. Engle, particularly, but we all agreed, said, "This just
cannot be. You cannot have two Irish Catholics from San Francisco
running for the two top spots in the state. Furthermore, there's got
to be one more run out of Stanley Mosk."

They were talking about the fact that Stanley Mosk had these
eminent qualifications, being a very prominent southern California
man. We had to have it balanced with southern California, and he also
was Jewish, and that was all to the good. Pat had some crazy idea
that if he put Mosk on the bench, that he [his candidacy] would
inherit some of the money that Mosk otherwise would have gotten for
running for attorney general. That just wasn't going to work.

About this time, Nixon began slipping in the polls. Don Bradley 's
best recollection is that it was February. It was one of those
glorious days in February when it's almost like this, except ten
degrees colder. But pretty soon Nixon began to slip.

The Post Card Fraud — Harbinger of Watergate

Kent: At that time one of Nixon's old friends was Leone Baxter of the

public relations firm of Whitaker and Baxter (she never admitted that
it was her idea or that she drew this post card, but it had her
handprints on it unmistakably) . She decided that the Red smear had
worked for Nixon (and she had participated in several of them)
against Jerry Voorhis, and it worked against Helen Douglas. Then
during the time that he was vice-president, Nixon had gone all around
the country making these Red-smear speeches, with varying degrees of
influence. He had made vicious speeches against Stevenson, on
Stevenson's proposal that there might be a nuclear test-ban treaty,
and that this was, in fact, a betrayal of the United States. Lib,
give me the name of that Oregon Senator whose wife then succeeded
him? Maureen — ?

Gatov: Neuberger.

197

Kent: One of his most disgraceful campaigns was against Neuberger on the Red
smear — that Neuberger was prepared to sell out the country to the
Russians. Anyway, Nixon had been doing this consistently for all his
political life. And so this new [post card] scheme just fitted in
like ham and eggs. Leone Baxter was not cued in that she should lie
about her conversations with Nixon, as Haldeman and Ehrlichman and all
the Watergate people were cued in.

So when her deposition was taken, she said that she went down and
showed Nixon this card, which she claimed had been the product of
some amateur activist, and a group of some dissident Democrats, which
was just absolutely absurd. It was the work of a professional, and a
professional that had been handling this kind of smear for a generation.

She showed it to Nixon, and we asked at her deposition, "Well,
what did Nixon think about it?" She said, "He liked it. He sharpened
it up!" When you say "sharpened up" by Nixon, all you mean, all you
mean is that you get the lies and the dagger in deeper. That's just
what had happened. We never did find out in what way Nixon had
sharpened it up, because she clammed up when we took her deposition.
She never admitted even that he had said that to her again.

But anyway, we had her deposition early on that she had talked
with Nixon about this, and that he had thought it was a good idea. A
little while later, we took Haldeman' s deposition to Jerry O'Gara, who
was a municipal judge and a tremendously competent man. He took Bob
Haldeman' s deposition, and Haldeman said, "Oh yes, I saw that. I
read it, and I showed it to Klein — " this is Herb Klein, " — and I
showed it to [Murray] Chotiner." Strangely enough, these were two
names that we Democrats knew. We knew them as bad eggs, as Nixon
lieutenants, and people that you couldn't trust. But we didn't know
the names of the rest of the team which surfaced in that case.

I might just as well name off the team now . The team was Nixon,
the candidate; Haldeman, the statewide manager; Kalmbach, the southern
California manager; Ehrlichman, manager of the Los Angeles office;
Stans, the finance chairman; Chotiner, the consultant; Klein, the
pressman; and Chapin and Ziegler, with the soap behind their ears,
just out of college, who were helping in some nefarious ways. But it
was a rundown of the Watergate crew that were involved in this
particular fraud.

Well, Haldeman said that he'd showed it to Chotiner and Klein,
and they had not disagreed, and we asked him if he'd shown it to Nixon,
and he said, "Oh, no." "Did you mention it to Nixon?" He said, "Oh,
I might have mentioned it to him once, casually." He said the same
thing about Weinberger and Martin, that he'd mentioned it to them once
casually.

198

Kent: Then we took Leone Baxter's deposition and, happily, this is preserved
in Frank Mankiewicz's book,* because two copies of this transcript
disappeared from the desk back of my desk in San Francisco. I don't
know whether it was thrown out, or whether somebody stole it, but they
might easily have had an interest in stealing it, because Leone
Baxter puts the finger on Mr. Nixon and Mr. Haldeman in the most
unmistakable manner. [reading] Quesiton: "When was your next
meeting with Mr. Nixon concerning the campaign?"

Baxter: "I don't think I had another meeting with him until I
went over a copy with him and Mr. Haldeman."

Bean: Excuse me, just before you read the question, I'd like to move you
back into the light. You sort of leaned forward into the shade —
[people rearrange themselves]

Kent: Are we tied in? [response inaudible] "I don't think I had another

meeting with him until I went over the copy with him and Mr. Haldeman."

"About what date was that?"

"All of this seems to have transpired along about the same timing.
Very concentrated in late August, early September of '62, as I recall."

"Where did the meeting take place — the one with you and Mr. Nixon
and Mr. Haldeman to go over the copy?"

"At Mr. Nixon's home. That is, Bel-Air it was at that time.
Bel-Air, that's right."

"Who was present besides you and Haldeman?"

"That's all."

"How long did the meeting last?"

"An hour, probably."

"Did you have with you, or did Mr. Nixon or Mr. Haldeman have
proofs of this exhibit, the post card poll or something similar to
it?"

"Yes, they had them."

*Perfectly Clear: Nrxon from Whittier to Watergate, New York: Times
Books, 1973.

199

Kent: "Did you and they discuss the proofs?"
"Yes."
"What was the substance of the discussion?"

"The substance of the discussion was contained in the card,
whether it was valid, legal and proper, whether it would be
effective."* (You can be sure that that latter was the thing that
they were more interested in than anything else.)

"Was this in proof form, typed copy, or what?"

"They had had the proof earlier, some days earlier, directly
from the printer. They had the card as well a few days before. They
had the two things, the proof and the proof of the copy as it went
to the printer from Mr. Joe Robinson, and the proof when it came back."**

Now there, you see, was the smoking pistol of the '62 case, as
the telephone conversation of June 23 was the smoking pistol of
Watergate, that Nixon knew all about that card. That testimony was put
before Judge Byron Arnold and was the basis of the findings that he
made. [goes through papers] [Kent's position in sun corrected again
by cameraman]

I hold here a copy of the judgment. If anyone wants to look at
it, it was in San Francisco Superior Court, number 526150. It's
Judge Arnold's opinion. I'll just read a little of it. This was
after he had had the opportunity of reading all the depositions and
had many conferences with lawyers.

He says, "The court having read the depositions — " [cameraman
interrups and moves Kent again] "The court having read the depositions
of six witnesses taken in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and all having
been admitted into evidence, and the court having examined the proof,
both oral and documentary, and further evidence having been presented
and admitted — "*** and then he went on and made these findings.

This is the thing that made Byron Arnold, who is a fine judge, so
completely mad at Caspar Weinberger, because Weinberger said that
this was a judgment that was stipulated, and therefore did not have
the effect of a judgment where the judge had ruled on the evidence.
Byron Arnold was so mad he could scarcely speak. He said, "Is
Weinberger trying to say that an attorney can come in to me with a
piece of paper and say, 'We agree to this. Please sign it,' and I'll
sign it?"

*Ibid.
**Ibid.

***Democratic State Central Committee v. Committee for the
Preservation of the Democratic Party

200

Kent: I didn't get word of this until it became a little stale, so I wasn't
able to really chew Weinberger out on it. This is what was ordered,
and the judge then decreed.

"In October '61, Richard M. Nixon announced that he was going to
run for governor. In October of '62, a circular to Democrats was
drafted which purported to express the concern of genuine Democrats
for the welfare of the Democratic party, and their fear that the party
would be destroyed, if candidates supported by the California
Democratic Council, herein after called the CDC, including primarily
Governor Brown, were elected in the November 1962 election." That
says the gist of the fraud and the complaint about as well as it can
be said.

"It was drafted in the form of a post card poll addressed to
Democrats. This post card poll was 'reviewed, amended, and finally
approved by Mr. Nixon personally in the form attached hereto as
Exhibit A. It criticized the policies of the CDC and the Democratic
candidates it supported, notably Governor Brown, and asked the
addressee Democrats to express their preference either for Governor
Brown and the other statewide Democratic candidates, or their Republican
opponents, headed by Mr. Nixon.

"Nowhere in Exhibit A or letters mailed by defendent committee
was it stated that the defendent committee and its mailing of
Exhibit A were supported and financed by the Nixon for Governor
finance committee. Mr. Nixon and Mr. Haldeman approved the plan and
project as described above, and agreed that the Nixon campaign
committee would finance the project."* Now, this is the gravamen of
the fraud. This, in the CIA parlance, is known as "black propaganda."
You get a message to the enemy which does not purport to come from
you but purports to come from within his own camp and, therefore is
entitled to more credence than one from this group that comes from
outside.

One of the nuances of that would be — that this is being paid for
by the people within the camp sending the message. Now the actual
payment for this gambit was $70,000, which was paid to Joe Robinson,
who was a signature collector here in California. Joe Robinson was
told to get out nine hundred thousand or a million copies of this
card with a return address, and to send it to conservative Democrats.
Now that was perhaps a minor part of the fraud, but it was a part of
the fraud. The way California voters tend to behave is that if there's

*Ibid.

200a

^ This is not a plea for any candidate. This is to ask you: Are you aware of
what has happened to our Party during the past four years? Many Democrats
like ourselves are shocked over the domination of the Democratic Party by the
CDC (California Democratic Council). Yet most Democrats are frankly revolted
by the CDC leadership's objectives and viewpoint which have included:

Admitting Red China into the United Nations

Moratorium on U. S. nuclear testing

Allowing subversives to speak on college campuses

Abolition of State and Federal loyalty oalhs

Abolition of the House Committee on Un-American Activities

Foreign aid to countries with Communist governments

Refusal to bar Communists from the Democratic Party •.

These certainly are not the Democratic Party objectives. {£) Yet, operating be
hind the Democratic Party screen, the CDC is directing the Party, is capturing
and dominating Democratic candidates.

Our present Party ticket is composed entirely of CDC nominees, originally pro
posed, sponsored and handed to the Party by the CDC Convention in Fresno
four years ago. Whether willingly or weakly, Governor Brown, who was accepted
by the CDC and endorsed by them, has become their captive. ££ His capitu
lation is evident in his statement to the press that he would veto any
legislation damaging to the CDC. He told their convention in January, 1962,
"The CDC is the strongest political organization in America." He calls it
"my strong right arm." He says, "I am proud of my membership in the CDC."

Who are other nominees loaded on our Party by the left-wing CDC? Generally
they are men either approving CDC objectives, or undistinguished, unprepared
for high office or weak and unwilling to oppose the CDC.

^ The grave situation was demonstrated at the Democratic State Con
vention where CDC leaders forcibly prevented adoption of a simple resolu
tion to bar Communists from the Democratic Party organization. After the
defeat, a Party spokesman told the press, "If we refuse to ban Communists
from the Democratic Party — it means we welcome theml"

As a Democrat — what do you feel we can do to throw off the shackles of this
left-wing minority, now so powerful it can dictate the course of our Party?

Should wo act now and in the time ahead, to reclaim our Party and restore Party
leadership selection to the rank and file membership? Should we repudiate the
arrogant assumption that free men dedicated to revered Democratic' principles
will blindly follow the dictates of those whose objectives are foreign to our own?

(T) We believe our one great weapon is a passive weapon —simple
refusal to 30 along with them. We can break the power of the CDC by
refusing to elect their candidates. Or we can take acceptable Republicans — if we
can find any. ^jj Whatever we do, in the name of tha Democratic Party —

&£& tyrt l&eilwt gatwia U tie CDC!

Committee for the Preservation of the Democratic Party in California

National Oil Bldg., 609 S. Grand, Lot Angeloi • C«ntral ConcuUr Bldg., 607 Market, S«n Frindico

200b

POLL SELECTION

.1 '

' In view of the increasing domination of tha Demociv»tic- v

Party by -the CDC (California Democratic Council], we
, aro anxious to obtain an opinion sampling of California
Democrats. Please fill out and mail before October 23.

Do you

1. The CDC leadership viewpoint favors: Agree Disagree

Admitting Red China into the United Nation* ....... Q O

Moratorium on U. S. nuclear testing ....CD .CH

Allowing subversives the freedom of college campuses ..... Q Q

Abolition of State and Federal loyalty oathi O . |~] ;

Abolition of the House Committee on Un-American Activities , , , Q

Foreign aid to countriel with Communist government! ..... O '

Complete national disarmament at ultimats goal • . • O CD

Refusal to bar Communistj from the Democratic Party ..... f~l

2. Can California afford to have a Governor Yes No

indebted to the CDC — who has stated he will veto any legislation
damaging to the CDC — who calls it "my strong right arm" — who
i declares, "I am proud of my membership in the CDC" | ]

3. What course of action should bo taken

by independent Democrats who don't belong to the CDC and want no
i part of it?

Demand that Democratic candidates disclaim and abandon the CDC . O • ' D

Refuse to support candidates who don't renounce the CDC |~~|

! Support • Republican candidate rather than sell out the Party and the
! State Government to CDC objactives [] . Q

4. Who in your opinion will win in November?

i Governor: Secretary of State: U. S. Senate:

Brown . . . O R°« . . . . n Richards . . . Q

! Nixon . . . D Jordan . . . , Q Kuchel . . . Q

~ j. .

' If. Governor: Controller: Supt. of Public

; Anderson . . Q Cranston . . Q Instruction:

i Christopher. . Q Reagan . . . [] Richardson . . £]

' Attorney General: Treasurer: Rafferty . „ • D

i . Mosk . . . . O Betts . . . . Q

Coaklcy . . . Q Busterud . . . Q : • • "

If you, too, feel it important to preserve our Democratic processes and cut
off the CDC handcuffs, please send a contribution today to the Treasurer,

Committee lo Preserve the Democratic Party in California,
Crocker Anglo Bonk, One Montgomery Street, San Francisco, California

And please wri/e us your views.
..Committee for the Preservation of the Democratic Party in California

201

Kent: a heavily Republican precinct with a half-a-dozen Democrats in it, the
Democrats in that precinct are more likely to vote Republican than
Democrats that are in a heavily Democratic one.

So Robinson was to select the million Democrats that he was to
send this post card to, from conservative precincts. He was, as I
said, paid $70,000 to do this job. About this time, these stooges
formed this committee, which was of about five or six guys, headed
by a fellow named Marlin that we never heard of — Lib, or myself, or
Bradley. We'd never heard of any of these people as being prominent
Democrats that were on this committee. Then they began to issue
statements about where they were getting their money, and what they
were doing.

Then they would put out these sheets, and here one of these
typical things — it's hard to believe that people would put out such
blatant fraud. [reads] "One. How are you being financed?"

"We have appealed to Democrats throughout the state, and so far,
their support has been most .encouraging and helpful. An appeal has
been sent to some fifty thousand registered Democrats, along with a
poll on their reactions to the CDC. We are hopeful that we will
receive enough financial support to expand this list to some one
million Democrats."

"Are you receiving any Republican money?"

"We are not refusing any contributions, and naturally, the
Republicans are interested in this campaign. We are considering
extending our fund appeal to Republicans, as we believe all citizens
should be concerned with the power-grabbing strategy of the CDC,"* and
so forth.

Then it went on, "Who makes up your committee?" and so on. Well,
the funds that paid for this was $70,000 from the Nixon for Governor
campaign committee. One of the reasons that we got a restraining
order was that they sent out one-half million post cards asking for
money from Democrats to finance this appeal, and that is against the
law, to ask for money from Democrats without having the permission of
the state chairman, the national chairman, and committeeman, and so
forth.

*Ibid.

202

Kent: From the half-million mailing, they got $368.50. So all this stuff
about, "We were financed by Democrats, and we're hoping to get some
help from Republicans," is just the most bald-faced lie that you could
possibly imagine. Again, it's just Nixon and, particularly, the
groups of Republicans that had been around him.

The Cropped Photograph

Kent: One of the interesting sidelights that turned up — and this I commented
on some time before — when you have one fraud like this, and then
another fraud that's somewhat similar shows up, one tends to reinforce
the other. In this case, we got some cropped photographs. I went
to considerable pains to try to see if the originals were still in
existence. They were cropped photographs from 1962. I have never
had as much fun in politics as I did with those photographs, because
I found a photograph taken of Governor Brown in Sacramento, leaning
down with his benign smile to a crippled girl, which was to start off
the March of Dimes drive. They had clipped the little girl out, and
underneath it said, "The CDC is my strong right arm, and I want to do
everything I can to see that it grows and prospers," and so forth and
so on.

The next one was a little Laotian dancing girl and Premier
Khrushchev. And she had been clipped out. And it said, "Mr. Khrushchev,
Mr. Premier, we who admire you, we who applaud you, welcome you to
California." This picture of Khrushchev was on the other side of the
photo [opposite Governor Brown. (Gatov) ]

At this point, we had talent and we had time, and we had a
little money. So we had these blown up into four-by-fours, about the
size of that, even bigger than those little pictures you've got
there. We'd have the regular picture, the genuine picture, and then
the cropped picture, and then stand up there in the deposition with a
pointer and say, "Now here is a picture that was taken, and here's
what they did with it! This is what I have been telling you about it.
Now let me read you from the post card." This is all part and parcel
of the same thing.

They got some of the most equivocal answers from Haldeman and
from Weinberger that you can imagine about these pictures. They
disavowed one of them. They said one of them was by a Karl Prussian,
who was supposed to be an ex-FBI guy. But Haldeman said, "They are
pictures of Governor Brown, and he has said things like that." Just
disregarding the fact that they were manufactured and fraudulent.

203

Kent: We then worked on this case. We had Jerry O'Gara, who was a highly
competent lawyer. He took depositions of Stans and of Haldeman and
of Weinberger and of Joe Martin. I'm just in time to pay tribute
and compliment to Joe Martin. That was Joseph Martin, Jr., who had
been in the press as a Republican on a number of occasions. He was
one of the negotiators for the disarmament treaty. But before that,
he was national committeeman, for instance, in California in 1968,
I guess, when he resigned because he supported Rockefeller against
Nixon, and he very properly took the position that he couldn't hold
a party position and take a partisan position as between candidates.

We had spent between about ten and fifteen thousand dollars,
and it came hard to raise that kind of money. We had not named
Nixon and Haldeman as defendants. We clearly had, as the judgment
shows, more evidence against Nixon and Haldeman than we had against
the stooges. But if we had named Nixon and Haldeman as defendants,
we'd have been up against the finest New York team of lawyers and
we'd have had demands for depositions to be taken in the East, and
this, that and the other thing. We would have been into a hundred,
a hundred and fifty thousand dollars of expense.

They, on the other hand, didn't want to have Nixon's deposition
taken because it would have been highly embarrassing to have asked
Nixon all these questions that we now had the basis of. So we more
or less struck a balance before this took place. I had gone in right
after the election with lawyers for Robinson and for these stooges
and for the others to see Judge Arnold. He said, "Well, now, Roger,
I suppose you're going to drop the lawsuit. You won the election."
I said, "Not me." He said, "What's wrong? What've you got to gain?"
I said, "We don't think fraud is funny. And furthermore, we think
maybe that if we bring this thing to a point and prove that it was a
fraud, it will prevent these guys from doing it in the future (we were
shown to be just naive damn fools, because they went right ahead with
Watergate and everything else) . We also thought that it would be
easier to prove our case when they did things like this [later] —
if we proved it [then. (Gatov) ]

Well, by God, came 1972. I wrote this thing up, I sent it to
the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Sacramento Bee,
and the Willows Journal, where I had a friend who ran the Willows
Journal. The only one that published the fact of this '62 case, and
of the involvement of Nixon and Haldeman in this fraud was the
Willows Journal, before the election of '72. Now, I am told that
there were a few others that did. [confers with cameraman]

204

How the Post Card Came to Light

Bean: How did it happen that the Democratic State Central Committee became
aware that this Nixon campaign committee was disseminating these
phony, allegedly Democratic pieces of literature?

Kent: Very interesting. We got probably three or four days' notice of
this, because they were going to publish it anyway, and they were
just getting ready to publish it. But one girl called up and said
that her mother was addressing things for the Democratic party, for
the Committee to Preserve the Democratic Party, and called Democratic
headquarters and said, "What shall I do with them?" The very sharp
secretary down at Democratic headquarters said, "Bring 'em right down
here." [laughter] So they were brought down right then to Democratic
headquarters, and she immediately got in touch with me and got one
over to me, and I immediately got in touch with Jerry O'Gara and Jerry
Marcus and other of the lawyers who eventually worked on the case.
They saw this thing, and we looked at it.

We immediately identified who was putting it out by the postal
permit. We just went and checked the postal permit and found out the
magnitude of the mailing, which at that point was up to more than a
half-million. So we knew that this had to be a Republican mailing.
There couldn't be that many Democrats that were that mad at CDC that
would put up what we figured was seventy-five to a hundred thousand
dollars for this gambit.

We immediately commenced working on the complaint, and the
restraining order, and the temporary injunction.

Bean: And what were the then-unpopular opinions that this campaign sheet
attributed to the CDC?

Kent: So many of them have changed around completely that it's amusing.
These awful things were that the CDC leadership viewpoint favors
admitting Red China into the United Nations, a moratorium on nuclear
testing, allowing subversives the freedom of college campuses,
abolition of state and federal loyalty oaths, abolition of the House
Committee on Un-American Activities, foreign aid to countries with
Communist governments, complete national disarmament as an ultimate
goal — I never heard anything like that! — refusal to bar Communists from
the Democratic party. And then, "Can we afford to have a governor who
adopts those points of view?"

205

[Interview 10:* May 25, 1976] ##

Fry: In this interview on the twenty-fifth of May in your garden, I'd like

to ask you about something you told me (this was a while ago) about
the delivery between Caspar Weinberger and Leone Baxter of the copy
of the so-called post card poll, which established the fact that they
were probably the honest ones in all of this, and everybody else was — ?

Kent: Well, no, I wouldn't go so far as to say that. [laughter] What I'd
say is that at the time this was being put together, getting ready
for final clearance by Nixon and Haldeman (and that appears clearly
in Leone Baxter's deposition). It was right around the twenty-fifth
of September, or of October, some time around in there. They had the
finals ready to go. They approved them — she, Nixon, and Haldeman.

Well, anyway, just before that, and probably just before she went
to Los Angeles, we subpoenaed Sparkie's [Delivery Service] for any
delivery between Leone Baxter and Caspar Weinberger. We came up with
I think either three or four deliveries right on those critical days.
We asked Leone Baxter and we asked Cap Weinberger if these had anything
to do with the post card and the poll and so forth. There were
indignant denials, and we asked what they were, and they said, "Well,
we could never tell you what they [the deliveries] were, because we
send things to each other all the time. It might have been an article
in TIME that somebody clipped out." [laughter] This boggles the
imagination of the rational man. This was a vast undertaking in terms
of expenditures of money and effort in 1962 — not so much today, but
this was much the most massive expenditure of money and of effort by
the Nixon campaign that went on this that campaign. That Leone Baxter
and Weinberger weren't talking about it is absurd, because Leone
Baxter's deposition, discloses the fact that she went down and
approached Nixon with it — ([I don't know] whether this took place in
Florida or in southern California; I know she went down in Forida and
saw him one time) .

But anyway, he liked it. I think I told you or I told Walt
[Bean] before that Nixon read it, and he sharpened it up!

Fry: Yes, that's what you said on the videotape.

Kent: Yes, and there's only one way in which Nixon would sharpen something
up, and that is to get out the daggers to stick into somebody on a
Red smear. That is what had happened. Leone Baxter said she had
talked to Nixon about it, and then we find from Judge [Byron] Arnold's
decision that Nixon and Haldeman approved it, and that it was going
to go forward. Weinberger was the state [Republican party] chairman,
and if he wasn't involved in a critical part of the governor's
election, then he wasn't a very good state chairman, and he was. He
was a very active and effective Republican political figure.

*Conducted by Amelia R. Fry.

206

Kent: It would be almost certain that he knew about it, and that these

deliveries were for him to examine it before Baxter took it to Los
Angeles to show to Nixon and Haldeman. There was one other thing,
Chita, that I mentioned that I thought somebody might be interested
in. That is, the basis for the restraining order were three
technicalities. And the three technicalities, to the best of my
recollection, were that it didn't have the name of the printer on the
literature, and it did not have the name of any committee or of any
members of any committee. And it asked for money — in a rather indirect
way, but Judge Arnold went along with us, and said that it did ask for
money in the name of the Democratic party. That was, in the name
of the Committee for the Preservation of the Democratic Party, without
the approval of any of those named in the code as authorized to give
approval. Before you can make a solicitation in the name of a
political party, you ask the state chairman, the vice-chairman, the
national committeeman, committeewoman. And within a county, it's the
county chairman.

None of that was in there, so that, bang! we were entitled to a
restraining order with no question about it, on these three
technicalities. Then, of course, we went right ahead and charged,
which we knew had to be the truth, that this was a Republican game and
not a Democratic game, and this committee was a phony.

That, eventually, through the deposition, and by order of the
judge, it was proved on the record that that was the case.

Fry: In getting the depositions, did you personally take part?

Kent: I didn't, no. We had Jerry O'Gara handling it almost exclusively and
doing an excellent job.

Fry: You mentioned to me in an interview before that as counterparts in
campaigns, sometimes you'd have lunch with Leone Baxter, and —

Kent: And Libby Smith and Leone's husband, Clem Whitaker. This was never

during campaigns. This was in off-seasons that we'd — they might call
us up (I don't think we ever called them up) and say, "How do things
look to you? How'd you like to have lunch?" We'd say sure, and we'd
go over and talk to them. We'd go over and talk professional politics.

Fry: I wondered if this sort of rapport between you affected Leone's
testimony in this case. Would that have anything to do with it?

Kent: I think that she might have — Let's say she might have been more on
her guard, if it was a person that she regarded as a stranger and an
enemy. I think she regarded me as a political antagonist at all
times, but not as an enemy.

207

Fry: Not as a personal enemy.
Kent: Yes.

Press Reaction

Fry: One thing puzzles me. This issue didn't really hit the fan in the

news media as one would expect, looking back on it from today. One
thing I noticed was — I think you caught this — the post card was first
brought to the attention of your office on a Saturday. The following
Monday, I believe, was when you went to court and got the temporary
restraining order. That same Monday was when Kennedy got on television
and announced that Russia had missiles in Cuba. That whole Cuban
crisis started. I didn't know whether that was a factor in this or
not. Is my assumption correct, that not much was made out of this —
particularly in the electronic media?

Kent: Well, we did everything that we could with it. Of course, we didn't
have all this — we did pretty well with the electronic media, with
those cropped photographs. But that we only got —

Fry: And that was a visual thing.

Kent: That was a visual thing. But that we only got within the last two

or three days [of the campaign] . We picked up the cropped photographs
and we put those together. We were competing with, I'm sure, the Cuban
missile crisis. I know, because I was at a couple of meetings where
this was discussed. It was right at the tag end of the campaign.

Fry: You mean the meetings with the press or — ?

Kent: No, no, meetings with Pat Brown and the committee [to decide] what

to do about it, and what he could do to help his campaign and to help
Kennedy, so that I know that that was interfering very, very sadly
with any domestic news that would be going on about the campaign.

We got pretty good stories. Mike Harris wrote a pretty good
story. Mike was pretty mad in '72, when I finally got to the
Washington Post. The way it got to the Washington Post was not through
me sending me to the Washington Post — this was in '72 — but me sending
it to the Democratic National Committee, and those damn fools finally
began getting it to the press. They got it to the Washington Post,
and they got it to more and more other newspapers.

Fry:

This was when?

208

Kent: In '72. But you see, one of the reasons that it was not getting a
big play was that we got the restraining order on these rather
technical grounds. We got the temporary restraining order on very
much the same grounds. Reporters are properly chary about publishing
charges which are not proven. The charges that we had in there, that
this was a Republican fraud, and was being financed by Republican
money, we didn't have a solid bit of evidence at that time, except
that we knew it had to be. It couldn't be anything else.

And so, reporters — they might say, "Kent says that this is a
Republican fraud, and Haldeman says that it's a damn lie. Haldeman
says that there's a little Republican money going into it, and not
much. Weinberger says about the cropped photographs, 'They're actually
pictures of Brown; what are they kicking about?" So we couldn't get
any excitement blown up about it, except as you say, on the media.
The media was good with the cropped photographs , and that gave us a
chance to use the cropped photographs and then use the post card and
the message as well.

Fry: Oh, you did?

Kent: Oh, yes.

Fry: You used that with your cropped photographs?

Kent: Yes, yes, yes. Always we used — "Here, here's a visual proof of it,
and here's what it says on this card. What it says on this card is
just as much a lie as what it says on these pictures." We were
doing our absolute damndest. Leone Baxter congratulated me after
this thing. She said that I had made more of it than she thought was
going to be possible. She said that what the Republicans should have
done was that they shouldn't have denied that they paid for it. They
should have admitted that they paid for it. They should have said,
"A group of disgruntled Democrats with no scratch in their pockets
came to us and said, 'We are terribly concerned about this terrible
CDC, and we don't like it taking over our party, but we haven't gotten
any money to publicize it.'"

She said, "At that point, we should have said, 'They came to us,
we said, "That's a worthy purpose; here's $70,000. Go out and
publicize your concern about the lousy Democratic party."'" It
wouldn't have sold. It wouldn't have sold [laughs], but it would
have been a better story than the one they ended up with, that they
had nothing to do with it.

Fry: And that wouldn't have made any difference in the restraining order,
either?

Kent: No.

209

Judgment and Damages

Fry: While we're rehashing this, I have another question. The judge says

this in your papers on the Committee to Save the Democratic Party. In
the judge's final decision, he writes this: "The plaintiffs were
damaged in a sum exceeding ten thousand dollars, which plaintiffs
were obliged to spend for suing this action, and enjoining the above
recited acts of the defendants' committee: Robinson and Company,
Incorporated, a corporation."

Now also, that committee had collected $368.50 from the post card,
which you and O'Gara held on deposit as trustees for the Democratic
State Central Committee. So I guess you got the $368 back, but if
you were damaged in a sum exceeding ten thousand dollars, then why did
the judge then award you only a hundred dollars in damages and
$268.50 in costs?

Kent: It was all a consent decree. It had to be a consent decree. Otherwise,
we would have had to go to trial.

Kent: You had asked why we only got $368.50. If we had sued for our actual
damages, I mean we certainly would have been in the millions. I mean,
to subvert a political party and win an election by fraud — we would
have been up in the same kind of a suit that Bob Strauss brought
against the Watergate people, which I think they finally settled
for $2.5 million. We wouldn't have gotten that amount of money, but
if we had spent the kind of money that the national committee spent in
the lawsuit, we probably would have gotten maybe a half-million
dollars from the Republicans. But we weren't going to get anything
but what they would agree to, the $368.50 that they had collected from
the Democrats.

Fry: So you couldn't get the ten thousand dollars, then — ?

Kent: No, no, the judge would have had to award it, and he wouldn't have
awarded it without a trial.

Fry: And you didn't have enough money to go through with it?
Kent: We didn't have enough money to go for a trial.

Fry: Was 1972 the first time that this was used nationally, or did you try
something when Nixon ran for president in '68?

210

Problems in Timing

Kent: [muses] Something in '68. One of the major problems of this case
was, again, timing. You said that the time that we filed the suit
was the Cuban missile crisis. The time that we got the judgment, the
final judgment, was about two days before the 1964 general presidential
election, so that it had just no impact there at all.

Fry: Everyone was thinking about Goldwater?

Kent: Goldwater and Johnson. It was going down the line. This reminds me
of one of my few calls to fame. That is when I was appointed general
counsel to [the Department of] Defense. It was announced on the same
day that Kefauver beat Truman in New Hampshire! [laughter]

Fry: So you have a penchant for being upstaged?
Kent: Or having my timing very poor.

Fry: In '68, the major issue was the Vietnam war. I just wondered if this
couldn't have been exploited more.

Kent: I think I mentioned this to Hubert Humphrey. I'm sure I must have,
but he was having such a hell of a time. I mean, he was just being
harassed by the youth movement and the right movement, and he wasn't
getting any money. I thought it was just one of the most courageous
campaigns that was ever waged, because he came close to winning it,
after being just pounded for about six months.

At that time, he didn't have — you didn't have so much the
foreign issues. The domestic issues would not have been as good.
I felt that it could have been used much better in '72 than in '68.
I kept urging on McGovern's people that they use it. By this time,
Haldeman, Kalmbach, Ehrlichman, Chapin, Ziegler, and whatnot were all
exposed as a part of Watergate. There had been something comparable
in Watergate. There hadn't been anything comparable in '68.

In '72, you could say, "Look what these bastards did in '62, and
we proved it on them in court. They're the same crowd, and they're
doing the same thing." I was saying to these guys, to Frank Mankiewicz
as well as to others — I spent all one day talking to Frank here on this
very porch after this wanting him to write his book — that McGovern
should have said this every speech, that the same gang of crooks was
found guilty of election fraud in '62, and Nixon was the candidate and
Haldeman was the manager and Stans was the treasurer and Klein was
the press man. They were all the same guys. Occasionally, a nice
guy would drop around from the Baltimore Sun or the Washington Star
or the London Economist or the Village Voice or the Cleveland Plain
Dealer — Shut up, Charlie [to the dog] — and get the story from me.
Shut up! [Fry moves microphone closer]

211

Kent: Then, I was so grateful when this was put into the Congressional

Record. That's in the record, of my talk at CDC and many other places,
that the judge's opinion is in the Congressional Record. Because up
to that time, these guys would say, "Well, would you just mind having
a Xerox copy of that made, and sending it to me?" I spent about
thirty-five dollars on Xerox copies.

Fry: To these various newspapers?

Kent: To the various newspapers. I suppose there were a dozen newspapers
in late '72, and after the election, I got even more interested —
after the election — that came around and asked about the case. Then
I was able to say, "Here you are, my friend. Just go look at it."

Fry: Frank Mankiewicz mentioned once to me that he was afraid you were

mad at him, because you had tried to get him to use this more in the
McGovern campaign when he was head of McGovern's campaign in '72,
and he hadn't done it.

Kent: That's right.

Fry: Do you remember that?

Kent: That's right. And then he'd told me that he'd tried, and he was
unable to do it. I had to believe him. He said that the press
wouldn't buy it. I was mad at him. I made my feelings known to
everybody that was connected with the McGovern campaign, that in my
opinion, they had a load of coal and one piece of gold, and that they
ought to use the one piece of gold.

Fry: Because the whole Watergate thing didn't really permeate the — the
possible extent of it did not permeate the consciousness of the
public during the election of '72.

Kent: That's right.

Fry: And it wasn't until after it was too late that everybody realized
what was happening. Maybe this would have helped a little bit,
showing the extent to which the burglary could have spread into a
lot of other activities. All right. Let's go on to our next
question here, which is about that pamphlet that was put out, called
"A California Dynasty of Communism." This was, I think, by Karl
Prussian. This had some connection with the Nixon committee. Maybe
you could explain what this pamphlet was, and what connection you saw,
that nothing legal could be established.

Kent: Karl Prussian was an alleged former FBI spy and informant. I think
that it eventually proved out that that was a lie, too, that he was
just a right-wing Birch Society nut, and financed by them. He got
this out, and he charged a great many of the Democratic candidates

212

Kent: with being out-and-out Communists, and he charged that the CDC was
Communist dominated. Then, in there, he had that picture that I
mentioned before, of Pat Brown leaning down to, with his hands in
front of him, a little Laotian dancing girl. They cropped her out
and put Khrushchev on the other side, and put, "We who admire you
and applaud you," and so forth, "welcome to California."

We never found that in general use as a piece of Nixon
literature, but on two or three occasions, our workers who went into
Nixon headquarters picked up copies of that "Dynasty of Communism"
in Nixon headquarters in southern California. This is what I was
informed of. I didn't pick them up myself, and I didn't talk to the
guy who did, but I have no reason to distrust it.

The Hughes Tool Company Loan

Fry: There was some interesting research, I think, that went on, too, on
Nixon. This was the year that that story broke about Nixon's family
loan, the loan to his mother's brother-
Kent: The Hughes loan.

Fry: — by the Hughes Tool Company. The $205,000 with very little security
required.

Kent: That is correct. The land securing that loan was of value, to my

recollection, of fifteen to twenty thousand dollars at the most. It
might have been worth even less than that. It's a cinch that Donald
Nixon could not have borrowed [even] $25,000 on that piece of
property from anybody but Hughes, and Hughes loaned it to him quite
obviously for purposes of getting back his money with interest. The
funny stories that were written about that were Nixon being greeted
by a bunch of Chinese in Los Angeles with a great big sign. He waved
and cheered and smiled at all these people.

I think he had asked somebody, "What does the sign say?" and it
said, "What about the Hughes loan?" [laughter] Several things of
that nature.

Fry: How did you find out about that?

Kent: I don't recall. That was uncovered in southern California.

Fry: We'll have to find out from the southern Californians who that hero
is, I guess. Now also, there was another exposure in the campaign,
and that was on a restrictive covenant that Nixon had signed in order
to rent his house in Washington, D.C.

213

Kent: I think it was for buying a house there. That you really couldn't
make too much out of. I'm just frightfully ashamed to admit that
the first subdivision that we had here [in Kentfield] — we had other
lawyers, and they took one of the subdivision [forms] that had been
used down the peninsula that had a racial covenant in it. That was
the first subdivision that was sold here in Kentfield. I had many
fights thereafter. I had fights with my brother Bill, my brother
Sherman, and Addie and I. We removed the covenant already, and we
just insisted that there be no policy, that there wouldn't be any
racial discrimination in any sales that were made.

But it was such common practice at the time that Nixon bought
that house in the suburbs of Washington, that you could have found
a half-million people within two hundred miles of there that had the
same thing.

Polling for Propaganda

Fry: There's just one other thing along this line, and that is the

Donald Jackson committee. Congressman Donald Jackson sent out a
questionnaire to all Democratic candidates (I suppose Republicans,
too) with questions such as "Should a person who has invoked the Fifth
Amendment be employed in any capacity by the U.S. government, the
State of California, or local governments?" In other words, they were
all trap questions, so that something like the John Birch Society or
a right-wing group could take them then and really make a lot of
damaging publicity about the Democratic candidates, on this basis.
Do you remember this coming up?

Kent: I don't remember this. I do remember distinctly, in Leone Baxter's
testimony, where she speaks about a directed poll. That is, the
question you ask determines the answer you're going to get, and that
you're not taking a poll for the purpose of taking a poll at all.
You're taking a poll for purposes of propaganda.

Fry: I think this was also in southern California.

Kent: Yes.

Fry: In your papers, it shows that there was an advisory sent out to all

candidates, and a press notice sent out, for the Democrats not to
answer the Jackson poll.

Kent: To disregard it.
Fry: Yes.

214

Kent: I remember that now. We had a discussion about it, and said, "Oh,

the hell with him. Just don't answer him. That's the best strategy."

Fry: Did that work, as you remember?

Kent: He didn't get any mileage out of it, I'm sure.

Brown's "Indecisive" Image

Fry: The other delicate issue was the Chessman case, and the fact that

Brown was looked upon as soft. But I think you covered that in this
previous interview with Bean.

Kent: I don't think I quite did. I didn't quite cover exactly how Pat

felt. I did cover it in the fact that Pat was not the kind of a guy —
this was in that conversation that we had on the front porch here with
Engle — that was going to say, "Send him to the gas chamber." Where
a man's life or a man's liberty were at stake, Pat was going to look
at it long and carefully. But he also took very seriously the fact
that he had taken the oath to enforce the statutes and laws of California.

So, what he said was — and he said it outright. Everybody said
that this was a weak and a vacillating position, and I thought it was
a very strong and a sensible position. He said, "I am going to give
the people of California one more chance to vote as to whether or not
they want the death penalty." Whether this was in the assembly or
in an initiative vote — I think it was both. I think that the
legislature had voted that they wanted to retain the death penalty.
Then I think they had an initiative as well. I could be mistaken in
that.

Fry: It was later.

Kent: Anyway, the people of California voted that they wanted to retain the
death penalty, and Pat Brown said, "Let him go." At first, he made
everybody mad that wanted to have Chessman immediately hung, and then
he made everybody mad that was opposed to the death penalty. He was
accused of vacillation and not making up his mind, whereas it
appeared to me that his mind had been made up very, very clearly,
concisely, and sensibly.

Fry: The other things that Nixon and his forces were striking out at Brown
with were his indecision in the 1960 Democratic National Convention,
in which Brown was chairman of the delegation.

215

Kent: That I know a good deal about, that Brown had been elected the favorite
son. I guess that everybody that went back to 1948 realized that a
favorite son is not going to beat a real live candidate, and therefore
Brown was in real trouble if a real genuine candidate, like Kennedy —
not Johnson; I think Brown would have beaten Johnson very easily — had
come into California [with a delegation on the ballot. Gatov] And
so, likewise there was some question about whether Brown was willing
to take the shock of running for governor in 1958, or whether he was
going to hold on and run for attorney general again. He had to make up
his mind. I think, of course, the thing that made up his mind was
Knowland coming in and running Knight clear out of the governor's
chair. At that time, he decided he could make it, but again, I wonder
whether it was here or someplace else that Glair — with one of his
wonderful salty things — said, "All right now, all you guys. You said
you want Brown to run for governor and you want me to run for Senator.
We've got pretty good jobs right now, and if we lose, you guys will
be in the same position. If we lose, it will be Brown and Engle,
attorneys-at-law." [laughter]

Rafferty vs. Richardson for Superintendent of PubJLic Instruction

Fry: That should give pause to all candidates. There was another battle
going on. That was in the Ralph Richardson versus Max Rafferty,
because the post of Superintendent of Public Instruction had just been
made vacant by retirement. That was when the first right-winger — am
I right? — got statewide office.

Kent: I think so. I think so. This guy was so bad that he made a liar

out of me in one of my dearly held political theories. My political
theory was that this election was so important, because it being a
nonpartisan election on a statewide basis, that it would be impossible
to throw out an incumbent, no matter how bad he was, because you had
to get every vote. In the partisan elections, you're going to get a
hardcore of 25 percent Democrats, and 35 percent Republicans, and then
you can go out and work on the others.

But in a nonpartisan election, that man has got to be so bad
that everybody dislikes him, or you don't get him out. But Rafferty
was so impossibly bad, but Richardson was an awfully nice guy, and I
think was a capable fellow. He was a southern California guy, and
that's why I never knew him in actual conduct of his business,
superintendent of schools, or whatever he was down there. But he
was just as nice as he could be.

216

Kent: But he violated one of the old political axioms, and that is that

when you are "way ahead, don't debate. He did debate, and he debated,
and I heard him once at the Commonwealth Club. He was a quiet,
polite indecisive, looking at both sides of the question kind of a
guy. Rafferty was for the little red schoolhouse —

Fry: And the basic 3 R's?

Kent: The 3 R's, and the ruler to beat the kid with. He [Richardson] lost
it, but he had been so bad. And then Rafferty got caught up in that
slacker deal [in 1968 (Gatov) ] which was what really defeated him
I mean, it's a crazy thing to have a man defeated for a reason that
has nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not he's a good
superintendent of schools.

One of the southern California newspapers went down to his home
town, and they began making inquiries about Rafferty in World War II.
It ended up that Rafferty said that he was not going to go to World
War II, and among other things, he was not going to go to World War II
if he had to take a gun and shoot his toes off! This you would not
have made so much out of, if this hadn't been a blood- and- thunder
anti-war-protestor guy, who said that you should take all of them [war
protestors] and throw them in jail and flog them.

Then it turned out that he was the guy who had used every
conceivable dodge. He'd been falsely sick twice, and then he made the
threat that he would blow his foot off. This got publicity widely.

Fry: This was '66?

Kent: This was 1970 when Riles beat him.

Fry: In the 1962 Senatorial race, Richard Richards raced the incumbent,

Kuchel.

Kent: Yes. Of course, anybody running against Kuchel was just going to be
in an impossible position. [Senator] Kuchel was in the same position
as Earl Warren. The Republicans — he was going to be the Republican
nominee. The only reason that he finally was run out of being a
Republican nominee was by Rafferty [in 1968], and then it went over so
far to the right that Cranston, the luckiest man in the world, filed
for the Democratic nomination and would have had absolutely no chance
against Kuchel, but was able to naturally defeat Rafferty [in 1968].

Fry: Well, Kuchel almost didn't campaign in this [1962] election. I think
he came down just right at the end of the campaign period, and made
some appearances up and down the state.

Kent: And he won big, didn't he?

217

Fry: And he won very big. He was also the only one who did win in the
Republican column in such a resounding way.

Kent: Sure. He was in one of those — you find a good many times people

like that, in individual constituencies as well as statewide. Warren
and Kuchel, and you almost have to include Pat Brown, except he ran
once too often, got into the position where they had a lock on their
own nomination, and they had a very sizable following in the opposite
party.

Pat Brown, when he ran for governor here in Marin County — he polled—
I've forgotten the exact figure, but he had to have polled around
35 percent of the Republican vote, or he wouldn't have gotten the total
that he got. Of course, a Democrat running against Warren was just
hopeless. People had the comment, "We want to get the Warren
Republicans." Then they'd quickly say, "Let's get the Warren Democrats."

Fry: What did you think in this Kuchel versus Richard Richards race? What
did you think of the selection of Richards as the man to run against
him?

Kent: I never had too high an opinion of Richards. I think he was a pretty

good man, but I didn't think anybody was going to beat Kuchel. I think
you could have picked out people that perhaps you would have been
happier to run against Kuchel, but nobody that was going to beat him.

The Controller's Race

Fry: For the controller's race, Alan Cranston ran against Bruce Reagan.

Kent: Yes. That just turned out — once a guy gets in that controller's

position — Of course, at that time he had a vast source of money.

Fry: Who?

Kent: The controller, any controller. He could just about assess his

inheritance-tax referees with what he needed to be re-elected. They
had very, very cushy jobs and they would come up with lots of money,
and they did. Every controller did that, up until the time when
they had some reform legislation.

Well, Cranston was also — he had a good deal of political strength,
because of having been president of CDC. With a CDC endorsement, when
they opened up headquarters for Democratic candidates, you'd be damned
sure that probably the number one was going to be Alan Cranston, and
that the CDC workers were going to be putting in their time working

218

Kent: for him. Pretty soon it became apparent to the followers of Mr. Reagan,
if he had very many — I never even heard of the guy — that Mr. Reagan
just wasn't going to go anywhere.

As I recall, somebody told me that Reagan, for a statewide race,
collected something under twenty-five thousand dollars, so that you
never even saw his name. It was just a total debacle.

Fry: I've read estimates that Nixon, Brown, and Nixon's primary opponent,
Joe Shell, spent about a half-million dollars apiece in the campaign.
But twenty-five thousand — [laughs]

Kent: Oh no, that was nothing.

The Treasurer's Race

Fry: Was there any special effort required in the race for the treasurer?
It was Bert Betts versus John Busterud.

Kent: No. That was a part of the Democratic sweep. I mean, John Busterud
was many times the guy that Bert Betts was, I mean, as a man and with
brains and education. But Betts, as I said, had a good name. Bert
Betts was the chief accountant from Lemon Grove, San Diego County, and
he went on the ballot as the CDC-endorsed candidate. There just was
not any discrimination. Again, Busterud couldn't possibly raise money
enough to have changed the result. I mean, in order that Busterud
would have a chance, I suppose, then he probably should have had a
half a million. I mean, he wasn't going to make much impression without
it. He probably didn't have more than twenty-five or fifty thousand,
or maybe a hundred thousand.

Fry: Was Busterud a Republican?

Kent: Yes.

Fry: Why do you say that he was the better man?

Kent: Well, I happened to know him personally. He was a Republican leader
in San Francisco. I think he was a county chairman at one time.
He was a man I did business with a little bit, not a great deal, but
one whose word was absolutely dependable, and whose facts, if he gave
them to you, were absolutely true. He was one of the few people I've
ever been able to have an honest argument with, because we would not
disagree on facts, if the facts were ascertainable.

Fry: You started to say that there was another —

219

Kent: Well, it seemed to me that Betts — again, I'm thinking about the first
time that Betts ran. Or was this about the second time?

Fry: I think this was the second time.
Kent: This was the second time.
Fry: I believe so.

Kent: The first time, he ran against a guy who had a fancy name. I've

forgotten his name. It was Procunier or something like that.* They
said, "Who would you rather vote for, good honest Bert Betts or this
guy?" [laughs] But that was the first time. I'm talking about
the first time, when I'm talking about the slate, and going down the
line, because the second time, [he was] running against Busterud.
Busterud was a real candidate, but, he was running against an
incumbent, and an incumbent treasurer is almost impossible to beat,
because of people just do not have interest in that race. They don't
go down the line that far.

Fry: Yes, it's hard to make a decision on everybody on the ballot. Most
people don't do it.

I found in your papers something apparently drawn up by you and
some others, called, "A Code of Fair Campaign Practices." I believe
that was drawn up during the primary, with the note that the Republican
primary candidates were coming out with such vilification about each
other that you foresaw that the general election could be pretty
brutal. Is that right? I'm guessing about this, just from what I saw
in the written sources. This was mailed out to all candidates.

Kent: You know who mailed it?

Fry: I think it was the state committee.

Kent: Would it be both state committees or just one?

Fry: It was to all the Democrats. It was just drawn up by the Democrats
for the Democratic candidates.

Kent: Libby has followed this more closely than anyone I know in California.
She was very close with the national guys , and they relied on her
for a lot of things. She probably would know. I have a faint
recollection of that, but nothing much.

*In 1958, it was Ron Button.

220

Fry: In my notes here, I have the name of the people who worked with you
on this. [goes through papers]

Kent: It almost certainly would have been Libby, and then it would have
been —

Fry: Here it is. Jack Spitzer, and the state Democratic committee, and Tom
Carvey and you. This was sent to each Democratic candidate to sign
and return.

Kent: I see.

Fry: And your letter notes that rival GOP candidates have become slanderous
and vindictive to each other.

Kent: Well, this shows, because of Carvey and Spitzer —
Fry: This was March 31, 1962.

Kent: I think Spitzer was the southern California guy, and Tom Carvey, of
course, was a CDC president. So it was a CDC operation. They were
probably clearing this with me, and I probably had some part in it,
but they probably also wanted to have my prestige as the state chairman.

Fry: They had on there that it was also sponsored by the state central
committee.

Kent: If it did say, "sponsored by the state central committee," I would
have taken it to the executive committee and gotten an aye vote.

Registering Dollars or Democrats

Fry: Yes, which probably is what happened. We have just a few minutes
left, and I wonder what is the most important to discuss — perhaps
the rise of the Unruh. forces in this campaign. Unruh, I think, had
drawn criticism from other Democrats in the registration drive, which
itself was unique in this campaign.

Kent: That registration drive was a rather typical Unruh operation, and one
that is, as far as I'm concerned, almost unique in California. It
just involved large amounts of currency. What they did was — I think
you said that that he got a hundred thousand dollars, and I think that
is true. I think that what they did was, they went down to the
ghetto areas, and the low-income areas, and they just took twenty-
dollar bills, and they said, "You deliver twenty people to the polls,"
and they had some kind of control over it, but obviously it was almost
impossible to have control over it.

221

Kent: I had some good friends who went down and passed out twenty dollars
to go get people to the polls.

Fry: On election day?
Kent: On election day.

Fry: Well, I thought this was earlier. This was when they were registering
people to vote.

Kent: Oh well, maybe it was registration. Maybe it was registration. They
did it on election day as well.

Fry: Yes, they did both, right.

Kent: I think they did that. They insisted that they would be able to

have some kind of control over whether or not the money was expended
or not.

Fry: In an analysis of the election, which came out in the Western Political

Quarterly, there wasn't very much evidence to show that Unruh's method
worked any better than whatever was used in the north.

Kent: That's right.

Fry: How did you do it in the north?

Kent: The way we've always done it. We just went around and had volunteers
go up and down to public housing and say, "Do you want to register?"
At times they would have a roving registrar, and they'd have two or
three guys in an automobile — one driving, one was a registrar, and one
was a scout. [The scout] would run up and say, "You want to register
Democratic?" and bring the registrar up to have them vote.

One of my very good friends, who was in charge of registration
in San Francisco for many years told me that their method had been
fully as effective as the much-publicized and very expensive Unruh
operation.

Fry: The outcome of the drives — because the Republicans also had a drive
on, in self-defense — was the 82 percent of Republicans voted, and
78 percent of the Democrats voted. [laughs]

Kent: That's pretty high.

Fry: That's a pretty high voting record for both of you. Brown carried

Los Angeles County, where Unruh was doing his drive, by 112,000
votes. It's all kind of inconclusive.

222

Impact of Reapportignment

Fry: What did the Democratic committee, if anything, have to do informally
with the redistricting that had gone on just before this election?
That probably influenced the election more than anything else, and
the outcome of the Democratic congressional and legislative offices.

Kent: This we're talking about was '64?

Fry: This would be 1962.

Kent: In '62?

Fry: Yes. Every ten years is the reapportionment.

Kent: But do they get around to getting it done in two years?

Fry: It had been done, apparently, just before the election, according to
what I read.

Kent: Yes, well, as I told you —

Fry: There were a number of safe Democratic districts as a result, whereas
before, you had had to contend with the Republican redistricting.

Kent: That's right. Well, I think I talked to you about this. I didn't
myself take a personal interest in this. This was the numbers game
that these guys were playing, of where will they cut these districts
so that they will be safe Democratic districts, and then just an
enclave where they're going to be maybe 90 percent Republican, and then
Democratic districts all the way around.

I remember there was one particular scream of outrage from some
place down in Los Angeles, where they had one Republican district
that was so safe that the devil could have won, and he was surrounded
by five districts that the Democrats could carry.

I'm sure I told you they carried this beyond the mere count of
who was there today; they got demographic charts and computers and
[projected] what the thing was going to look like in ten years, in
five years, in six years. They did their best to make sure that they
got the big advantage in districts.

Fry: I can see how information that was in the Democratic Central

Committee office could have been useful in this. I found in your
papers voting record analyses, legislative voting summaries, and
this sort of thing, which could be used both to set strategies during
campaigns and to figure out redistricting problems. Do you know if
this was the source of some of the —

223

Kent: I know that there were a lot of people fooling with figures. I don't
recall what they are now.

Fry: I was interested in how this was done, and if it was all just between

the legislature and Congress. It looks like the local party would
have had —

Kent: Oh, the local party got into it. They came up with their idea of what
should be maximum for the Democratic party. Then, of course, they
listened to the screams of the Democrats that hadn't been, in their
opinion, properly taken care of.

I remember Clem Miller, who was one of the nicest guys that
ever lived, and who had this First Congressional District. He was
just — he was just shaking his head. He said, "What the hell do they
think they're doing to me? They're giving me a 52 percent Democratic
district. I'm a four-year congressman now. I've got a chance for
good seniority, and they're putting me into a marginal district
where I'm going to have to spend all my time trying to be elected from
now until doomsday."

Press Coverage

Fry: We're just about at the end of our tape. This was also the campaign
in which, for the first time, Democrats had a lot of good press from
a lot of different newspapers all over the state. This represented a
change in coverage, according to the analysis I read. Do you remember
that? I wonder why? Was it because of efforts to educate the press?

Kent: I think that finally the basic criticism that we were levying on

them at all times, and very, very justifiably, began to finally get
through to them. The unholy trinity of the San ^Francisco Chronicle,
the Oakland Tribune and the Los Angeles Times — they just absolutely
ignored the Democrats. Didn't pay any attention to them at all.

Fry: This is what the historian finds, when she goes back to look through
the newspapers.

Kent: Sure. We were raising hell about that. Then we started using radio
to a considerable extent more than we had. We found that we had to
buy our way into the press. If we were going to get a news story,
we'd have to buy more space for advertising than we were going to get
in the news story.

224

XI THE 1964 CAMPAIGN
[Interview 11: June 4, 1976]##

Fry: In the 1964 campaign, I noticed 88 percent of the Democrats voted in
this election, and 89 percent of the Republicans voted.

Kent: This is which year?

Fry: In 1964, when LBJ was running for president. Proposition 14 — anti-
fair housing — won in California. In the primary, Cranston raced
Salinger for the Senate. It was a few months after Kennedy's
assassination, and it was the year in which Engle died between the
primary and the election for U.S. Senator. George Murphy beat Salinger
for the Senate seat.

Kent: Right.

The Senate Race — Glair Engle 's Last Campaign

Fry: Could we take a running start and focus on 1963, when a lot of jockeying
apparently was going on by all of the various leading Democrats —
Cranston, Unruh, Brown, Mosk, Anderson.

Kent: Yes. I don't remember the month that Engle died in, but it was fairly
late.

Fry: July 30 in '64.

Kent: In '63. Oh, died! He died in '64.

Fry: But he was very ill in '63.

225

Kent: That's what I meant, the time that he was stricken.

Fry: I saw a letter from his wife written, I think, to Libby Gatov, in

which she insisted that he was just fine and was going to get out of
the hospital the following week. That letter was written in October
of '63, when he was hospitalized.

Kent: That's right. She was keeping a brave upper lip that he was going to
be all right, and that he was going to be able to run. Anybody else
with any inside information knew that that was not true. We probably
shouldn't have had the information, but we had it from two sources
that were unimpeachable — one was from Dan Kimball, who was the Secretary
of the Navy, and he was at Bethesda Naval Hospital, so you knew that
Dan went out and asked the doctors what the story was. The other was
from John F. Kennedy. In both cases, they were told that this was a
very large, inoperable tumor that was going to grow, and that Engle
would respond to treatment, and would improve and reach a plateau,
and then would go steadily downhill and die.

They predicted it exactly the way it went.

Fry: So the controversy continued for a long time — with some saying that
he would be well enough to run, but ycm knew he wouldn't be.

Kent: That's right. His wife, Lu, was insisting that he was going to be in
shape to run, and that he would be in shape to serve. But we were
quite sure that that was not true.

Rivalries Among Engle' s Political Heirs

Fry: This whole senatorial race is such a big topic that I thought we might

have to have a whole interview for it, discussing other things going on,
including party splits in which Unruh was involved.

Kent: I think I could hit that Senate thing and hit it fairly fast, because
that was one of the most dramatic things that occurred when I was
chairman. We were given this information that Engle was not going to
be able to run.

Fry: I think we do have that part covered in a previous interview.

Kent: And that we went and called on him and his wife, and asked them — told

him that the only way that we could straighten things out in California
was if he would permit (yes, I'm sure we did this) doctors to look at
his [medical] records at Bethesda. They, of course, refused, because
they knew what that would show up.

226

Kent: So at that point, [Gene] Wyman, Libby Gatov, and myself who were there,
left the place and sadly said that we must prepare [for] a CDC
convention at which the question of a senatorial candidate was to be
opened, because we knew that Engle was not going to be able to handle
it.*

Fry: Was that before the turn of the year, do you think?

Kent: I think it was just after, just after.

Fry: And before the CDC convention in February?

Kent: Yes.

Fry: What I don't understand is why did Jerry Waldie and Carmen Warschaw
continue to insist that he was just fine. They went up and visited
him after you did.

Kent: I always felt that this was an Unruh ploy, that Unruh was — the one

person that he probably couldn't tolerate as leader of the Democratic
party in California would be, number one, Cranston.

Fry: Why?

Kent: They were at odds on many, many, many things. They were together on
practically nothing. Cranston had been a very staunch supporter of
Pat Brown, of course, and Unruh had been doing what he could to destroy
Brown and Brown's entourage.

Unruh knew that if Cranston was the top dog in the Democratic
party, that it would be a fight between himself and Cranston, and that
Cranston would have the cards, because the United States Senator has
the cards. If he knows how to play them, he's got them. Unruh didn't
have any reason to believe that Cranston didn't know how to play them.

So that it was my opinion that Waldie had made a deal with Unruh
fairly early, and Liz Snyder had also made one. I think Dick Richards —
perhaps for his own ambitions, he having run for Senate I guess once
or twice against Yorty — he wanted to run. He wanted to keep the thing
open and keep Cranston in the background, and that an open option.
This is just my supposition on it.

Fry: He still thought that he might run again.

*For another account, see Elizabeth R. Gatov, "Grassroots Party Organizer
to Treasurer of the United States," an oral history conducted 1975 and
1976, Regional Oral History Office, University of California, Berkeley,
1978, pp. 320-324.

227

Kent: That he might run again.

Unruh's Network of Influence

Kent: Waldie in many ways is a very, very fine guy, and I liked Waldie from
the time he entered politics. I met him, and we were both a little
bit under the weather, in Honolulu about eleven o'clock one night. I
told him — I said, "Goddammit, Jerry, you get out from underneath the
influence of Unruh. You get out. Things are going to unravel there,
and they're liable to be much worse than you think or anybody thinks."

Actually, it didn't turn out that way. I'm quite sure it could
have turned out that way. But he said no, that he was — [makes aside
comment] He said to me, "I've gone along with this guy so long that
if he goes down, I'm going down." I said, "That is not true. You have
many friends that he doesn't have. You can disassociate yourself from
him. It's not too late, and you'd better do it."

We had this kind of semi-drunken conversation, as I say, on the
streets of Honolulu, and nothing ever happened with it. Waldie stayed
with Unruh until he went into Congress. That was one of the luckiest
breaks that ever happened to Waldie, that Baldwin died, leaving that
seat open —

Fry: In his district?

Kent: — in his district, leaving that seat open so that he could run for
Congress and get completely out of the legislature.

Fry: And out of Unruh's sphere of influence?
Kent: Right, right.

Fry: I can understand why you would think that Unruh might be going down
in the big collapse of his empire, at this point, because he had had
two big setbacks at this point. He had, in August of '63, that
confrontation with the Republicans in the assembly, when he locked
them up for twenty-three hours so they'd vote on the budget, and they
never did vote. He lost that. The press was unanimously against him
on this, as an abuse of power.

The other thing was the sort of expose which was written by Harry
Farrell, an award-winning series [in the San_Jose^ Mercury] called,
"Money, Power, Politics." This revealed Unruh's slush fund for assembly
campaigns, which he had started in 1960, which he had controlled. As
'64 rolled up, he was beginning to look vulnerable, I guess.

228

Kent: Right? And there were beginning to be very unusual signs of personal
prosperity that were showing up in connection with very much the same
kind of thing that Harry Farrell was writing about, that could have
been very poisonous for Unruh and for anybody associated with him.

Fry: Except for Waldie, who was Contra Costa County, right — ?
Kent: Yes.

Fry: — everybody else in this Unruh group were southern Californians.
Is that right?

Kent: No, no. Leo Ryan, for instance.
Fry: Was he part of that?

Kent: Yes. These are among the things that I didn't like at all. We had
broken our neck to let Leo Ryan in that assembly district, and he'd
lost by less than a hundred votes, something like that. Then we had
done everything to help him for the following election. He had
decided that he would not go at the very last minute. He would not go,
and he would wait until reapportionment.

He waited for reapportionment, and he was an absolute lead-pipe
cinch to be elected. We were a little bit sore at him for not having
run the time before but we were offering him the kind of help that the
state committee could offer and did offer to people who had a very easy
election. He turned us down and took five thousand dollars from Unruh.
He needed five thousand dollars like he needed another hole in head.
He didn't need any money to be elected, because by this time —

Fry: It was a safe district.

Kent: — by this time it was an absolutely safe district. He became one of
Unruh' s boys. There were others in northern California too. I can't
put my finger on it, but —

Fry: So it was not a northern California/southern California distinction?
Kent: No.

Fry: As Unruh said, it was money that was the mother's milk of politics.
[ laughs ]

Kent: Sure.

Fry: And that's the way it was working.

229

Resisting the Inevitable

Fry: Well, I wondered why Lu Engle insisted for so long that Glair was able
to run, when it was obvious to you in your visit that he couldn't
really track in a conversation. Elizabeth Gatov recounted how helpless
he was on the Senate floor — he depended entirely on his administrative
assistant. So his wife must have known that he was incapacitated?

Kent: Yes. I didn't talk to her about it anyway, except that she was a

tiger. I mean, she was just saying that he was all right, and he was
going to be able to run, and he was going to be able to be a Senator.
But one of the wise old pols said to me, "Lu Engle' s been around here
long enough to know the difference in status of the widow of a Senator
and the wife of a Senator. The wife of a Senator is a very important
woman in Washington, D.C., and the widow of a Senator is nothing."

FryP Or of a retired Senator?
Kent: Yes.

Fry: Well, I wondered if it had anything to do with his retirement, or
something like that, that he needed another couple of years.

Kent: I would doubt that it had, because he had been a congressman — as you
know, he had been the chairman of Interior and Insular Affairs for
nearly four years before he moved up to Senator. So he had to have
been in Congress for probably eighteen years before he moved up to
Senator. He was four years or so in the Senate before he was stricken.
I'm sure that he had more than twenty years in.

Fry: And twenty years is the maximum, isn't it, for the top level retirement?
Kent: Usually, yes. I think so.

Fry: I have another theory. I wondered if anybody — Unruh, perhaps — wanted
him to survive that election, so that if he died afterwards, a Senator
could be appointed, and that somehow, he might have more influence in
the appointment of a Senator, and keeping Cranston out. Does that
make sense? Or, if Brown was governor, would that shoo Cranston right
in?

Kent: That's right, that's what it would do. Sure.

Fry: So that theory isn't any good. In the CDC convention, when Engle
talked on the telephone —

Kent: No, it wasn't Engle. It was Carvey.

230

Fry: Oh, really?

Kent: Yes. I mean, Carvey talked to Engle.

Fry: On the telephone?

Kent: On the telephone.

Fry: And were the delegates plugged in the loudspeaker system?

Kent: Yes, to the loudspeaker system.

Fry: So that they could hear Engle talk?

Kent: They could hear Engle, and they could hear Carvey. Right.

Fry: And at this point, did it become fairly obvious to most of the delegates
that Engle was too incapacitated to run?

Kent: It was just one of the most emotional and sad moments you can imagine,
because one word was the killer. Carvey said, "Will you be out before
the primary?" and Engle said, "That will be prob — prob- prob-
probleblematical." Then he asked him several more questions, and then
came back to more or less the same question, and Engle answered it in
the same way, with the same break on the same thing. You could just
see people just almost weeping on the floor. It was perfectly clear
that Engle was gone.

Mosk's Temporary Eclipse

Fry: Where was Mosk in all of this? He apparently wanted very badly to run
for the Senate before the convention.

Kent: That's right, that's right. There was some personal problem.
Fry: Why don't you put it under seal?

Kent: Well, I was here in northern California and was told that Stanley Mosk
had had a personal problem in southern California, which would have
made him very vulnerable in a campaign, and that he should not face
up to it, both for himself and for the party.

Fry: So he — let's see, I think he was one of the ones voted on in the CDC

convention. No, he wasn't either. The vote in the CDC convention was
Cranston versus Engle versus Roosevelt and McLain .

Kent: That was before Salinger decided to get in.

231

Fry: Yes, that's right. Salinger flew in on March 19 and entered. The
CDC convention was February 22 at Long Beach. So by the time of the
CDC convention Mosk was no longer a factor.

Kent: That's right. He had withdrawn.

Kent : No , no , no .

Fry: Was it Pat or you?

Kent: No, I had nothing to do with it. I heard that he was thinking of
running, and then I heard he had this problem, and I heard that he
had withdrawn.

Fry: So somebody must have talked to him about it.
Kent: A number of people did, I'm sure.

Fry: You know, I thought that an agreement had been made with Mosk, that if
he would be attorney general for four years, from 1960 to '64, that
then he would be appointed to a judgeship.

Kent: That is correct.

Fry: Like the Supreme Court, maybe?

Kent: That is correct. That is the deal that I went down and made with him
in Los Angeles, and which was a very unpleasant interview. It was in
'63, when they had that meeting in my house at Kentfield. Engle had
come out from Washington. That was when Brown had said he was going
to appoint Bob McCarthy to attorney general. Mosk was attorney general.
Mosk was attorney general, and Mosk was going to resign as attorney
general and be appointed to the California Supreme Court. Brown had
made this promise to Bob McCarthy that he would appoint Bob McCarthy
as attorney general if this transpired.

Well, we all said that this was the biggest political boo-boo
that could be made. I mean, it was clear that two Irish Catholics
from San Francisco on the two top spots — Then they said, "Somebody's
got to tell Mosk that he's going to have one more run in him."
[laughs] Then they all looked at me. So I was elected, and I made
an appointment and went down to Los Angeles and saw Mosk in his office
as the attorney general down there. That's when he wasn't one bit
pleased with the idea that he — because I was explaining to him that Pat
could do this, even if Pat was defeated, because Pat would still have
the time when he was lame duck, after having been defeated, before he
went out of office in which he could still make a judicial appointment.

Fry: So this must have been '61.

232

Kent: This is when we were talking in '63, you see. If Pat had gotten
beaten in '64, Pat could still have appointed Mosk in the interim
between the November of —

Fry: You're two years out of place (either you or I am). Pat ran in '66,
and '62, and '58.

Kent: Correct! I'm two years out of place. That's right. He ran — this

[meeting] took place in '61. That was when Engle was not going to be
up [for re-election] until '64, and Engle said, "I just don't want
to be running in '64 when there's a Republican governor in '62." So
I was two years out of phase. Pat could have appointed — having been
defeated in '62 by Nixon, if that had been the fate — he could have
still appointed Stanley Mosk to the Supreme Court. He had a guy who
was willing to resign. Engle pointed out at that time that it would
not be a new experience for Mosk, because that's the way that he was
appointed as the youngest superior court judge that I think had ever
been appointed up to that point by Culbert Olson, when Olson was a
lame- duck governor.

Mosk didn't seem pleased about trading one bad deal for what
might be another one, but he did. When I left that meeting, he said,
"I think I just will quit and go practice law, and the hell with this
political business."

Fry: Really!

Kent: Yes.

Fry: He was really through with it?

Kent: He was mad that he wasn't going to get what he had been promised, and
you couldn't blame him.

Fry: So now in '64, during all this senatorial jockeying for upper power

places, he knew that he would get a Supreme Court appointment anyway,
didn't he?

Kent: Well, he'd been promised it.

Fry: So if he didn't become a Senator, that wouldn't be too bad a loss?

Kent: No, no.

233

Salinger's Promising Entry

Fry: I wonder why — let's see. In looking back at this, the surprises were
that Salinger won the primary, and then another surprise was that
Salinger lost the election, the general election. [laughs] What is
your theory on that? What happened to cause this when Salinger could
fly in from the East Coast on the eve of the closing of the candidate —
what's the word? Not registration. What's the word?

Kent: Filing. Filing date.

Fry: I also don't know how he got the idea to do that?

Kent: Well, I talked to him about it, and of course, nobody ever got the kind
of publicity that Salinger got. In other words, there was a headline
story out of Washington, "Salinger, the president's press secretary,
may come out to California and get into the race." Then the next day,
Salinger has gotten into an airplane and is on his way to the coast.
"It is suspected that he may be filing for Senate."

Then the next day, "Salinger is here. He has employed Don Bradley,
and his papers are being prepared, and he's going to file for United
States Senate." And each day for five days, Salinger's name was on the
top page of every newspaper in the state. He had the damndest name
recognition at the end of five days that you could possibly imagine.
He had pretty good name recognition when he started.

Fry: Right, because every time there was a press release out from the White
House, there was Salinger on television, talking to the reporters.

Kent: Well, quite a bunch of them, yes. Sure, sure. But then, on this

particular issue though, he had about five different stories that were
the number-one story on the front page of all the papers in California.
So he started off with that as a terrific advantage. He talked to me,
and I said, "Where are you getting your money?" He said, "Don't worry
about that. I've got all the money I need." I don't know. He
obviously didn't have all the money he needed, because he then commenced
to scrounge for money pretty vigorously.

Cranston's Enemies

Kent: In the meantime, Cranston had made some powerful enemies. He had been
helped by a lot of people. He was asked by many people who had helped
him to appoint qualified people as inheritance tax referees and
inheritance tax appraisers (I think they were called then) , including
myself. I mean, I wasn't asking for one for myself; I was asking for

234

Kent: one for a guy who had been the best Democrat that you ever saw, and

was a thoroughly qualified lawyer, well respected in his community, and
would be nothing but credit to the administration if they appointed
him.

Cranston just ignored all of those requests, to all intents and
purposes, and appointed his own guys, and built his own personal little
old array and treasure chest of guys. One guy was so mad that he
started out to raise money for Salinger, and I think raised something
in the neighborhood of twenty-five thousand dollars for Salinger,
because he was so mad at Cranston because of all the things he'd done
for Cranston. He said, when they asked him to have Cranston appoint
this fellow who was qualified, he said, "Why, of course. It's the
easiest thing in the world. I'll do that." And the next point, when
he found out that Cranston wasn't going to appoint him, he was just
ab s o 1 utely f urio us .

So Cranston had made some enemies. Salinger, of course, having
been associated with the Kennedy charisma, was in a good position to
capitalize on it. Of course, it was pretty close. I've forgotten, but
it was —

Fry: [reads paper] Salinger got 1,177,000 and Cranston got 1,037,000. It

was pretty close. I'm wondering why Don Bradley went over to Salinger.

Kent: It was just a question of money.

Fry: He was a pro.

Kent: He was a pro.

Fry : I s ee .

Kent: And Don had also been a good friend of Salinger's, see. In the early
days — I think I've mentioned — in those early special elections when
Don was my executive secretary —

Fry: Back in the fifties.

Kent: In the fifties, Don would go get Salinger to write the rag sheet that
supported our candidate in those special elections. "The Mountain
Messenger" was going up, if I remember, to Susanville and Modoc and
Lass en.

Fry: Was Salinger really illegal in his candidacy, since he was not a

resident of this state. Mosk was attorney general, and there was a
ruling at that time that went from secretary of state to the Supreme
Court to settle the question.

235

Kent: I just remembered that there was a dispute, and I don't remember the
facts of it.

Fry: What if Yorty and McLain forces had joined together on the senatorship
thing? Did they, before the primary? Do you remember?

Kent: No, but you were leaning on two awful weak reeds.
Fry: They weren't anything, really, to worry about?
Kent: No, no.

Fry: After Salinger entered the race, did Unruh come to you to get the
endorsement, or to help get an endorsement from CDC?

Kent: No, he didn't. Lib was very strongly supporting Cranston. I was taking
the position at that time, which I took — I think I told you before —
in substantially every election: being the chairman, it was just way
out of line for me to support anybody in the primary, because I was
getting money to support the operation from both sides. So Lib got me
down there one night to see Unruh endorse Salinger. [laughs] She
thought that that would be enough for me, that I wouldn't be able to
stand it. I said, "I'm afraid I'll even have to stand that." It
wasn't really a full-scale endorsement. At that time, it wasn't. Maybe
he did later.

Fry: Unruh?

Kent: Yes.

Fry: I thought that maybe he had engineered the whole thing.

Kent: Well, people had thought that, but he always claimed to know, and

Salinger always claimed to know, and Bradley always claimed to know.

Fry: That's interesting. Well, let's see. Gatov and Dan Kimball were

co-chairmen of Cranston's campaign, I guess. And Pat Brown was behind
Cranston.

Kent: Yes.

Brown's Support for Cranston and then Salinger

Fry: But he didn't — apparently, a lot of people felt that Brown should have
spoken up for Cranston more.

236

Kent: Brown spoke up quite a bit for Cranston. He said — I remember one
thing — Of course, Brown supported Salinger when Salinger won and
Engle died. He appointed Salinger as the Senator. He had said, during
the course of the campaign, in supporting Cranston, "Hell, don't send
a rookie to do a man's job, a veteran's job. Cranston has the
qualifications that Salinger, as a rookie, does not have." Then later
he made some wisecrack about the fact that why didn't somebody tell
him about Salinger — that this was the rookie of the year.

Fry: You mean when he appointed him.

Kent: Yes. I suppose that it was, to a very large extent, the bitterness
of the Cranston-Salinger primary fight that enabled Murphy to win.
I can't think of any other real good reason why Murphy should have won.
I mean, Murphy was the first of the actors, and he hadn't quite gone
senile at that time.

Fry: I wondered if there was some backlash from Pat Brown's appointment of
Salinger, with the voters feeling that the decision had been kind of
taken out of their hands. There was Salinger already in the Senate,
before the general election took place. Had Pat discussed this with
you and had you considered appointing someone who was kind of a neutral
good citizen of California for those few months in the Senate.

Kent: No, because remember, Salinger was the nominee at the time that he was
appointed.

Fry: I know.

Kent: It would be a black eye to a nominee not to appoint him. I think that
Pat had to appoint Salinger. He never discussed it with me, but if he
had, I would have certainly said that he should have done it.

Fry: Did this whole battle between Salinger and Cranston line up along the
lines of the Unruh versus Brown split in the Democrats?

Kent: I think it probably, to a very considerable extent, did.

Fry: There was a feud, I think, between Salinger and Lyndon Johnson during
the general election, too, that Johnson didn't want to have anything
to do with Salinger's race. Do you remember that?

Kent: I wouldn't be surprised at all.

Fry: I seem to recall something had happened at the Democratic convention.
Somehow Salinger had irritated Johnson. Was this your impression?

Kent: I'm sure that the Kennedy palace guard, you know, were very insulting
to Johnson in many ways, and Salinger was part of that group. I think
that Johnson — it was going to be a cold day before he went out of his
way to help Salinger or anybody else connected with Camelot.

237

Mrs. Engle's Role in the Campaign

Fry: It looks like there was a kind of Waldie and Unruh and Engle — Lu

Engle — coalition that was against Cranston in the primary, and for
Salinger.

Kent: Yes. I think that, probably as far as Lu Engle was concerned,
there may have been many other factors.

Fry: She came out and actually campaigned for Salinger.

Kent: But I think that what happened was that Cranston, figuring that he
was the heir apparent, went back and talked to her before Engle was
even dead, and before it was certain that Engle was not going to be
able to do it. I saw her some time after this, and she was just
plenty mad.

Fry: At Cranston?

Kent: At Cranston, yes.

Fry: Looking over her husband to see how ill he was?

Kent: Sure. And gunning for the job.

Fry: Well, it kind of surprised me that she actually would come out here
and actively campaign up and down the state with Salinger. A final
touch put on that primary campaign by Salinger was a mail-out card
that was sent. I don't know who financed it. It showed this full-face
portrait of Kennedy. I think it was edged in black or something like
that, "In Memorium." It said, instead, "In his tradition..." Then
on the inside, it said, "Vote for Salinger." This was sent out all
through Los Angeles County, many, many thousands of them, right at the
end of the campaign. Do you know anything about that?

Kent: I don't remember it, no.

Fry: What intrigued me was the fact that who paid for all of those was
unknown. Was it money raised by Unruh, or it just could have been
money raised by Salinger? Mrs , Gatov thought it was printed outside
the state.

Kent: And at that time, those guys were still going desperately into debt.
Fry: Oh, they were?

Kent: Sure. That's what killed poor Bob Coate, pretty near. He came in,
[as chairman of the Democratic State Central Committee] and Cranston
had overspent his budget by two or three hundred thousand dollars,

238

Kent: and Salinger had done the same. They could have gotten credit for
some of these debts, or they could have gotten credit for some
other people, and used that money to pay for this card, say.

Fry: It's what, eleven- thirty? It's about time. Do you have anything else
to say about the senatorial election.

Kent: No, I don't think so.

The Democratic National Convention
[Interview 12: June 17, 1977 ]##

Fry: I thought we could get started today on the 1964 Democratic National
Convention story. Do you want to back up and go into the Mississippi
Freedom Delegation?

Seating the Mississippi Freedom Delegation

Kent: Yes, let's go into the Mississippi Freedom Delegation and the state

convention, for instance. At the state caucus, a motion was made that
we recognize the Mississippi Freedom [Democratic party] delegation.
I was in the chair, and I took no part in the debate. I had, from the
very beginning, a most serious doubt about the legality of seating
this party as a representative of the state of Mississippi. It just
didn't make any sense. There was nothing in the law of Mississippi or
in the national committee that gave any pretext that they could be a
legitimate representative of the state of Mississippi.

Fry: Could I explain here, just for the benefit of the tape, that as I
understand it, this was a delegation of blacks who had been denied
their right at the polls in Mississippi, like most blacks were in '64.
So it was a question of morality versus legality. At least, that's
how Ted [Theodore] White poses it in The Making of the President 1964,
on pages 277 to 279. Is that all right?

Kent: I think that's very true. I most reluctantly eventually took the
position, which we'll discuss, that we couldn't seat them as
representatives of Mississippi, because there was just absolutely no
basis on which you could do that.

Fry: You were torn, I guess, between the right of someone to vote and
preserving a democratic process of representation.

239

Kent: Sure. These people, horribly as they were treated, didn't have any
better right legally to vote [at the convention] than the next sixty
people you picked up on the street. I mean, there was just no basis
on which they had a legal right to vote.

Fry: I wondered that if they had been allowed to seat their entire

delegation if that would have meant then that General Motors could
have sent in their delegation the next time or something like that.

Kent: Something equivalent to this. I was in the chair, and I said, "How

do you vote on this?" Of course, they voted "aye" that they [Freedom
delegation] should be allowed to vote. Then I called for the other
side — or maybe the first vote was "no" and the second one was "aye."
I remember standing up behind the rostrum and saying, "All right, and
now how do you vote on the other side of the question?" Then I ducked
down behind the rostrum because the yells were so frantic from
California that they wanted these people to vote. It was apparent that
our delegation wanted them to have the vote.

Fry: This was at the state [Central Committee] convention?

Kent: At our state convention. This issue came up as one of the things that
we were to recommend to our delegation as to what they should do.

Fry: To seat the Mississippi Freedom — ?

Kent: Well, that's right. I'm quite sure that that's the way it went. I got
back [to Atlantic City], and I had known Joe Rauh [spells it] — you
know who he is. He's a very prominent liberal lawyer. I'd known him
for a year and liked him. I asked him — he said, "We're filing a brief
on behalf of this Freedom party." I said, "Joe, you got any law?" He
said, "Plenty of law," and he gave me kind of a sly smile. I said, "I
know you got plenty of equity, but do you have any legal basis on which
these people can be given a vote?" He said, "It's a most persuasive
brief." I said, "I'm quite sure it's persuasive, but you have not
answered my question, except that by the fact that you haven't answered
it. You're not a dummy. I know you have answered it."

So that night — and we may have discussed this before — Brown had
been talking with Johnson, and with others. They had decided that
what they would offer this Freedom party would be to seat them on the
floor or wherever they could be seated, and that they would be allowed
to audit the proceedings. This was provided that these people took an
oath that the other — that the duly elected white delegation took an
oath that they would support the nominees of the convention.

Well, I think it was Libby Gatov that was one of the first ones
that called to my attention very quickly the fact that on this
delegation, there were a bunch of nonentities. They did not have on
this [white] delegation the congressmen, the speaker of the senate,

240

Kent: the speaker of the house, this that and the other thing. They did not
have prominent white delegates who were going to take this oath that
they would support the nominees of the convention. So you were getting
absolutely nothing in terms of political support for Johnson. Of
course, this [oath] was aimed at a possible Wallace thing, or a right-
wing business.

Fry: Yes, that they would break off —

Kent: That they would break off and go someplace else.

Fry: So you didn't have the big politicians or anyone?

Kent: They weren't there. Pat Brown said, "Well, this is what the president
wants." (This is at two o'clock in the morning.) He said, "Isn't that
good enough for you?" I said, "No!" I said, "We've got to have
assurance of the top, real wheels in Mississippi that they will support
the ticket, or we don't have anything. At that point, I will certainly
give it very careful consideration." So I was just leaving, closing the
door and going to bed at two o'clock in the morning, and he said, "I
will then report to the president that everybody in the California
delegation is in favor of his program except the chairman." [laughs]
I said, "Okay, go ahead. Go ahead and report that to him."

Then I think I did go over this with you, because I think I said
that about ten people took credit for this great compromise, which was
that these people [Freedom delegates] — either all of them or a
substantial number of them would be allowed to be seated as auditors.
Two would have votes as at-large votes, in which they would be
representing the disenfranchised from every state, not only Mississippi.
This was something that was within the power of the national committee
(which was meeting to nominate its nominees) to give. It could seat
some people and say, "All right, you're going to be allowed to vote."
I said, "That's fine with me, that's great." That's the one that we
went into at some length, that Unruh tried to give the deep six to at
our caucus .

Unruh 's Move to Defeat the Compromise

Fry: You didn't explain exactly what Unruh did.

Kent: Well, after this proposal had been made — and this proposal, as I said,
was a perfectly lawful action by the national committee, and it was
going to be satisfactory to the great majority of the delegates. It
was going to resolve a very sticky and objectionable problem, as
Teddy White's book tells of the awful things that were done to these
b lacks .

241

Kent: But it was going to pass, and it was going to be then put behind us,

and they were going to go forward with what else there was to be done.

So Brown, as the chairman of our delegation, called a meeting of
our delegation to meet just before we went to the convention hall
to cast a vote on this and other problems. This was still a very
heated issue, as far as California was concerned. There were those
who felt that we should go and seat the entire Freedom party as
delegates of Mississippi. Then there were those who said, as I did,
that this would be an unlawful act and that the proposal of this
compromise was a clearly lawful thing to do, and a very sensible
resolution of the difficulty.

They said, "All right, there will be three speakers on each side
of this issue, and then we'll take a vote." The three speakers, I
believe, that spoke for the compromise were myself and Jimmy Roosevelt
and, I think, Pierre Salinger. The three that spoke for seating the
entire delegation were Phil Burton, Don Edwards, and a black leader
whose name now escapes me. That was when — this was in the middle of
the program where Unruh was trying to torpedo Brown, either as chairman
of the Kennedy committee, or as a candidate for governor. So he was
urging his people, the people that he could influence, to vote
against the compromise and vote for the seating of the Freedom party.

Wins low Christian, who was the governor's secretary (travel
secretary, I think, at that time. Or maybe he was appointments
secretary) was in the back of the room. He heard Unruh telling a
delegate that this is the way the delegates should vote. So Christian
came back and got this Johnson representative (whose name I couldn't
remember then and I can't remember now. He later became the chief of
protocol. He was out here in California working for Johnson as a
Johnson lead man in '60. He was working for Johnson, and he was also
working in '64). But he was the one who then said to Unruh, "You
don't seem to realize that what you're talking about is contrary to
the wishes of the president, and you have got to make it clear before
this vote is taken that you want these people to vote in favor of the
compromise." That's when Unruh was really caught, after having gotten
all his people to agree to jump off the bridge — That's when I was
with Brown, and he [Unruh] asked for a ten-minute recess. I said to
Brown, not knowing any of this, "What the hell — we've been through
what was agreed. We've had the three speeches on each side. They're
waiting over in the hall. Call the roll!"

Then he had Bradley call the roll, and Unruh wasn't called until
the end, and that's when Unruh said, "Pass!" He didn't commit himself
either way .

Fry: We did get that. I was thinking that was 1960, but it was '64.

242

Kent: That was '64, right. So that was the compromise that was reached, and
certainly there were horrible things that were done to these blacks,
who were attempting to vote and then to exercise influence in the
convention.

Fry: Stemming from the process of this compromise was the agreement that in
1968, only delegations that would —

Kent: That met certain qualifications.

Fry: In other words, only in states where everyone had been allowed to vote
would the delegations be seated.

Kent: Right. That's correct.

Fry: That was the really big thing. Did you have anything to do with that?

Kent: That was, that issue was being resolved, as I say, on a very, very

high level, as Teddy White says in here. Johnson, Humphrey, and these
other people could have resolved this at any time. They and some New
York advisors (as I said, dozens of people claimed credit for this
compromise) were talking. It was above my level. I wasn't cut in on
it.

Fry: A lot of the convention delegates, I guess, were feeling that this was
a terribly explosive issue. Maybe that's why they were handling it
with kid gloves, because this was the summer of the first race riots.

Kent: I think so.

Pat Brown's Role

Fry: It was very much a sensitive issue. Let's see. On Pat Brown's role,
he nominated LBJ, he and Connally. Could you give us an idea of his
prominence in the convention?

Kent: Well, he had a very prominent part in the Democratic political

structure. I mean, he was the governor of the largest state. I
remember getting into real trouble in defending Pat before — in which
year? I think this must have been two years later, in his campaign
against Reagan. That's when it was — where Pat was on the right side,
as far as the Democrats were concerned, of every issue except the
Vietnam war issue. I pointed out to these people — what's Reagan
going to do to the University? What's Reagan going to do to free
speech? What's Reagan going to do to this? You can count on Pat.

243

Kent: They'd say, "Well, you're not addressing yourself to what we want to
hear." I said, "I know I'm not, because I can't give you anything
that you're going to be very happy with. As a matter of fact, this is
Brown talking about something where he doesn't have one damn thing to
do with making a decision." [laughs] One of these guys called me up
a little short and said, "Well, why does he talk about it?" This was
where Johnson had just twisted arms of everybody whose arm he could
twist — and he was the greatest [arm twister] — that would have been
all the Democratic governors and whatnot, to get them to publicly
support his Vietnam program. Brown was one of them, and that did Brown
one hell of a lot of damage, certainly in that '66 election.

Fry: Do you think that went back to Brown's role in the '64 convention?

Kent: No, it didn't. The Vietnam war was not hot at the time of the '64

convention. I mean, it was on the back burner, and was something that
we were going to take care of with our left hand and defend democracy,
and so forth and so on. It wasn't until '66 that Johnson really needed
support of other leading Democrats.

Fry: Was there any talk of Pat Brown, to you, as vice-president?

Kent: Really, none. I think that substantially all of us — when I say "us,"
my compatriots on the delegation, particularly from the north — were
very, very anxious that Humphrey get it. Johnson kept kind of dangling
it up and down in front of Humphrey, and trading it off as if it was
a choice between Humphrey, who was clearly the best guy, and that
Senator Dodd, who was clearly the worst guy. [laughter] He brought
Thomas Dodd down from Washington in a helicopter to the convention in
Atlantic City. Then, of course, Johnson did quite dramatically and
well nominate Humphrey for vice-president.

Fry: Do you think he was ever serious about Dodd?

Kent: Oh, I think Johnson had kind of a big cruel streak in him. I think
he was just dangling these guys and holding out the hope, false hope
that they might get it.

Democratic National Committee Elections

Fry: I'd like to back up a little bit now to talk about what went on before

the convention. We really didn't get into the campaign for the national
committeepersons . That was on June 27 at the delegation meeting to
elect the officers. This was a very big campaign that year, between
[Carmen] Warschaw, who wanted Libby Gatov's .role as national committee-
woman. According to my notes, Stanley Mosk and Jesse Unruh wanted
Warschaw to win. And then Eugene Wyman, who was southern California
chairman, was up for national committeeman.

244

Kent: We had already thrown Ziffren out [in 1960] , and Mosk was the national
committeeman. Now I don't have any independent recollection — I can't
imagine that Mosk would have turned around and said (he might possibly
have done it) , "I am going to be for Warschaw against Libby," because
in the coalition that put together Mosk's election, Libby was one of
the critical people. He owed his election, really, to her.

I guess at that point, Mosk decided that it was the wrong thing
for him to do to be national committeeman and be attorney general and
be a Supreme Court justice designate, to all intents and purposes. He
decided to back off. Wyman, who was a growing luminary, decided that
he wanted it. Wyman had always worked with us, worked with us in
the north really very well. Whether he had Jesse's support on it I
can't recall. He probably did, because Jesse, I think probably at
that time, thought he could control Wyman. He knew that Wyman had
access to vast amounts of this Jewish movie money, and Wyman was taking
care of these people and doing a beautiful job of it, and was able to
raise all kinds of money for the Democratic party, or if it was for
Unruh and Unruh's candidates for the assembly, he could do a job there.

I think that that is true, that it was pretty well decided that
Wyman would be national committeeman. But we had a real fight on our
hands as far as Warschaw was concerned, because Warschaw turned
around and gave five hundred or a thousand dollars to every delegate
who was an assemblyman or a senator, and urged them to not only vote
for Warschaw, but to influence others to vote for Warschaw. This was
one of the few times that I really got tough in that kind of a fight.
I told this little guy from Solano County, who said he wanted to sit
at the head table with Johnson. I just went in and told him. I said,
"I have control of who sits at the head table, and you are not going
to vote for Warschaw. You're going to vote for Gatov for this job."
We knew he'd promised his vote to Warschaw. "Or you are not sitting
at the head table." I said, "Here's the list." I had the person here,
and asked him if he was going to strike it off.

He said, "It may be impossible for me to be there." [laughter]
I said, "Well, if it's impossible for you to be there, that's all
right with me. I'm talking about a negative vote." I got tough with
some others, and Pat got tough, and Bradley and some of the others of
us got tough. I don't think it was as close as Warschaw thought it
was going to be. Anyway, we did elect Libby again for another term.

She at that point said, "Look, I do not intend to make a career
of running against Warschaw every four years. You guys go find
somebody else to run for national committeewoman; I'm not going to do
it again." [laughs]

Fry: So she went in knowing that was her last four years?

245

Kent: Well, that was her impression at that time, yes.

Fry: I want to check out a couple of things with you. Was there a way of
selecting the delegates, which I think was done by you and Wyman and
some other people — I don't know who-all — with an eye to who they
would vote for for either national committeeman or national committee-
woman?

Kent: Well, you know, it was funny. Unruh claimed this after the 1960 — after
we threw out Ziffren. He claimed that he had had his mind on not only
the presidential nominee, but that he had his mind on the national
committeeman and commit teewoman. He said when this election of Mosk
against Ziffren was won — he said it was won [by the selection of
delegates] at the Highlands Inn in Carmel. I just don't think that was
true. I think that he wanted people on there who were friendly to him,
but I don't think that the lines had been drawn that sharply at that
time, so that he [would have] said, "I want these votes on there for
Mosk against Ziffren.

I remember there were some big fights between Ziffren and Unruh
on delegates. It's just possible that there could have been some of
that, because there was a Pacht family [spells name], which was a
prominent Jewish family in Los Angeles. Then they were friends of
Stanley Mosk's. Or they were friends of Ziffren's. They were friends
of Ziffren's, and probably would have gone along with Ziffren. Then
there were some others. I guess it was probably the Harvey-Wars chaw
crowd that were going to go with Carmen for national commit teewoman.
They were going to go with Unruh as far as the national committeeman
was concerned.

I remember Ziffren finally getting up, when Unruh had about three
of these people on the delegation, and nobody — none of the Pacht ones —
and Ziffren making this plea, saying, "Look, what we're talking about
is that we're talking about some very influential and very fine Jewish
families in southern California who have supported the Democrats over
the years. You have now put three from one faction on, and none from
the Pacht faction. I strongly recommend and urge and move that this
committee substitute this Pacht for one of these Warschaws." And we
did it. It was very smart. Ziffren was very smart, and he phrased
this very eloquently and very logically. He won that vote.

Fry: You mean Ziffren did?

Kent: Ziffren did, yes.

Fry: Was Ziffren the one who made the appeal? I thought you said Unruh did.

Kent: No, Ziffren made the appeal. Unruh said, "We're going to have three
Warschaws in there."

246

Fry: That's what I mean.

Kent: Unruh said, "We're going to have three Warschaws." Ziffren said, "We
want one Pacht," and then made this appeal to the effect that these
were two comparable families, and one was being completely shut out and
one was being given three representatives. As I said, at that point the
uncommitted, of which there were half a dozen or more, went with
Ziffren.

Put It In Writing

Fry: Then in '64, was there any such considerations in selecting the
delegates?

Kent: Let's see. In '64, of course, it was very, very cut and dried. I
mean, this was when Johnson was —

Fry: That was when Warschaw was running against Gatov.
Kent: Yes.

Fry: And Warschaw claimed that she had a commitment to be backed by Wyman,
which he broke.

Kent: Yes.

Fry: Did he do that?

Kent: He [didn't (Gatov)] put it in writing. That's when she hired a

skywriting airplane to fly over Atlantic City with a big sign saying,
"Put it in writing."

Fry: I saw that newspaper article, and I couldn't figure out why she had
hired this skywriter. And that was what it referred to!

Kent: She said, "I had a commitment from Wyman that he would vote for me for
national commit teewoman." She claims that Wyman said that it was never
in writing. So then she was spending — oh, she must have spent thousands
of dollars trying to make Wyman into a bum, that his word was no good,
and that if you had to do business with Wyman, you had to have it in
writing.

Fry: Why do you think Wyman would have supported her? That would have given
you two committeepersons from the south.

Kent: That was one of the reasons [he didn't. (Gatov)]. Later that

happened.

247

Fry: It did?

Kent: Yes. I've forgotten which one it went, because all of a sudden we

decided, well, hell, it had been done actually. I think it had been
done back in Helen Douglas' day, that Helen was the national committee-
woman from the south, and the commit teeman was also from the south.

Fry: So you're saying that was no special argument against Warschaw in the
first place?

Kent: I don't think so, no.

Fry: But Wyman was supporting Libby, really, right?

Kent: Well, Wyman was supporting Libby and the rest of us. He was supporting
Brown, because Wyman then became very influential in the Brown
administration. Wyman again was one of these guys like Phil Burton
and like Unruh, who devoted twelve, sixteen hours a day to politics. He
realized, of course, that Brown was going to be governor. I'm quite
sure he figured that there were just one hell of a lot of things that
Brown could do for him as governor in the practice of the law and
otherwise, that he was anxious to have.

Role of the National Commit teeman

Fry: How did you feel about losing Wyman as a state co-chairman in the south?
He was so effective in that role.

Kent: Yes. I just felt that these positions — you're aware of this. The table
of organization doesn't really mean a hell of a lot. What you're
talking about is people. If Wyman had been the vice-chairman in
southern California, and I'd been the state chairman or the national
committeeman in the north, we'd have been working together, and we would
have been working probably very closely. It wouldn't have made a hell
of a lot of difference whether he was the national committeeman or a
functionary in the party, for instance, at the meetings that we had
every three months of the executive committee.

The national committeeman was a member of the executive committee,
and Ziffren's voice was loud and clear and very influential. He had
a cadre of guys that were on the state committee, executive committee,
that he could count on, and that were very smart, and were eloquent
and very ring-wise in terms of practical politics and the mechanics of
how you got things done. Wyman was the same way.

Fry: In other words, you and Wyman continued to function about the same after
he became national committeeman?

248

Kent: That's right, that's right.

Fry: He continued in this prime role as money-raiser?

Kent: That's right. He continued to be completely and totally friendly with
me. And when we talked, I had the feeling that I could just absolutely
talk and level with him, and say, "This is what I'm thinking, and
this is the reason I'm thinking this way."

Wyman was carrying his politics further than I was. I mean, for
instance in '62, Johnson was vice-president, and Wyman laid on a meeting
for Johnson to address the state committee in Sacramento when he was
the vice-president. He had all the trimmings. He had a twenty-girl
orchestra singing "The Yellow Rose of Texas" for Johnson when he came
in. Johnson was just tickled to death. Wyman was a step ahead of poor
JFK's assassination, as far as getting himself in with Johnson was
concerned.

Chain of Deaths

Fry: Well, speaking of the assassination, this was part of a chain of deaths
that left the Democratic party in a pretty weakened state by 1965.
Before Kennedy there was Glair Engle, the Senator from California, and
then Clem Miller, who was killed in a plane accident on the West Coast.
He had been a key congressman for the Democrats. I just wondered if
that, plus maybe some other things that you can explain —

Kent: Then strangely enough, there was an Indian from India, who held the
seat that John Tunney eventually held. I've forgotten the fellow's
name [Dalip Singh Saund] , but he was the guy that beat that Cochran
woman, the aviatrix, for that congressional seat. It was the saddest
thing, from the Democrats' point of view, that the two of their very,
very good congressmen were this fellow and Clair Engle.

Fry: The Indian?

Kent: Yes. They were elected from two of the most difficult of all seats for
Democrats to win, so that you lost two of your very best, and you lost
them in districts which you were almost certain to lose again. I
mean, if Jack Shelley had been killed, as far as the Democrats were
concerned, it wouldn't have made a particle of difference, because
there' d have been another Democrat elected.

Fry: You said Clair Engle, but you meant — ?
Kent: --Clem Miller.

249

Kent Considers Congressional Seat

Kent: There's an interesting personal line there, and that is that there was
a hell of a hullaballoo for me to run for that seat after Miller's
death. I was very strongly tempted. I didn't particularly want to be
a congressman, but I would have just loved to have gotten into a
campaign, because what we had just came through — we had just come through
the 1962 campaign, where we had clobbered Nixon. We had the best state
wide campaign organization that I've ever seen in California. I mean,
Bradley was in charge, and we had this group over here, and all of the
people that — Libby was in it, and all these pros. Madlyn Day and Cyr
Copertini and these other people, and Jack Abbott and Van Dempsey. We
had money, and we were all set. We could have just taken this
organization and moved it right into that special election. All these
people were my very close friends.

Katie Miller wanted this fellow Bill Grader to run. Bill Grader
was one of those unfortunate guys that was a very, very fine guy
packed in a very unattractive package. He was very much overweight,
and kind of half-bald. He had been Clem Miller's assistant. This was
hanging in the balance for a period of two or three weeks as to whether
I'd do it.

Don didn't want me to do it. I don't know what his reasons [were].
I think he wanted me to stay in California, and I'm quite sure that
Engle, for instance, wanted me to stay in California and Brown wanted
me to stay in California, and whatnot. So I think they had some reasons
for it. I was really just teetering. Bradley finally made the
clinching argument. He said, "Look, we have just laid these Republicans
on the ground like a rug, and just bitten their ears off." (Miller
was elected after he was dead, of course. This was on the basis that
the Democrats would put up a good candiate, and the people would have
a choice.)

He'd said, "It wouldn't make a particle of difference to the
Republicans or to the situation in California if Joe Doaks, a very fine
fellow with a good mind and a good reputation and whatnot, should run
for this seat and lose, as far as the parties are concerned. It
wouldn't make any difference. But if you run and they beat the chairman,
we'll probably have a real problem."

Fry: Because the impact would be so great?

Kent: Well, the Republicans were on the ground, just beaten down with Nixon.
This would give them a lift. So that was the argument that finally
persuaded me not to go . I was one of the few who realized that the
emotional impact of the votes for Miller after he was killed had
exhausted the emotional advantage that you were going to get from
Miller. I said, "Look, a lot of unthinking people were saying, 'A dead

250

Kent: man beat this fellow. Any live body could beat him.'" I said, "Don't
you kid yourself, this is going to be a really tough one, because the
people exhausted themselves and their emotions in voting for Miller
after he was dead, and a guy comes in and says, 'I'm going to follow
in Miller's footsteps,' and they'd say, 'You and who else?' and they'd

go about their business and cast their vote the way they wanted to

•

That's the way it went, in fact. It was a positive disadvantage
to be running in Miller's place, even though perhaps Grader could take
more advantage of it. But he could take advantage of it in certain
pockets where Miller had been very helpful to this group or that group,
and they had worked with not only Miller but with Grader, so he would
have some help on it.

We had a convention in Santa Rosa, and I stepped out and nominated
Grader .

Fry: Oh, you did?

Kent: Yes.

Fry: Was that a tough race?

Kent: Oh, it was pretty easy. Grader lost very handily. He never had a
chance .

Fry: Well, as things rolled on in 1965, you resigned. Do you want to go
into that right now?

Kent: Sure. Let's do that and get that out of the way.

Kent Resigns as Party Chairman////

Kent: I was kind of blithely going along as chairman. Life seemed to be that
this was the way it was going. I was going over to the office in the
afternoons. Libby called me up to have lunch, and I said sure.

Fry: This was after she had already resigned, wasn't it? She resigned in
March .

Kent: I think so.

Fry: And you resigned at the end of summer.

251

Kent: In October or thereabouts. Anyway, we had lunch, and she said, "Well,
I get it from Brown's office that you are planning to resign." I
was very much surprised; it was a new thought to me and one that
immediately began to have some attractions. I said, "I haven't
thought about it." She said, "This supposedly comes out of Brown's
office." It could have come out from some of my friends, such as
Christian and Brown himself, and Champion at one time. It could have
come from people who didn't like me at all, like Button and some of
the others.

But anyway, I immediately just let this open my mind up and said,
"Well, why not? I've been there eleven years, and maybe it's time
that I quit this." Then we immediately began to talk about a successor,
I wanted to make goddamn sure that we had a successor who was going to
be friendly to Brown.

Fry: You mean you and Lib by talked about it?

Kent: And Bradley and Dempsey and Winslow Christian and Brown himself —

everybody who had been in this group. We wanted to have somebody who
would be helpful to Brown and certainly would not be an Unruh man. One
thing we had well in mind was that, by this time, the voting strength
in the state convention and the state committee had pretty well moved
south, because they had had more assemblymen elected down there. They
had more votes, and they had changed the rules, I think, at that time,
so that they got some extra votes.

So we wanted to make sure that this didn't go to the wire of July
or August of '66. The way that we could do that —

Fry: You didn't want it to be voted on —

Kent: At the state committee meeting, because we wanted to have it voted on
at a meeting where we had control. So we decided that we could have
it at the executive committee meeting, which would be held in the fall
of '65, which was scheduled for northern California. This is one where
we could schedule things so as to get the result that we wanted, if we
wanted to do the work, because in the executive committee, all [the
forty] county chairmen had votes. If we had it in the north, we could
get the county chairmen out of Calaveras and Colusa and Stanislaus and
so forth, and have them there and have them ready to vote, and they
would have enough votes to elect whomever they chose, regardless of
the votes that were controlled by elected officials.

Fry: And they were anti-Unruh?

252

Successor Bob Coate Faces_Big Debt

Kent: Well, in a sense. They were pro-Brown, pro-Bradley, pro-me, pro-Libby —
Pro- the organization that had been working together for ten years. So
then they said, "Who would we get?" Well, both Lib and myself and
Alan Cranston and Don had had very good experiences with Bob Coate,
found him to be a very reliable guy who had a good mind, a guy who
would do what he said he would do.

Fry: Was he a good money raiser?

Kent: Well, he had not demonstrated that at this particular point. He later
turned out to be a fantastically good money raiser.

Fry: How long had he been working in the party?

Kent: He'd been helping us for four or five years, or more. I don't know.
So finally, the mantle fell on Bob. We decided that he would be the
guy that we would use to succeed me. The way we did this, of course,
was one of these typical phony political businesses, where Brown said,
"All right, this is the way we'll do it. We'll have Coate elected,"
and I would resign at this executive committee meeting. The way we
framed it was that Brown would ask me to be his state chairman for his
coming campaign in 1966, and that I would then write this silly letter
to Brown saying, "I thank you for the honor, and I accept, but it's
obvious that I should not try and take on the heavy responsibility of
both these jobs. Therefore, I feel I must resign as state chairman,"
which at that particular time, that was the way the dice rolled. (I was
state chairman, and not vice-chairman.)

So we had that exchange of correspondence. We had a meeting here
in San Francisco. I don't remember whether I nominated Bob or somebody
else did, but Unruh didn't even fight it. He knew he didn't have the
votes, so Bob was then elected. There had been some very, very serious
finance things had happened, which I couldn't take — were not my
responsibility, really.

What had happened was that Salinger had run up this tremendous
primary debt, and he'd gotten pledges from Democrats that had always
supported us, and from the airlines and the telephone company —

Fry: Had Cranston also?

Kent: Cranston had also done it. Between them, they owed four- or five-
hundred-thousand dollars. Then we had this perfectly ghastly time
with George Killion and the Johnson campaign, because Killion — I think
I told you this before — went to our regular sources, after having
promised us in Atlantic City in front of Larry O'Brien that he wouldn't
do this. [tape turned off and restarted]

253

Fry: You were just telling me what Killion —

Kent: Well, we had Magnin going to raise money from the sources that we had
used, and then sources largely that he had generated himself. All of
a sudden, he finds out that Killion is going to all these sources and
telling them, "It's all the same thing. We're raising money for
Johnson." This was to be independence for Johnson, which is what
Killion was working on. He lied to these people, and he collected the
money. We had several meetings with Killion and with a contractor,
who was a hell of a nice fellow. But Killion knew what Johnson wanted,
and that is, Johnson wanted cash, and he wanted cash for Johnson. So
they proceeded to raise a hundred thousand dollars from our regular
sources here in San Francisco. They put that in a bank account with
Bob Haynie [spells name] with Killion on this thing.

They had promised Larry O'Brien that they would not approach
people that we could approach. They were to go get money from people
who wouldn't give money to me, because I was a Democrat. Well, they
were just absolute lies. Killion not only double-crossed me [laughs],
but he double-crossed Haynie. They went east with Haynie to see
Johnson, and Haynie said that he was going to go out and play golf,
and they'd have an appointment, and they'd come and give Johnson this
hundred thousand dollars the following morning.

So Haynie and his friends went out to play golf, and Killion went
down and gave Johnson the hundred thousand dollars that afternoon. So
then this turned out —

Fry: It didn't give you any brownie points out here at all?

Kent: It not only didn't give us the brownie points, but what it did was,

it just robbed us of the money that we needed to run a minimum campaign.
Poor old Bob Coate, when he came in, owed the four or five hundred
thousand dollars [debts] that Salinger and Cranston had run up, and
they also owed the one hundred thousand dollars that we would have
collected and paid our regular campaign expenses out of for the Johnson
campaign. We weren't getting much money in for Johnson, because
everybody realized that Johnson was a shoo-in.

Fry: And this was to be for the other candidates?

Kent: Well, no. This was to pay our expenses for office rent and stationery
and media and radio and that kind of thing. You can't run a northern
California campaign for a president or a governor for less than a hundred
thousand dollars. We had raised about twenty-five thousand, and so we
were about a hundred thousand dollars in the hole. Poor ol' Bob had
to step in and commence to try to raise that money and restore the credit
of the Democratic party. He did a magnificent job. He wound up — that

254

Kent: last eighteen thousand, he had six of us on a note for eighteen thousand
dollars, so it was three thousand dollars apiece. Each of us had to
eat the three thousand dollars to pay the bank, and we never got the
money back.

Fry: Back when you were trying to figure out who should be your successor —
did you ever consider Gerald Marcus?

Kent: I'm not sure. I'm sure his name must have come up. I mean, he obviously
was a friend and had been in many campaigns, but whether he had ever
exhibited any interest in the job, I don't know.

Libby Gatov Resigns National Committee Post

Fry: I wondered if you knew much about Libby Gatov' s resignation.

Kent: I know only this, and that is that she got very fed up with this very
sterile life in Washington.

Fry: I mean her resignation as national committeewoman.

Kent: Didn't they coincide? Didn't she resign as treasurer at the same time,
and then resign as national committeewoman?

Fry: No, she had resigned as treasurer earlier, and had come out here to

work in the '64 campaign, and be with her family and so forth. Then she
decided to resign the national committee, which she did in March of '65.
There again, though, she faced the problem of Wars chaw grabbing it.

Kent: But Wars chaw did grab it?

Fry: No, she didn't. Let's see — I think Ann Alanson got it then. As I
understand it from the Gatov interview, Libby mailed a letter to
Washington announcing her resignation late enough — she didn't send it
airmail — so that it only got there the day before some kind of a meeting,
so that by the time Wars chaw found out about it, it was too late for
her to do anything about it.

Warschaw had wanted Trudy Owens, from southern California. Maybe
Trudy did go in.

Kent: No, I'm pretty sure Ann went in.

Fry: I'll try to find my list of national commit teewomen here. Here it is.
I guess Trudy Owens was state co-chairman in southern California.
Looks like it here. Then Ann Alanson was northern division women's
chai rman .

255

Fry: So after that, you worked on Pat's '66 campaign?

Kent: Right.

Fry: You want to go into that next time?

Kent: I think so, sure. Let's call it — that ought to be the last one.

Haldeman Deposition Barred from Watergate Hearing

Fry: I think so. The only other thing was that I did get that letter from
you in which you had said that you had tried to get Haldeman 's
deposition from the '62 case here in California in on the Watergate
hearings at the House Judiciary Committee, but you couldn't. I
wondered why.

Kent: Well, Ervin ruled it out of order. Dan —
Fry: On grounds that satisfied you?

Kent: No, I wasn't satisfied. Haldeman's lawyer — Haldeman objected to
Wilson, his lawyer, when Dan Inouye was reading Leone Baxter's
deposition. Ervin sustained him, on the grounds that it was too
remote, it was ten years back. I felt that it was under a well-known
legal principle, that evidence of similar offenses can be introduced.
This was such a similar offense, in that Haldeman had lied to protect
Nixon the candidate, and it was proved in black and white in Leone
Baxter's testimony that he had lied.

Fry: Thank you.

256

XII PROBLEMS AND ISSUES OF THE 1966 CAMPAIGN
[Interview 13: February 23, 1977]##

Fry: When we last left you, we were in 1965, I think. You were stepping
down as head of the Democratic party.

Kent: Right.

Fry: In order to go into this whole 1966 election, you want to kind of lay
a background of some of the problems that were going on within the
Democrats. There were some things that were happening — with both the
CDC and the party. The clouds were gathering for some splits in both
organizations. I noticed, before you stepped down, on September 15
Pat Brown had asked Simon Cassidy to resign as head of the CDC.
[Kent murmurs assent] Okay, I'll contribute that fact. [laughs]
Now you have to tell me what it was all about.

Vietnam Splits the CDC

Kent: Well, I think, strangely enough, that Cassidy was right. Cassidy
was a very early, very vocal opponent of the Vietnam War. I was a
very dedicated opponent of the war, but I and Cassidy were pursuing
different courses. I had written to Johnson in July — I think it's
in the record — saying, "Don't get in the damn Vietnam War. You can't
win it, and it's a hopeless situation," and saying that I was writing
him and not going on the streets.

Cassidy, on the other hand, was going on the street. Now I
thought, even though I was opposed to the Vietnam War, that that was
a mistake for a party functionary — and you couldn't say that a
president of CDC wasn't a party functionary — to get in an open brawl,
publicly, with his president. I mean, I felt that Cassidy should
have been back in Washington seeking an interview with Johnson and
telling him, "Please, here are the reasons why you shouldn't be in it.1

257

Kent: I think Pat Brown had the same feeling, that Cassidy was disrupting

the Democratic party, because at that time, the bulk of the Democratic
party — there was no doubt about it — and the bulk of the Republican
party were all in favor of the damn war. So that Cassidy, in
violently and publicly opposing it and creating riots and this kind
of thing in a Democratic organization, was injuring, in Pat's view
and in mine, too, the Democratic party. We didn't see, of course, what
was coming in terms of the massive dissent and revolt that was going
to take place in the coming two or three years . I think that was the
major reason for Brown wanting to have Cassidy out.

I think Cassidy was also incompetent. Cranston, of course, was
the first CDC president. Then Joe Wyatt. Then — his name's something
like Carberry — well, I've forgotten [Tom Carveyj.

Fry: We have that.

Kent: They were all good friends of mine, and we worked together. But then

CDC — with the direct primary, and not only designation of party on the
ballot but the abolition of cross-filing, the basic reason for CDC
disappeared. As far as I was concerned, and as far as most of my
friends were concerned. See, the major reason for CDC was that in the
days of cross-filing, and particularly before designation of party
on the ballot, there would be two or three Denocrats that would run an
office held by a Republican, say. The Republican would get a plurality
of the votes cast in the Democratic primary, because he would be
listed number one on the ballot without any designation of party,
and the Democrats would think they were voting for a Democrat. The
only way in which Miller and Libby Gatov and others finally had their
Asilomar convention and this — we'd all been talking about this for
several years, but I was in Washington at that particular time. [The
way] we could beat this impossible situation was to get together with
an endorsing convention, and have the Democrats agree on a single
candidate. I'm sure this is all in my talk and also here.

They did it on a statewide basis with these conventions, which
customarily were held at Fresno. Then they had, within each congressional
district and each assembly district and senatorial district, similar
caucuses set up, with varying degrees of success, but quite a lot, to
select a prominent Democrat. Usually they did pretty damn well. They
selected one with real quality that the Democrats could get behind,
and all of a sudden began to win these elections. We won something
like eight out of nine special elections, which had been far different
from what the situation had been before.

Fry: This was kind of to help point out who really was a Democrat in the
days of cross-filing, when you couldn't really tell from the ballot?

Kent: That was it, that was it. It would point out who was a Democrat and
who had the support of the Democrats.

258

Fry: Then after cross-filing was eliminated, actually CDC and its preprimary
endorsement policy created a division, I suppose.

Kent: I think that's correct. I think that's correct.

Fry: Because it was endorsing between Democratic candidates, not between
Republican and Democratic, as before.

Kent: That's right. It was choosing, having to choose between two or more
Democratic candidates who might be equally good. The argument could
not be made: but we've got to stick together or we're going to lose to
a Republican. People would say, "Come on, let the voters decide
which of the two they want as a Democrat, and then we'll get together
afterwards." This unfortunately is not the history of what happens
in primaries. [laughs] Primaries usually develop much more heat and
controversy and make it much more difficult to win in the final than
an endorsing process.

Anyway, CDC had run far into the background. As far as I was
concerned, it had gone far into the background as far as [being] a
potent political force in the Democratic party. I continued on as
chairman of the party for northern California after CDC became very
much weakened. But I didn't pay much attention to what they were doing,
and they didn't pay much attention to what I was doing. From time to
time, we'd get together on certain things, like we'd try to get
together on Dollars for Democrats.

Here in northern California, the leadership of CDC continued to
be very high quality, and they worked out of our office and we worked
with them.

Fry: Who was that, the northern California leadership?

Kent: Well, it was very funny. It was difficult to go up there to the office
at 212 [Sutter] and see who was state committee and who was CDC. They
were all kinds of cross-offices. Nancy Jewel stayed more with CDC,
though she'd always been with us, and Ann Alanson had jobs with CDC
and with women's division as well as with the state committee.

Fry: Wasn't there some attempt at this point at one of the meetings to remove
CDC from the inner circles of the state Democratic committee? You
know, they usually have had some plots on that committee.

Kent: You see, right from the very beginning, when Liz Snyder was chairman
of the state committee, she deplored CDC and wanted to liquidate it.
(That fellow's name was Tom Carvey, the guy who was the president who
followed Joe Wyatt.) These — Cranston and Wyatt were outstanding guys,
and Carvey was a very good man. So it was the easiest thing in the

259

Kent: world to work with them. They ran good political organizations. They
knew what they were about and what the objective of a political
organization was, and how to go about achieving it.

I have always had a great respect for them, because the state
committee was nothing but a bunch of generals. If you wanted to get
to the troops, you had to go to the CDC, because you weren't going
to get the county committee guys. They just wouldn't take a part in
it. The state committee people were even worse, usually, so that even
if you had all of them with you, you'd only have something like fifteen
hundred people. You wouldn't have 10 percent of those as workers, so
you'd have to go out and recruit for every campaign. You'd have to
go out and recruit a new bunch of doorbell pushers and letter stuffers
and so forth.

CDC, particularly where the clubs had good leadership, was the
source for that kind of manpower and womanpower.

Fry: Well, is it correct that it didn't become much of an embarrassment

until Si Cassidy took over with his newspaper in El Cajon and a more
outspoken style?

Kent: Well, I think my interviews are replete with my — where Nixon and

Leone Baxter tried to make it embarrassing in the '62 election. You
have that whole story, where I stayed with it and got the injunction
against the Nixon-Haldeman — We got it against the members of the
committee, but Haldeman and Nixon were named in the judgment as the
people who had financed and implemented and thought out this scheme to
defraud, which was a scheme to blacken Brown by tying him into CDC,
and tying CDC to Communist issues of various kinds.

Fry: But that had originated from the outside, and this time, from the

news releases, the press stories that I've read, it seemed that people
were objecting to Cassidy 's style as being so flamboyant or openly
defiant.

Kent: Oh, I'm sure he was. I'm sure he was. My recollection is not as
clear on that as it might be, and probably very largely because he
did not — he kept his scope of operation very largely in southern
California. He didn't interfere with what we were trying to do up
here, particularly, so we just said, "To hell with Cassidy. If Brown
wants to row with him, that's all right, and we're with Brown."

Fry: Probably a lot of these were quotations from Warschaw. [laughs]
She was not one of his friends.

Kent: Well, she was always anti-CDC.

260

Fry: Let me see here — on the CDC split, Pat Brown asked him [Cassidy] to
resign on September 15. He didn't really resign until February of
'66. In the meantime, there was an effort to impeach him by the CDC,
and that didn't work. That lost. All this was going on — was that
terribly important?

Kent: It didn't appear so to me. It probably was important in disrupting
Brown's base. Previously, in '58 and in '62, Pat had been very
popular with CDC. He hadn't been their hero or anything like that, as
Cranston was, or Dick Richards even, or some of the others, but he
had been very popular, and he'd hardly had a dissenting vote in
getting the endorsement of CDC to run for governor. As he got into
this kind of fight, it was clear that there were a large number of
people in CDC that were for Cassidy. When he wanted to throw Cassidy
out, why all of a sudden instead of having a good firm base that was
pretty unanimously for him, he had a very shaky weak organization,
which was badly split. A great many of them were not for him.

Fry: After Cassidy resigned, then did you have to worry very much about
CDC?

Kent: I don't even remember what happened after Cassidy resigned. Did he
resign, and then they immediately had the election, and Wars chaw won
an election, or — ?

Fry: My chronology here — let me see. I have that Cassidy finally resigned
in February [1966], and then — [pauses]

Alans on- Wars chaw Rivalry

Fry: The next thing happened on May 6, here, when Ann Alanson, who was a
CDC person, won the battle to become national commit teewoman. You
know, to an outsider that appears that there was some sort of, perhaps,
unity movement there to get her in and bring in some of the important
CDC people.

Kent : Carmen made —

Fry: Wars chaw charged you — No, go ahead.

Kent: — several attempts, of course, to become national commit teewoman. I
want to say that they were serious. She was putting up large sums of
money for Senators and people who were members of the delegation and
who would have votes at the caucus of the delegation. Now was that
the same caucus when we threw out Ziffren and elected Mosk?

261

Fry: No, that was two years earlier. [goes through papers] Now here's

the story on that. This is March 6 [1966], the [Los Angeles] Herald-
Examiner story. It shows Carmen Warschaw with a railroad man's cap
on. She's charging Roger Kent with railroading Ann Alanson's
candidacy, railroading the meeting, and getting it through. [laughs]
That's the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner.

Kent: [reading newspaper account] Oh, I remember. What she did was, you

see, the telegram from California's twenty-three Democratic congress
men — that's what Carmen Warschaw put together. What she would do was,
she would give Chet Holifield a thousand dollars for his campaign,
which he needed about as much as you need a thousand dollars to get
from here to Berkeley with, and all these other guys. Then she'd say,
"I want to be national commit teewoman, and they've got the votes at
this moment, and if they're going to hold a meeting at this time, then
Ann Alanson will be elected and 1 will get beat." That's why they
tried to get this thirty-day postponement.

Happily, at that time Gene Wyman was also on the same side that
I was on. Gene had been pretty much with Unruh. Unruh had almost
brought Gene 'in, but Gene was a very, very smart man and ambitious for
himself. He was breaking away from Unruh. I think this was his own
idea, that he didn't want to have dominance of the Harvey -Wars chaw
group. That was a real danger.

Fry: So he helped out there then in the meeting.

Kent: Yes, in that meeting. Then we had the meeting, and Ann was almost
unanimously elected as your article shows.

Fry: Wyman then was the one who moved —

Kent: — against the postponement.

Fry: Against the postponement and got the vote right then.

Kent: Yes. I, of course, had called the meeting. I was chairman, and I
wasn't about to postpone it, unless I'd been ordered to.

Fry: Well, then, let's move on into this business of the California

Democratic Central Committee. Before the primary, Warschaw was down
there in Yorty country. Yorty was running against Pat Brown for the
nomination for governor. At the same time, Reagan was running against—

Kent: [George] Christopher.

Fry: — Christopher, who was a northern Calif ornian. So in the scenario,
Wars chaw's support was needed to offset Yorty 's candidacy against
Brown, right?

262

Kent: Well, I don't know. I don't really know how much weight Wars chaw's
support amounted to. I mean, she had lots of money in the Harvey
family. That's the Harvey aluminum family. And she had two or three
gals that were just her pigeons that just lived off her, as far as I
could see.

Fry: What do you mean, gals?

Kent: One of them was married to some poor relative of hers and she was
always with Carmen and carrying Carmen's coat and bringing her a
cigarette and a drink and the rest of the stuff. There was another
one; there were two or three of that type. But I couldn't see any wide
spread support of Carmen anywhere except in this tiny coterie, and then
in this group of congressmen and assemblymen and senators that received
large amounts of money from Carmen Warschaw.

Fry: Was she part of the Unruh circle?

Kent: She kind of shifted around. I think she was more often with Unruh
than not.

Fry: Well, was she a contributor to his campaign slush fund?

Kent: Oh, I'm sure she was. I'm sure she contributed to all slush funds.

Fry: Oh. [laughter] So it wasn't significant?

Kent : No .

Fry: She wanted to be state chairman?

Kent: Well, yes. First she announced at this meeting where we defeated her
for national committee, when she ran against Libby Gatov. She
immediately announced that she was going to run for state chairman.

Fry: Libby Gatov —
Kent: Libby Smith.

Fry: Yes, that was earlier. Then she also lost the national commit teewoman
battle against Ann Alanson.

Kent: Then she lost the state chairmanship against [Charles] Warren in that
very close election. And then eventually — and this was when I had
practically withdrawn from the political scene, and they had that
whole new shakeup of the McGovern group when they had a whole — instead
of having one national committeeman and one woman, they had two or
three. I don't know how many there were. She became one of those, I
think. She also was very sick at one time, and it appeared to be that
she had cancer and was being carried around in a palanquin up at
Sacramento one time. I guess she recovered from that all right.

263

Brovn-Yorty-Unruh Conflict

Fry: Maybe you can help give me a picture of what support she did have

mustered, because Pat Brown had written her back in February of that
year — no, January 24th, there's a letter from Pat Brown to her
pledging support to her if she will help "bring Mayor Yorty's support
into our effort." You know, the more I read the less sure I get
about where Pat Brown stood in relation to her candidacy, because he
did make a number of public statements saying he backed her. [Kent
murmurs assent] But then some news stories just say flatly that he
didn't. I don't know.

Kent: Well, she was a very, very difficult person. I mean, she was smart,
no question about it. And as I said, she had lots of money and she
was always very snappily dressed and gotten up. She was persuasive
and she had her own ideas about the way she wanted things to go. She
was not at all hesitant about making those known. And she was not at
all above making threats. Pat responded to both the carrot and the
stick, and she was giving him both. There again, I'm sure that a
major backer of her influence was money — money as far as helping Pat
was concerned, money as far as helping Yorty was concerned. I mean,
Yorty of course just had been really building up this slush fund. I
think he almost got in trouble with the IRS on the fact that he had
built up this very large amount of money, ostensibly for campaigns.
Then I think he used it personally, but besides that he did have a
lot of money that he'd built up. He'd have a testimonial dinner at
a hundred dollars apiece about every eight months in Los Angeles.
He just put away an awful lot of money. [laughs] Of course, he was
a cocky little guy and just the damndest liar that I've ever had
anything to do with. He could lie more convincingly than anybody I ever
had anything to do with, and he consistently did it.

I always felt that there was a corrupt bargain between Unruh and
Yorty that if Unruh could make life so unpleasant for Brown in the
legislature and defeat his measures, that Brown would say, "To hell
with it. I will not run again." Unruh would then run for governor.
Now several things came to mind on this. It came to me second hand,
I think, from Don Bradley and from some others, from Brown, that
Unruh was saying, "Look, you've had these fine Cadillacs and fancy
mansions and all the rest of the thing. You've had it for eight years.
When's my turn? I want to be governor!" As if that was all that was
involved in being governor.

That was at a later time, but I might as well hit it now. Let's
see — no, this would be '66, '65. [ponders] It was symptomatic of
Unruh 's approach to Brown. In about '62 or '63, he said to Brown,
"Look, I'm taking nothing but lumps trying to put your legislative
program across. I am doing this, and I want to get you your
legislative program. There's one thing — there's only one man in the

264

Kent: state who can deny me the right to be the chairman for John F.

Kennedy's re-election campaign, and that is you. Now, I just want
to be perfectly blunt with you. Which do you want, your legislative
program or to exercise your right of veto over me as the chairman for
Kennedy's re-election campaign?" That was the kind of relationship
that Unruh and Brown had. It was a real sword's point one.

At this time, as I said, I had the feeling that in getting ready
for this '66 business in '65 and so forth, that if Unruh could make
life so unpleasant that Brown would get out, then Unruh would be the
candidate for governor against whoever wanted to run. But if he
couldn't, then Yorty would get in the race in the primary and break
Brown's leg in a primary race. And that is just exactly what happened,
because Yorty —

Kent: Well, Yorty was just a despicable guy. The worst of all was that

racist campaign he ran against Tom Bradley for mayor the first time,
when he defeated Bradley. I'm sure a lot of people have made this
comment, but Fred Harris, that Senator from Oklahoma who was a populist
candidate for president, made the crack, "I met my fellow Oklahoman
Will Rogers, and I'm sure of one thing, that he never met San Yorty."
[laughter]

Fry: Oh, when he said that he never met a man he didn't like?
Kent: Right, right.

Fry: Did Yorty ever mislead you in your running of the Democratic party,
so that you made a bad decision or something?

Kent: What he did was, he used to try and downgrade me as an incompetent
playboy. He wouldn't attack me. He said, [pauses] I think he said
something like that I was "amiable and naive." My dear friend Joe
Houghteling here in California said, "Well, he's perfectly right.
You're amiable, but you are not naive!" [laughs] I took many swipes
at Yorty. Yorty adopted with me very much the tactic that Reagan had
adopted as far as Brown was concerned. Reagan didn't really get into
arguments with Brown. He would just, when Brown would say that Reagan
was the child of the Birch Society, and here was a list of his
contributors, and they were all members of the Birch Society, Reagan
would just say, "I'm not going to talk about that. I want to talk
about that nepotism up in Sacramento, all those Brown relatives that
are on the payroll. Do you know that so-and-so and so-and-so and
so-and-so are on the payroll?"

We knew that we could prove that Reagan was getting most of his
money from these real right-wing sources and the Birch Society. We
knew that we could prove that he had never had an hour's time in any

265

Kent: kind of public office. So he makes a virtue out of both of these!

It was a perfectly remarkable public relations gimmick that he did it.
I mean, he was a "citizen." He wasn't a "politician." Of course
he hadn't spent his time in city councils and on the back benches
and so forth.

Brown's Political Weak Spots

Fry: It looked like he couldn't possibly win, to any sensible observer at
the time, didn't it?

Kent: That's right. That's right. We figured that he'd be much easier to
beat than Christopher.

Fry: Well, maybe he was. Do you think Christopher could have won even
easier?

Kent: Well, I don't know. As Pat's weaknesses shaped up — this is the

cumulative business of, "you didn't appoint so-and-so to the Fair
Board, and you appointed so-and-so's wife to this committee, and you
didn't appoint so-and-so." Gradually these animosities built up.
The old story about the judge. You create twenty-two enemies and one
ingrate when you appoint one man a judge. This is what gradually
builds up.

He got into some real brawls with the farmers. I've forgotten
what those were about now, but some of those very wealthy farmers —
I remember one particular guy. They were really greedy fellows.
They wanted the moon, and Brown wasn't ready to give them the moon.
They got very disgusted with Brown, and they went out and they
organized farmers' committees for Yorty, which was just so absurd,
because Yorty knew absolutely nothing about what their problems were.

Fry: And they later went on to Reagan, I guess. What do you think?

Kent: Some of the farm leaders came back to me, and they said, "Well, we've
gone back to him and we've had meetings. And we've said, 'All
right now, goddammit, you had your fun. You voted against Brown.
You kicked him in the face and gave him this real black eye, and he
only won by x-number-percent . Now get back where you belong with the
Democratic party and with Pat Brown!'" But a great many didn't. The
Democratic heartland, in the San Joaquin — I'm sure the figures would
show that it was badly shattered and Brown did not pick up the strength
that he'd had there before.

266

Fry: Yes, I think I remember reading that the Bakersfield area went for
Yorty quite solidly. Then in the general election, Reagan won all
of the counties but two.

Kent: Yes, two or three. Alameda and San Francisco were the only two big
ones, and I think he won one more. Probably Shasta or something.

Fry: That's right. There was a little mountain county. Christopher
actually was coming up in the polls, and was within just a few
percentage points of Reagan by May, and then that story came out
about his having been convicted of a misdemeanor in his dairy business
before. That was run by Drew Pearson some time in May.

Kent: That was a gimmick of this Harry Lerner.

Fry: I wondered who turned that in, because Christopher first said that

Reagan forces had turned it in, and then later on he said that no, it
wasn't, it turned out that it's the Democrats who did this. I
wondered who it was .

Kent? Well, I'm sure it was Harry Lerner. Harry Lerner — the only way he
knew how to campaign was —

Fry: He was the PR man?

Kent: Yes. He had moved down to Los Angeles. That we — Lib and Don Bradley
and someone else, George Miller, I guess, and I — got a message off to
Pat Brown saying, "Let's not have any more of that without our knowing
what you're doing, because I can't tell you what an adverse effect
this is having on your candidacy here in northern California when you
take after George Christopher on something that every politician knew
about."

It was not a — you know, it was one of these things where he
violated a standard of how much milkfat there had to be in the milk
that he was selling over in Marin County, and he got arrested and
arraigned. Then he had elected to defend rather than pleading
[guilty], so he had his picture in the paper and whatnot. It was not
a very serious thing to begin with, and it was well known. It made
Christopher and Christopher's friends so damn mad that they couldn't —
they were just fuming. And it made a great many of the moderate
northern Californians — moderate Democrats and Republicans that could
be expected to go for Brown if Reagan was the candidate — it threw them
off of Brown for sure.

Fry: One of the articles that I read stated that that determined Reagan's
lead just before the primary, based on the polls. Because after that
came out, Ronald Reagan climbed to a 17 percent lead.

267

Kent: I saw that too. Again, this is so far back that I don't remember, but
I'm sure that it did hurt Christopher badly in that primary against
Reagan.

Fry: It also hurt Brown.

Kent: It hurt the hell out of Brown, when the time came to run against
Reagan.

Reagan's Strengths

Fry: So as you saw Reagan at that point then, after the primary, when Reagan
won the primary, how was this perceived by you and the other people?

Kent: Well, I think that we thought — I and my closest political advisors,

Libby and George Miller and Don Bradley and Martin Huff and some of the
others — that Reagan would be easier to beat than Christopher. Of
course, we turned out to be absolutely wrong. Reagan turned out to
be, of course, an actor and a man who can read his lines. The lines
were written for him by some very, very skilled PR guys. And he could
read them for maximum impact.

Fry: Did you all try to do anything to combat his image he had of having
been the white-hat hero in so many films? This kind of went along
with his untainted citizen candidacy, too, where he'd had no experience
in public office and was glad of it?

Kent: I don't think we did anything with the movie stuff. I mean, from time
to time, we'd just say, "Well, he's just a damned actor. He's never
run a business, he's never run a political office. And he's getting
his money from these crooks!" That was the thrust of the negative
campaign that we were pushing against Reagan. Then we were pushing
the positive campaign on Pat that what he had been able to do for
California in terms of the schools and the University and the water
plan and the housing act and the other things that we felt entitled
him to a great deal of credit and to be re-elected. It didn't work.

Brown's Campaign Organization

Fry: Why don't we take a minute here, and you explain your vantage point
in this election — where you were and what you were doing officially.

Kent: Well, I think I was the state chairman. [laughter]

268

Fry: The state chairman of what?

Kent: The state chairman of the Brown campaign. See, I resigned as chairman
of the state committee in order to accept the job of being chairman
of the Brown campaign. But it was well understood at the time that
I did that that Pat was going to be running the campaign. I mean, he
was going to put in the people that he wanted to have as pros to run
the campaign. I wasn't going to be in charge of a professional staff.
I think I mentioned to you that he put together just a perfect bastard
troika. He got Don Bradley. If he'd only stayed with Don Bradley
as the sole pro, he would have had a good chance to win. Instead of
that, he put in Hale Champion, who was sitting in that office there
with him, and had been as- treasurer or director of finance, and had
been very close with Pat. Hale had participated in some of the most
dismal and disastrous political decisions involving Senators and
congressmen and so forth that you could imagine. His judgment, to my
mind, was totally faulty on these matters. He was not a good
politician, and he was not going to be any good running the Brown
campaign.

There were some others there.

There was one meeting in Sacramento that I went to, and Bradley
and Champion were there, and there was some discussion. From there
on, they took their operation down to Los Angeles. They went down
and they went to Los Angeles, and they went in some big building down
there. They began — they brought Harry Lerner from San Francisco. He
went down as the PR guy. Then Brown was so impressed with his '58
win, which was very much run by Fred Dutton, that he called Fred
Dutton back from an alleged practice of law in Washington, at five
thousand dollars a month to sit in with Champion and Bradley and Lerner
down there in a Los Angeles suite.

Now when you have four strongminded people like that with
different ideas of running a campaign, there just isn't any worse way
to do it. I was never invited to go down there. We were doing — Lib
and George Miller and the staff here in our office — what we could to
see that we had the registration, that the Democrats were registered,
and that we had the people ready to get out the vote, that we had people
out on Dollars for Democrats and that we had telephone things going.
When Brown came up here, we went to the meetings and put them together
for him.

Fry: Were these operations you're speaking of for the whole state or just
for northern California?

Kent: This was just for northern California. You see, by this time, Bob

Coate was the state chairman of the party. I think he spent more time
down in Los Angeles, certainly, than I did. I didn't spend hardly any.

269

Kent: There were some individual — I can't remember which individual races

there were that I was particularly interested in, but there were some
congressional [races]. See, this was '66, wasn't it.

Fry: This was after the reapportionment.

Kent; Yes. Murphy had been elected in '64, and we had, I guess we had
Richards running against Kuchel in '66.

Fry: No, that was later. You didn't have a senatorial race in '66. That
was about the only race you didn't have.

Kent: That's right, we wouldn't have had one.

Fry: But by court order, after reapportionment, all of the state senator
seats were up for grabs. So you had enormous numbers — all forty
of those seats had to be contested. So there were 211 candidates in
the primary.

Kent: Is that '66?

Fry: That's '66, yes. Trying to carry through the reapportionment, which
just had been approved by the Supreme Court, by the State Supreme
Court.

Kent: Yes. This brings to mind the fact that there were a half a dozen
of those that I was very much interested in.

Fry: I wondered if that would have something to do with the fact that

you were up here in the north, because in the south, they were adding
seats, but in the north you had lost state senate seats, and so you
had twelve incumbents running against each other for five seats in the
primary.

Kent: You probably undoubtedly have it right there, but what Brown did was
of course, he took care of a number of these incumbents by judicial
appointments .

Fry: Before or after the election?

Kent: I think before. I think before, yes. Petersen, who was the senator
from Mendocino, went up and became a judge in Del Norte. Joe
Rattigan was the senator in Sonoma and he became a district court of
appeal judge. Carl Christiansen, who had been a state senator in
Humboldt County and before that a judge in Humboldt County, went back
to being a judge in Humboldt County. Let's see, this fellow from
Modesto, a very good state senator, went down to Los Angeles and
went on the district court of appeal down there.

Fry:

I see.

270

Kent: I don't know. You may be exactly right. It might have ended up that
there were twelve...

Fry: There were still twelve left, I gather.

Kent: Twelve left running for five seats because, you see, at that time
there were thirty-two seats in northern California and eight in
southern California. That changed over to — whatever it was.

Fry: So the problem wasn't as great in southern California, since it was
expanding hugely, and the competition up here was fierce.

Kent: Right.

Garnering Funds and Support

Fry: That must have posed a disadvantage for your campaign finance funds.

Kent: Oh yes, it did.

Fry: With all of these candidates.

Kent: Oh, sure, it did. That's right.

Fry: Did you do the usual approach in fund raising?

Kent: We did so little, really. The big fund raising came on after my time —
actually, it was nothing when I started, to all intents and purposes.
It was just a few thousand dollars from the Hellers and a few others.
Bill Malone would raise some money. Then with the help of people, I
began to raise maybe a hundred thousand dollars or something like that.
Then the candidates themselves would go out and raise money.

The big raising of money [was] by Wyman and then by Coate, when
Coate got into half a-million stuff in clearing out the deficits and
so forth — and Wyman got into millions down there.

Fry: Yes, I noticed that in the reports that are filed with the secretary
of state, Brown did have — I think about a half a million. At any
rate, it was a lot of money for this election. You had told me that
you also had a debt that had been left over from Cranston's campaign?

Kent: Yes, the Cranston-Salinger —

Fry: And Coate had to take care of that too?

Kent: That's right.

271

Fry: Was money a problem with Pat Brown's campaign in this election?

Kent: Well, I'm sure that it was. But the idea of squandering it by paying
Button five thousand dollars a month was one of the things I'd just
shake my head about. I'm sure that that didn't do anybody any good
at all to pay him that amount of money, and that amount of money could
have been used very, very advantageously in other places.

Fry: Meanwhile in the south, you had these two fund sources. One was Unruh
with his slush fund that as I understand it was used maybe for the
assembly candidates, to enable him to control the assembly. But that
was a lot of money, and there was also a lot of money with Warschaw
and her forces.

Kent: Sure.

Fry: Now, did they ever come around to actively, helpfully supporting Pat
Brown, with money or with public statements or whatever?

Kent: I don't think so. I don't think so. I think Unruh sat out that

campaign. I don't think he ever even endorsed Brown against Yorty.
He just sat back and threw rocks. I'm sure he didn't give him any
money.

Fry: The only note I have on it is that after the primary during the general
election, he was out of the state for most of the time, but that he
had made some kind of public statement endorsing Brown. But you were
not conscious of anything really happening?

Kent: Well, you know, this is a statement that a politician has to make.

If you're an officeholder, as he was, as speaker of the assembly — he
can' t decline to say that he's supporting the incumbent governor. I
mean, there are a dozen different ways that you can say it, and you
can be damn sure that he said it in the lowest key way that would be
acceptable. [Fry laughs]

Fry: Well, Warschaw even made a statement — it sounded to me like she was
supporting Reagan. What really happened? On October 19, which is
very close to the final election, the wire services carried a story
that Reagan visited her, and she came out with a statement that "Mr.
Reagan is a fresh new approach," and "In fact, we have many areas of
agreement. We agree on most of the basic issues." Then Brown was
asked, "What do you think about that?" and he said he'd asked twice
for her endorsement and that she didn't give it.

Kent: Well, put it this way. She sold out for Louis, who was that incompetent
husband of hers, to become an airport commissioner. This was bruited
about at that time. It slipped my mind now, but this was a Warschaw
deal. He went and called on her, and she said, "All right, Ronald old

272

Kent: boy. Sure, I'll come out and say you're a fresh new face and that
you've got a new approach. But on the line here, you're appointing
Louis to the airport commission."

Fry: Oh, I see.

Kent: This is what I heard on very good authority, and this is what happened,
that he did get airport commissioner, and she did come out for Reagan.
I've been in Brown's house. He would have these dinners up in
Sacramento once a year or something of that kind. I suppose three or
four times when she was up there, you know, and just beaming on Pat.
She was just an utterly unmoral person, as far as I'm concerned.

War ren-Wars chaw Contest fo£ State Parity Chairman

Fry: Well, Roger, if you have some more time left, what I'd like to do is
go into that whole, the crux of that battle. I've got a New York
Time;; story here [August 21, 1966]. Let's see, this was after the
primary, in August, August 20, when she lost the state chairmanship
of the Democratic party by four votes. You were lined up on the side
of her opponent, who was Charles Warren. Maybe we could just run
through the story of that meeting. Her forces, with Unruh behind her,
wanted an open ballot.

Kent: Who did?

Fry: Unruh and her forces wanted an open ballot for the voting for the
state chairmanship. Why did they want an open ballot?

Kent: This is very funny. Don and I said, "We've each been on both sides of
this question. I mean, you can get up and make a perfectly splendid
argument that says there's no reason why we should have an open ballot
here, and expose all of these people here to this undue pressure
that we know has been put upon them. Let's have a secret ballot.
That's the way things are done here in the United States in electing
people. "

The other side of the thing is, "Why, if you're afraid to stand
up and be counted, you shouldn't have a vote. Let's vote openly."
But the reason why they wanted to have it was that they had extorted
promises from people that they would vote for Warschaw, or else they
had told them, "You vote for Warschaw or else! Times are going to be
tough with you!" That's why they wanted an open ballot. We wanted a
secret ballot, because we knew that she was damned unpopular with a
hell of a lot of people that might feel that they had to vote for her
if they had to stand up and be counted.

273

Fry: A lot of people were afraid of Unruh?
Kent: Afraid of Unruh? Sure!

Fry: I want to read you this funny article that came out in the San Mateo
Outlogjc by Walter Scratch. He said, "Roger Kent, former attorney
general — " [laughter] " — and former state chairman, has long been
considered a loyal Pat Brown man. He was reported to have voted for
the secret ballot." Also "Pat Brown was reported to have left early,
but given his proxy vote for Warschaw — " Which side was Pat on?
Nobody really knew how he voted.

Kent: That's right. Louis Warschaw says that [reading] '"Governor Brown

supported me,'" and said, '"Mrs. Warschaw and I will support him the
same way.'" "Her husband, Louis Warschaw, accused the governor a
few days ago of having made a weak, pussy- footing endorsement of
his wife at the meeting of the Democratic State Central Committee.
Brown obviously favored Mrs. Warschaw, but did not remain for the
balloting."

I favored the secret ballot, I guess, because we had caucused
and decided that our best chance to beat her was with a secret ballot.

Fry: There was also some talk about the vote for the secret ballot being
held very precipitously on Friday night, before anybody had gathered
their forces to oppose it. I mean, before Unruh and Warschaw had a
chance to gather their forces to oppose it. Was that it?

Kent: I was probably there, but I don't remember it. I remember that the
secret ballot was conducted very efficiently, that the people were
lined up by congressional districts. The delegates — they had a tally
sheet of who was there, and they'd come up and say, oh, "Chita Fry,"
and they'd check off —

Fry: You were telling me how that ballot thing worked.

Kent: Well, yes. I don't remember the vote on the secret ballot, as to
whether we'd have the secret ballot or not, but obviously we who
favored Warren and who did not favor Warschaw wanted a secret ballot
and agreed we'd try and get one. Then it was, as I said, well done.
There were about four different lines in the convention hall, with
the first three congressional districts on one, and the people down
there representing each candidate with a tally sheet. Someone would
come down and call out the [his or her] name, and fold the ballot and
drop it in the box and go off, so that there was good protection
against double voting or anything of that kind.

274

Kent: I stayed and voted. Then I was going on a vacation, and I went down
to San Francisco Airport and telephoned from the airport and got the
happy news that Warren had won by four votes.

Fry: So you went off to Hawaii fairly happy?

Kent: Right.

Fry: How long did you stay in Hawaii?

Kent: I think only probably a very few days. I think this was one of the
times when I used to go down and go fishing with this friend of mine,
I wouldn't even go to Honolulu. I'd just go right over to Kona and
go out on his boat for three or four days and then come back.

Glenn Anderson's Campaign

Fry: I see. The other thing that nobody mentions very much about is Glenn
Anderson's campaign. Just from the little things I've picked up, it
seems like that might have been a liability. Here, the New York Times*
article says that he denied a frequently printed report that he
backed Assemblyman Charles Warren for state chairmanship because he
felt that Brown would be defeated by Republican Ronald Reagan at the
November election, and that he wanted the state chairman friendly to
him. You don't remember this?

Kent: I don't remember it. But Glenn Anderson is a pretty dismal guy, I
always thought. He got elected the first time [1958] by a very
interesting gimmick. Butch Powers had been lieutenant governor and.
a Republican and one of these real independent types. He was defeated
for the Republican nomination. I've forgotten who did it, who did
him in in '58. Anderson was running for lieutenant governor in '58.
Powers' opponent had gotten a large number of billboards, several
hundred up and down the state. The billboard companies would do a
kind of a cheap trick. They would say, "We're selling you this
billboard through the campaign, through election day." But in fact,
when you signed the contract, the contract would provide that you got
the billboard up until only three or four days before the election.

They could then — the candidate would take it out for only that
length of time, with the idea that the billboard company couldn't
and wouldn't change the message on the billboard for the last few days.

*August 21, 1966.

275

Fry: Which is the crucial time!

Kent: Well, word got to me from an ad agency in Stockton. I think it

eventually turned out that Butch Powers had tipped them off to tip me
off that I could get for Glenn Anderson, if he wanted, four or five
days of three or four hundred boards. So I got hold of Glenn
Anderson — I was state chairman — Glenn Anderson's people. They wanted
a few thousand dollars for this, and the paper and whatnot to do it.
It was done.

By this time, it was perfectly apparent that Brown was just going
to beat hell out of Knowland. So the message was, "Put in Anderson.
He will work with Brown." That was the gist of it. It was better
done than that. All of a sudden, the state blossomed with four or
five hundred boards for Anderson. Anderson won the election for
lieutenant governor. Anderson was getting awfully proud of himself.
To win for lieutenant governor when you're incumbent, I mean in '62,
this would be a cinch. You'd probably never get beaten.

But in '66, for this nasty little guy to make the statement that
Brown wasn't going to be elected governor, and that he wanted to have
a state chairman friendly to him, and that was why he was going to go
for — who did he say he was going for?

Fry: Warren.

Kent: He was going to go for Warren. It's pretty bad. On the other hand,
he happily turned out to be, as far as I was concerned, on the side
of the angels, but for the wrong reasons.

Fry: Now he had Bart Lytton as his finance chairman. That's a good example
of something I've been wanting to ask you, Roger. When you have
someone like Bart Lytton, who is a state treasurer for just one
candidate, such as a lieutenant governor, doesn't that present problems
for the whole pot that the state Democratic committee would like to
have for all of the candidates?

Kent: Well, it does, but there's nothing you can do about it. I guess far
beyond the extent of Lytton1 s assistance to Anderson is this Ken Cory
today, and that Orange County guy — I've forgotten his name — who put
up three hundred thousand dollars for Cory's campaign for controller.
I mean, he and another guy — there were two guys down there — they got
nearly a half-million dollars. The public looking at this would say,
"Well, the controller is owned by two men from Orange County."

276

Democratic Registration Effort

Fry: I have some questions here about the registration. I've read that

for the first time, the growth in voter registration was not two-to-
one in favor of the Democrats. In fact, I think the Democrats lagged
behind the Republicans in this growth rate.

Kent: Yes —

Fry: Also, in your papers, I noticed that in 1965, you had sent around a

memo saying, "there's been a lag in registration, and we've got to do
something" about what you called the "registrable registrants" who
had not been registered. So that must have been a real concern.

Kent: Oh, yes.

Fry: Why was it a problem this year, when it had always been a strong point
in all these previous campaigns?

Kent: Well, I guess it was Brown's unpopularity from these various things
that I've mentioned.

Fry: You couldn't get the workers to register?

Kent: And you couldn't — and the people themselves were not about to register
Democratic. I don't know. I'd like to look at those figures again
and see whether registration fell off or whether it stayed about level,
and the Republicans gained — it was merely that people were mad at the
Democrats.

Fry: Let's see. I've got the figures right here. The registered voters —
total registered, finally, for the Democrats was 4,720,597, which was
58.5 percent of both parties. Total Republicans were 3,350,990. It
doesn't tell how much growth that was, though.

I guess the main thing would be whether somehow there was a problem
in getting the grassroots workers.

Kent: That is undoubtedly true. It's dismal. This again is '66 that we're
talking about, isn't it, the registration?

Fry: Yes.

Kent: Well, they probably missed their former chairman, because this is what
we used to get into very, very heavily. For the first time in many
years, among the new registrants, the total registration — [pauses]
But the first thing that we would do when a campaign was starting,
we wouldn't waste our time trying to register people at a time when
their registrations would run out. We'd try and register people who

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Kent: were going to be entitled to vote. We would register in some stable

precincts. We'd register ahead of time where people were not likely

to move, and so forth and so on, but generally the main effort would
be at the end.

We would take the money that we got from Dollars for Democrats —
of course, we of the state committee would finance all of the books
and the walking papers and the precinct lists and the rest of the
stuff. The CDC would furnish 90 percent of the walking power. That
money would come in, and that money would be earmarked very largely
for registration. We, in turn, of the state committee would raise
money which we said, "This is for registration." We would also
encourage each of the counties and each of the congressional districts
to get money for registration.

Then I had several very pleasant conversations with Roy Reuther,
the automobile worker Walter's brother. He used to be going around
the country with satchels full of money for registration. What he was
looking for was people who knew what they were doing, and who had
target areas that were going to be productive in terms of votes and
in terms of critical areas.

We would very often get two thousand, three thousand, four
thousand dollars, something like that. Sometimes we got as much as
that from the auto workers — you know, their free fund which was to be
used for registration. When the Kennedys were running, they were fully
aware of the importance of registration, and we got a lot of money
from them.

What I would do would be, with the help of the staff, to get up
instructions as to what to do for the people who received the money.
I said, "Before we send you any money, what we want is, we want to
know who's running your registration drive, what your target areas
are, what your plans are, and how you're setting up your books and
how you're setting up your bank account and how you're setting up
your recording information. When we get that, then we will be in a
position to make an allocation to you or forty other counties. You
can be damn sure that we're going to take a long look at what your
plans are. The guy who has the best plans and the best people is the
guy that's going to get the most money."

We spent a lot of very serious time on getting that registration
done and getting the most accomplished for the money, I mean, that
we thought we could get.

Fry: So that in '66, did they still have Walter Reuther helping out with
money?

278

Kent: Roy Reuther? Roy used to be the one. He's the one who came out,

usually with the suitcases with money in them. He'd come out with two
or three other fellows with him. I don't know whether they had him
in '66. See, I was out in '66. This was the project that I used to
spend a great deal of my time on in elections .

Fry: So this was not one of your duties then in '66 here in northern
California?

Kent: No, no. I don't know who had primary responsibility for registration.
I think probably Bob Coate did. Because it was an across-the-board
thing, you know. It's for the benefit of everybody.

Two-Party Fund-Raising Experiment

Fry: There was something else that happened that was kind of an intriguing
experiment in '66. I don't know whose idea this was, but it was to
get the corporations to agree to what was called the California
Compact in May. The two state chairmen — I guess that's Parkinson and
Coate — announced the formation of the California Good Citizenship
Committee. They hired a professional staff. This was to raise money
for both parties. One example of this was the Aerojet Corporation
that got 12,835 of its twenty thousand employees to contribute $82,228
to candidates and parties of their choice.

Kent: I went up to Aerojet a couple of times. This was Dan Kimball's —

he was president of Aerojet. This was his idea. He would just go up
there himself, and he would bring the leaders of the party up there,
and he would bring the leading candidates up there, and he'd say "all
right" to these guys, the workers. He'd get them in the lunchroom or
something, and said, "It's your duty to contribute to political
campaigns. Now you just make a contribution and let us know who you
want it to go to."

Fry: Was this a widespread practice in '66?

Kent: It never got off the ground [except for] Aerojet, because of Dan's

enthusiasm and the fact that, I guess, a lot of the young executives
thought they'd lose their jobs if they didn't come up with the money.
[ laughs ]

Fry: It has these very big sounding names that made it sound quite widespread,
like the California Good Citizenship Committee, the California Compact.
I wondered if this going to the private sector for the same support
which now, I think, we're trending to the government for in elections
had ever worked out?

279

Kent: Well, we used it. We did a lot of talking about it with Dan Kimball.
I said, "I'll go anywhere and talk to anybody you want me to talk to."

Festering Campaign Issues

Fry: The other thing that you did in this election that I happened to pick
up was that in July, for instance, July 30 and 31, in Ukiah was the
first of a series of congressional district campaign conferences. You
debated with Robert Scheer regarding Governor Brown at the meeting.
Scheer was the peace candidate for Congress from Alameda County. Simon
Cassidy was there with Julian Bond as co-chairman of a new thing
called the National Conference of New Politics.

Kent: It was the First Congressional District caucus. Boy, what a clobbering
I took! This was just as the Vietnam dissent was really taking off.
These guys were saying that there was no difference between Reagan and
Brown and whatnot. I said, "Look, let's go over these various things.
Let's go over free speech. Let's go over the University. Let's go
over this, that, and the other thing. Let's go over what he's done
in housing, what he's done here, what he's done there, and contrast
that with Reagan. Don't just put blinders on and say there's one
thing that you're interested in, which is this war."

I said, "And furthermore, it's none of Brown's business and he
hasn't got a damn thing to do with it." Well, then one of these guys
very properly says [growls], "Well, then why does he have to talk
about it?" Well, of course, he had to talk about it, because Lyndon
Johnson was damn well putting the screws on him and telling him that
he was damn well going to have to support Lyndon in this thing, I'm
sure of it.

There were about a hundred and fifty people there, and I think I
got one convert that all of a sudden said, "Well, yes, by God, even
if I do disagree violently on Vietnam, I think Reagan will be just as
bad. I think Brown will be much better than Reagan on the University,
for instance."

Fry: What did you think that Pat Brown was most vulnerable on, in terms
of the imponderable issues of race relations, the Watts riot had
happened —

Kent: The Chessman thing had happened some time back.

Fry: — on capital punishment. There had also been a three-day riot at

Hunters Point, a race riot on Hunters Point. And Proposition 14 was on
the ballot to retract the fair housing bill.

280

Kent: I think that there had been a big swing away from "liberal" things,
and race relations, and on race relations it was going bad.

Fry: Yes, it won. I mean, Proposition 14 won.

Kent: They took it off. Then I think that a lot of the troubles were put
down to the story that had been circulated about Brown, that he was
weak and indecisive and had been all his life, and that the reason for
our troubles was this. So I think that was probably the major thing
against him, plus of course these boils that came up from Yorty and
the farmers and the popularity that was —

Fry: On the one hand, Yorty was trying to paint Brown as being in the clutches
of the left-wing extremists.

Kent: Sure, sure.

Fry: Then this was somewhat, I think, followed in the election. But then

on the other hand, I read that Brown was not coming out strong on race
relations. For instance, on the Rumford fair housing bill, he had
said, "Well, let's appoint a committee to study it, to study a new
housing bill," which sounded like a compromise. Then on the "mess"
at the University, which Reagan had made into a big campaign issue,
Brown was vulnerable there, because he had called out the state
police to remove the students from Sproul Hall during the first
brouhaha there.

Brown had gone along with an antiriot bill that the civil
libertarians looked askance at.

Kent: Yes.

Fry: So it seemed that Brown was vulnerable to attack from both the left
and the right in the Democratic party.

Kent: This thing you brought up about Reagan's attack on the University —

this is very interesting. Among the most influential of the respected
conservative or moderate Republicans in San Francisco, of whom there
are a good many, a great many of them are University of California
people. They had a meeting of the most respected guys in San Francisco,
half a dozen of them, with Reagan, and said, "Now Mr. Reagan, we would
like you to knock off the attack on the University, because the
University is a great university and something that we're all proud of.
If there's something wrong with it, maybe we can fix it one way or
another, but we would not like to see you continue to publicly attack
it."

I understand that Reagan, just as baldly as this , just says, "I
have consulted with my public relations people, and they say there are
votes in it and plenty of them, and I am going to continue."

281

Fry: Who were those Republicans? Do you know?

Kent: I remember one of them was Walter Haas. These are names [that were]
given to me, now, mind you. I can't remember.

Fry: Would it be Feigenbaum and let's see, was Steinhart alive? [pauses]
It sounds like maybe some of the Warren crowd, Earl Warren.

Kent: Yes, it would be the Earl Warren crowd for sure.
Fry: Well, it didn't work, at any rate.

Kent: Then Reagan did attack the University day after day after day after
day after day — "What do these longhairs know about what's going on?"
It was thoroughly obnoxious and uncalled-for.

Fry: Reagan's PR firm, which was —
Kent: Spencer and Roberts, wasn't it?

Fry: Spencer-Roberts, yes. I found a funny little thing. After the campaign,
they were asked by some reporter, "How would you have advised Brown to
handle a candidate like Ronald Reagan?" He said — this was Roberts —
"Well, I would have said something like, if I were advising Brown, I
would have advised him to have said, '[Reagan is] a decent fine man, but
maybe he should start on the local level.'" [Los Angelas Times, West,
December 11, 1966] In other words, verbally he should have patted
him on the head and said, "Of course, he doesn't have any experience,
and maybe it would be better for him to run for a more local office
first," and then just kind of ignore Reagan and kill him with kindness.

Now as you sit here today in 1977 and look back on the campaign,
do you think that would have worked against Reagan?

Kent: I don't think it would have worked. I don't think it would have worked.
But obviously, what we did didn't work either, and we thought that
was going to work. We'd point out that he had nothing but the worst
people backing him, and that he had no experience. All he did was
laugh about it, and say, "I'm not going to talk about those things.
I'm going to talk about the waste in Sacramento, and this nepotism"
and so forth.

Fry: And then the University.
Kent: And the University, sure.

Fry: The law and order [issue] — crime in the streets — was starting to be
quite prevalent too. Reagan was blaming Brown for that. Did you
make any speeches or anything for Brown?

282

Kent: That one in Ukiah. I know I was up there for quite awhile on that.
I'm sure I made some short radio and TV pieces. I'm sure I did. We
had a spot machine in headquarters which we used in '64 all the time
for the Johnson campaign, where I could just go in and dictate a
spot, a radio spot. Then they'd just flick it and hand it to all the
radio stations in San Francisco that wanted to use it.

Fry: But in '66 you don't remember?

Kent: I don't think we had anything like that. There were so many master
minds going around there in '66. [laughs]

Friction among Campaign Leaders

Fry: Well, everybody we've talked to so far seems to have alluded to —

— have alluded to some sort of friction among these leaders — Champion
and Bradley and Button — and their clashes. Some people leave out
Champion and say it was just Bradley and Button.

Kent: No, because Button didn't get in until about July. Bradley and

Champion had been in from the beginning. Bradley and Champion were
pretty good friends but they just disagreed on political strategy.

Fry: Could you characterize the political strategy of each of those men,

just to give us some background? Because we'll be talking with them.

Kent: [ponders] Gee, I —

Fry: Or did it form no pattern?

Kent: [pauses] I don't remember Champion. I remember Champion and Winslow
Christian being absolute idiots on the business where Brown wanted
to appoint this guy to the superior court — to the court of appeal.
It was up in Shasta County. I've forgotten his name. He was not a
very good lawyer or a good judge. He was carrying this bill for
Brown. This was going to create a vacancy up there in Shasta in the
senate. Champion and Christian had a friend, a close friend in the
office whose name escapes me at the moment, who came from that part
of the country. They figured that if they got Brown to appoint the
Shasta County guy to the bench then their guy could run for senate up
there and be elected, and that this would be a very happy thing for
Champion and this guy.

283

Kent: After Pat had made this decision, apparently, I went in and talked to
him. I went in there and said, "Pat, I don't talk to you this way
very often. But this is the silliest thing I've ever seen you do.
This guy that you think is going to be elected is a cocky little
bastard. He may not make it, but even if he does make it, what have
you won? You've still got a senate seat you already have, and you
could lose it. You've got nothing to gain and everything to lose
by this move, and you've not kept this guy's feet to the fire to get
him to lead the fight on this housing business, which you want him
to do. Once you've promised him and appointed him a judge, why,
your leverage is gone. "

Pat looked at me, and he said, "Goddammit Roger, you're right!
That's what I told these guys, but they just talked me out of it."
Anyway, that was the kind of horrible political judgment that I noted
in Champion, that he got Brown to do that. The result of the thing
was just exactly what I had foreseen as a possibility, and that is
that that seat was lost, and it was to all intents and purposes,
punitively lost. It would have been taken by the [Democratic] guy
from Willows when the consolidation came, but he couldn't beat an
incumbent who had beaten this [Champion's] guy. It was just a
miserable business.

Bradley is one I know for always running the traditional campaign.
Bradley will search out the influential people in every community, and
he will put together a meeting with Pat and he'll find out in advance
what each of these people are interested in, and he'll brief Pat on
what the people are interested in and how he could appeal to them and
see them and meet them and talk to them intimately. Of course, he'd
also lay on the big shows.

Particularly he had tremendously good judgment in the itinerary,
in the use of Brown's time. I mean, Bradley had been around the track
so long that he knew exactly where you'd get a crowd without any
problem. I mean, I never went with him, but there was an ILGWU lunch
hour down in some suit-and-clothes business down in Los Angeles, where
about ten thousand ladies get down on this street and eat lunch. It's
[the crowd's] just there, and you walk in. They're used to having a
politician. Bradley would never make the mistake of having Brown go
and stand up and be introduced at home plate if a championship baseball
game is going on, because all that happens is that everybody boos!
This is exactly the kind of thing that Champion would do. [laughter]

Fry: You don't doubt that Champion was a marvelous administrator, however?
Kent: Well, I guess he is.

284

Fry: You talked about registering voters and so forth. This brings up
the question of what reforms you would want to make in the whole
democratic process in California. One of those you had already gone
on record as wanting, which was increasing the time for registering
voters and placing it closer to the time of election, so that you
would have more time for registration.

Kent: Right.

Fry: What other reforms would you wish for looking back now.

Kent: Well, I think that this — I'd like to see a study of it. This purging
of the rolls is a damned nuisance and a very expensive thing.

Fry: You're referring to the county clerk's duties — ?

Kent: Knocking off registrations when people don't vote. Now whether or
not that should just flat out be eliminated — in other words, if you
register once, you're registered for life — But obviously, if you've
moved, and you want to vote in the local election, you're going to
have to reregister, because even if you went back to your own
registration place, the issue or the ballot person might not be on the
ballot.

Fry: Perhaps, if you reregister, it could just go into the state computer,

and that would automatically remove it from the other county or district
or wherever it is, right?

Kent : Yes .

Back to Hale Champion. You said that I told you he was a good
administrator. Well, he was. One time I went in there. I handled a
problem for some very good people who had been promised some money,
and it had been in the legislature and in regulations and so forth .
I just sent a memorandum up to — well, I just called Champion's office
and I gave it to the girl. I said, "I don't need to speak to the
director of finance. Just give him this information. I am told
that this is the case, and if it is, these people are damn well
entitled to their money, and if it isn't, well, they're not." Hell,
they had their money the next morning.

As I said, I was impressed. They were entitled to it, and they
did get it immediately. He had an office that was geared to do that
kind of thing. I'm sure that when he had this big job at Harvard
he was probably a damned good administrator there, though that is
not incompatible with being a poor politician.

Fry: No, not at all. [laughs] I guess we all know the good campaigner

and the poor governor syndrome. What do you think about relaxing the
residency requirements for voter registration?

285

Kent: You mean across state lines?

Fry: Well, at least that allows a move from one county to another and
holding registration without having to reregister.

Kent: I think that could be done. That is, if you move from one county to
another county, you could always vote for the statewide offices, and
you might be able to vote for the same congressman if you happened to
be in the same congressional district. But you couldn't vote for the
school board or the water bond issue, because it wouldn't be on your
ballot. That should very properly be a penalty for not reregistering.

Fry: The way it is now, you actually lose your right to vote —
Kent: For anybody!

Fry: — if you move within the period before an election, so a lot of

people are disenfranchised that way. I had read that this hits the
Democrats worse than it does the Republicans, because the Democrats
seem to be more mobile.

Kent: That is true.

Fry: You think that is true?

Kent: Yes.

Fry: What about allowing ex-felons to vote, if they've served time?

Kent: Oh, sure.

Fry: What about abolition of the literacy test?

Kent: Oh, hell. I've said, let's make people literate. Let's not abolish
it.

Fry: To get back to the crux of that problem?
Kent : Yes .

Fry: That is such a factor in the Mexican- American community, of course.
Are most of those Democrats?

Kent: I think so, yes.

Fry: You would be against preprimary endorsements, wouldn't you, by the
official Democratic party?

286

Kent: [pauses] I'm of two minds on this. I've often thought that the

Colorado system that I read about years ago would be the best system.
A primary — you can make a glorious speech about what a wonderful
thing a primary is, but what is very likely to happen is that it
would just tear the whole structure of the party apart, make mortal
enemies out of neighbors and friends and whatnot, and get nowhere.
A really good endorsing process is probably better than just plain
primaries.

The way they had it there in Colorado , which was that you would
put your name up. A registered Democrat would say, "I want to run to
be a delegate," at a convention of people who are going to endorse
the candidate for assembly. Then if you become the winner of that,
you'd be one of, say, twenty-five or thirty in this particular area
who would have a chance to vote for who was going to the assembly.

Then if you wanted to step up another one, then two out of three
or four out of those would be elected by that group to endorse the
one they wanted for state senate, and then two or three of this other
group would endorse the one they wanted to endorse for Congress,
until they had all the way up to the state offices. In this way, you
would have something of a party, which we don't have anything of,
really, at this point. You'd have — I'd like to see how it worked, but
I like it better than our system. Really, the people who go
into the endorsing convention nowadays have no credentials whatsoever.
You might as well just pick up the next twenty-five people you meet
on the street. We had a pretty good system in going to a district
and saying, "This is how we think you ought to select your delegates
who are going to come and endorse," and that is, take all of the state
committee people in that district, all of the county committee people
in the district, two or three out of every club in the district —
all of the nonpartisan officers who were Democrats, half a dozen maybe
of the angels who had supported with money and with other support.
You'd have maybe a hundred people, and then have them select who would
be the candidate.

If you would follow that kind of a formula, I would much prefer
that to a wide-open, dog-eat-cat primary.

Fry: There would be more fusion and less fission —
Kent: That's right.

Fry: — in this kind of distilling-out process. Roger, I'll let you go,
because it is lunchtime.

287

Kent's Peripheral Role in Strategy Making
[Interview 14: March 3, 1977]//#

Fry: I need to know more about what you personally did in evolving the

Democratic strategy in 1966. It started out focusing on the extremist
angle of Reagan's politics, and then the decision was made that
something else should be used. Did you do any talking to Pat Brown
or anything else over that decision?

Kent: I think I told you last time that they ran it exclusively out of

Los Angeles. Bradley was down there, Champion was down there, Dutton
was down there, and some of their very talented women. Nancy Sloss
was down there, and others. The thing I remember particularly was
that Libby and I were up here, and had responsible positions in the
campaign. We were particularly distressed and aggravated by the
attack on George Christopher by Harry Lerner and then by whomever
he passed it to.

Christopher was just wild, and many of Christopher's friends,
who were inclined to be Pat Brown people, were just completely turned
off from any participation in the Brown campaign. Instead of being
reasonably good friends of Brown and possibly being helpful, they
turned into just rabid enemies of Brown. I am quite sure that all I
did — I don't know whether it was this campaign or the one before.
No, it was the one before, where we got Drew Pearson out and had a
television show in Los Angeles which attacked Nixon on that 1962 case.
That was the '62 election, rather than the '66.

In '66, I don't really remember anything dramatic. That story
I've given you about the talk that I made to the Commonwealth Club
will have something in it.* Now for instance, I was never consulted on,
say, whether Brown should see Cesar Chavez when Chavez walked up to
Sacramento or not. I was never consulted as to whether Brown should
invite Chavez back to the Mansion later or not. On either of these I
would have been very ambivalent. I certainly couldn't predict that
it would give great good or great harm from either of those actions.

Fry: This was when Chavez had a march into Sacramento?
Kent: Yes, he had a march into Sacramento.
Fry: Leading the farm workers?

*November 18, 1966. See Kent papers.

288

Kent: That's right. Brown at first refused to see him on that time. This
is in that talk. That's why I remembered. Then later on, Brown did
talk to Chavez. Well, he made enemies with both actions. It seemed
to me that we probably would have advised to either say that Chavez
was his friend or not. He probably should have gone as most of his
liberal friends were going, with Chavez.

But aside from that, I wasn't consulted and neither was Libby
and neither were any of the other people that I know of who were
involved in the northern California campaign about any of the basic
strategies of the campaign, as we had been in all previous Brown
campaigns. It's quite certain to me that I busied myself, along
with Bob Coate who was then state chairman, and with Van Dempsey who
I think had been a secretary and an advance man and a county
organization man, in the regular Democratic campaign of registering
voters, getting out the vote, getting material in the hands of the
voters. I think it was probably about this time when the type of
material began to change.

New Campaign Techniques

Kent: When I first came in with Graves in '54, we had a tabloid which had a
picture, a biography, and a record of each of the candidates, and so
forth. That was it. It was highly impersonal. Then came this nutty
computer business that starts out by saying, "Dear Chita. I just want
you to know the high regard I have for you, and I'm so interested
because I repair that chuckhole in front of your house in Berkeley,"
where they've individualized the communications to the various people
and groups. I'm quite sure that there was a good deal of that done in
'66.

But again, Reagan was such a highly-skilled actor. He was using
TV and using it very well. Brown was using it and was not using it
very well. I remember there was one thing that a whole lot of people
got all upset about. I don't think they really needed to get that
upset. Brown was talking with a bunch of school kids, and he made the
comment, "Remember, it was a Republican that shot Lincoln." I think
he was talking to a black kid. Everybody thought that was just an
awful thing. He lost all kinds of votes by it. I haven't any idea
whether he did or not, but it probably was not a smart thing to say.

Fry: One book — I think it's the book called Ronnie and_Jesse.* It's a dual
biography of Ronald Reagan and Jesse Unruh. They mention that episode
in there, and said that not only was it run on a long special program

*Cannon, Lou, Ronnie and Jesse; A Political Odyssy, Garden City,
New York: Harper and Row, 1975.

289

Fry: that the Democrats gave, but then they snipped out that and ran it
as a spot, in which Pat Brown is not attacking Reagan for his
extremism, but he's attacking him because he's an actor, [Kent murmurs
assent] and it was an actor that shot Lincoln.

Kent: Oh, I see. Yes.

Fry: — according to that book. Do you think that's right?

Kent: I think you're probably right, yes. Of course, we always said that

Reagan was just a skilled actor. There was just no question about it.
That's why he was so successful on TV.

Fry: After the primary, did Lerner continue to be one of the PR people in
the south directing Pat's campaign in that respect?

Kent: I think that he stayed on the payroll and stayed down there. What
he did I really don't know.

Throwing the Rascals Out

Fry: This speech you gave to the Commonwealth Club was on November 18, 1966,
when you and Cap Weinberger were both on the program?

Kent: I don't know if you need to append it, but what I pointed out in the

speech was that this was just a great big landslide that was going one
way. I figured that it was the angers and the frustrations of the
people, that they just didn't like what was going on, and they just were
going to throw the rascals out. We happened to be the rascals. That
was the substance of it, that I didn't think that any of the minor
mistakes that clearly were made in the campaign were responsible for it.

Fry: Well, as you look back now and give a postmortem on it, from the 1977
vantage point, do you think that any other Democratic candidate
could have handled Reagan more effectively?

Kent: Only one who was dead. Engle could have handled him. I mean, Engle
could have stuck a knife into him with humor and made him look
foolish, I'm pretty sure. But Engle, of course, was dead and he
[would have been] running for Senate anyway.

Fry: Now later on, Unruh ran a rather disastrous campaign. I wondered

how Unruh would have handled this. Do you think he would have done a
better job if he had had the money?

290

Kent: I doubt it, I doubt it. I think that Unruh used the four years that

he had between '66 and '70 when he ran against Reagan again to somewhat
rehabilitate himself. Unruh was at, I think, a pretty low point in
the minds of his constituents in 1966. I don't think he would have
run a good race at all.

Fry: I guess Brown was really the major, only viable one at that time.
Is that right?

Kent: I think so, I think so. I felt that Pat had done a good job and had
some real solid accomplishments behind him, and that of course there
was no touch of scandal of any kind or character against him. He
had pretty good and competent people working for him. I thought he
had been a good governor and was a good candidate. I just didn't
have any idea how skillfully Reagan's campaign managers were going to
gloss over his right-wing support and the fact that he has no
experience of any kind in government. As I told you before, they just
said, "We're not going to talk about that. We're just going to talk
about nepotism in Sacramento and waste and crime in the streets." You
know, things that didn't have anything to do with Reagan.

Role of the Democratic Party from the Fifties to the Seventies

Fry: Well, backing up even farther and looking over a longer view of the
Democratic party, like in hunks of a half a dozen years at a time or
more, how do you see its evolution through the fifties and sixties up
to now, in terms of how important it has been to the political campaign?
In other words, you see periods when it was very important and periods
when it was not?

Kent: The thing that happened was that when Stevenson ran in '52 — I've
been over this with you — there just wasn't really anything. Bill
Malone claimed that he had a Democratic party back here, and he told
the Washington people that he had California, and then he'd tell
California people that he had Washington. Sure enough, the Washington
people would give him some of the appointments that he wanted, and
he could thereby prove to the California people that he had influence
in Washington. Then Roosevelt would carry the state, and that would
show that he had the influence in California! [laughter] But there
actually was nothing, except labor here in San Francisco, and that was
just about the size of it. There was no Democratic party, except for
a small nucleus of a dozen or more people who were Bill's close
allies and friends.

But there was no mass Democratic movement at all. The Stevenson
campaign of '52 brought in this large number of idealistic people who
were just crazy about Stevenson, and looked around to see what there

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Kent: was, and wanted to help the Democratic party elect him, and then found
that there was nothing there. Then they had to go out and create it
themselves, which they did, and started the Stevenson clubs and
everything else. From that flowed the CDC operation, and from the
CDC operation, we moved into the Graves campaign. Dick Graves had a
guy of tremendous ability and integrity and a person that you could be
proud of, and we were able to hold the Stevenson people pretty much
in the Democratic party and start to build a Democratic party instead
of purely a Stevenson party, which it had been.

With Graves — and then I came in, and we began to, with the
leadership of George Miller, whom I succeeded, and who was tremendously
interested in finding the weak spot in the Republicans, and decided
that the weak spot was the legislature. We then went out and tried to
win the legislature, which we did. We had a series of victories which
we publicized widely.

Fry: In special elections.

Kent: Special elections. I would ask for a small donation for these elections,
and would immediately write to everybody and tell them that we won it,
and thank them, and that we had elected a good Democrat. We had things
going, in terms of the fact that people began to be proud that they
were a Democrat. Then most everybody in California, or at least two-
thirds, certainly, were looking down the line at '56 when they'd have
another shot with Stevenson. That was about the way it was, because
Kefauver got about one-third of the vote, and I think Stevenson about
two-thirds of the vote in the primary of '56.

That again cemented the Democratic party. Of course, Pat and
Clair Engle and the other leaders — Ziffren and Liz Snyder and all of
us — were all in one bucket going for Stevenson in '56.

Fry: Then in '58 you had the sweep.
Kent: '58 we had the sweep.

Fry: What do you see as the high point, the golden year of the Democratic
party?

Kent: I suppose you'd have to say that that sweep year was it. We had been
building for that for at least four years, four or five years. Or
six years, since the Stevenson enthusiasm of '52. Then we had had
this series of victories in the smaller races, and we'd been tying
together behind good candidates, such as Graves in '54 and Stevenson
again in '56.

Then we had this mistake of Knowland's that we discussed last
time. That was the touchstone. That was what made it possible that
we field such a strong team. For instance, Engle would never have

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Kent: run against Knowland as minority leader of the Senate if Knowland had
stayed in the Senate seat. There was a lot of talk about whether
Pat would run for Senator or whether he would run for governor or
would run again for attorney general. Engle used to say, "Come on,
Pat, let's go." Then he'd say to other people — he had a remark he
used to make — "Well, if any of the other guys run and lose, they
still have a job. If Pat and I run and lose, it'll be Brown and Engle,
attorneys at law."

So we were able to field this very strong team, and then Stanley
Mosk was also a very strong candidate. I mean, he was just absolutely
perfect on paper. He was a judge. He was highly respected [and]
Jewish [and was] from Los Angeles, which we badly needed. He had a
big following down there, and he was readily salable. He was a very
personable guy to the Democrats, so that we could put together this
very, very good ticket.

I think I told you about — I'm sure I did — about where we got the
money for the pamphlet for the candidates that time.

Fry: Oh, yes, you did.

Kent: With propositions 18, 17 and 16. We got thirty thousand dollars for
that, and we got that all paid for.

Cracks in Party Unity after 1958

Fry: The cracks began to appear in Democratic unity after this big success
in '58.

Kent: Well, that is right. This is essentially personal. I had planned —

I put this on before — to go back east. My daughter Molly was graduating
from Smith, and, incidentally, John F. Kennedy was the speaker there
in 1958. In going back, I had called up and talked to Paul Butler and
said, "Paul, this thing in California is going to be very, very big.
We're going to win it and it's going to be a very startling thing. I'm
going to be in Washington that day. I think that maybe some of the
newspaper guys would like to talk to me." So what did he do but lay on
a press conference! I went out to the ball game here in '58, and I went
direct from the ball game to the airplane and got on the airplane and
went to Washington, and the press conference had been laid on for ten
o'clock the next morning.

Fry: Was this after the primary?

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Kent: The primary, just the primary. It turned out that Fred Button had

been trying to reach me, because by this time, Fred Button had — which
happens to all the assistants to all the people who ever get elected —
he had visions of moving into the White House himself. He wanted
Pat Brown to be back there and have this press conference in Washington
and make an announcement of why he had clobbered Knowland and why the
Bemocratic party had done so well.

They had not been able to reach me, and I had no idea that anyone
had been trying to reach me until I checked into the hotel and then
checked into the press conference room. So help me — by this time,
the news was out — there were about a hundred people there. So I told
them why I thought we had won, and that it was as big as it looked
and [that] it was going to go on into November.

About this time, I got word that Pat Brown was landing down in
Washington in an airplane. So I go down to see him, and I see Button.
Button is so mad he can hardly speak. This is an example of Button's
very poor judgment — he had lied to the Washington press corps about
why Brown was back there. He had said that Brown had an appointment
with the attorney general. So they quickly went around to check with
the attorney general and found out that he didn't have any appointment
with the attorney general. What Button wanted to do was to have the
press conference, and maybe Pat wanted to himself. But anyway they
were plenty mad at me.

When Button came back here —
Fry: Why was Button mad at you?

Kent: Because I had stolen all Brown's thunder! I had had the press
conference and had told why California won. It was a much more
appropriate thing for the state chairman to have that kind of a
conference than it was for one of the candidates. Nothing had been
laid on for any purpose other than the fact that I was going to be
there. [laughs]

Well, anyway, when Button got back he talked to Bradley. He
said, "Well, now, how do we get rid of Kent?" Bradley said — you know
he happens to be one of my best friends — "You know, you'd better talk
to somebody else. I don't know why you're doing this anyway." Anyway,
I would say that some cracks began to appear there and that Button was
responsible for some of the original ones.

For instance, the governor of New Jersey was going to come out
here and speak at the Bemocratic State [Central] Committee meeting.
He was a relative of Stevenson's. I've forgotten his name. I'll
think of it in a little while. That was all set, and that had all
been cleared by me with Button and with Tom Saunders, who was a very

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Kent: skilled politician who was helping in the Brown campaign. Button just
about went crazy again. He said, "What are you trying to do, sabotage
Brown?" I said, "What are you talking about?" He said, "Well, you
know, you're going to have this guy out here speaking at the state
convention. He's going to take all the headlines away from Brown."
I said, "Oh, hell, we can get him to tailor his remarks, I'm sure,
anyway that he wants to and that you'd like to have him. We can have
him speak as long as you guys want him to speak. But you told me that
it was perfectly all right to have him out here, and that you would
welcome him out here." He lied and said he'd denied this, and Saunders
backed me up completely. He said, "I was there when he told you
that." There again, Button was interested, as he probably should have
been primarily in his candidate, who was Brown, and not at all in the
Bemocratic party.

I mean, I was very much interested in Brown but I was also
interested in Engle and Mosk. I was interested in the people, and
this was going to be a hell of a thing as far as I was concerned. I
finally said, "All right, if you don't want him, I'll call him up and
tell him you don't want him." He said, "Well, ask him to say that the
plan has been changed because he wants to change the plan, not because
Brown wants to do it." This administrative assistant laughed at me
and he says, "Roger, we're not doing anything like _that !" [laughter]
"It will be well known that he has been dis-invited by Governor Brown."
I said, 'lThose are my instructions from the campaign chairman. I'll
give them to you, and that's it."

So I spoke to Lib, and she said, "Well, has anybody talked to
Pat?" and I said, "No, I haven't seen him." So she went in and talked
to Pat, and Pat just read the riot act to Button and said, "He's coming
and reinstate the invitation" and whatnot.

But as I say, you ask about the cracks beginning to appear. They
certainly began to appear with Button's ambition to get into the White
House with Brown. Then very shortly after that, the cracks came when
Unruh's ambitions surfaced. He wanted to become governor, and he
wanted to destroy Brown, and was doing his best to do it. I suppose
that this is more or less a natural phenomenon. You had this wonderful,
friendly, cohesive working together when you were behind, and it was
a delightful relationship with many, many people. People would sit down
in meetings and they would just put their best brains to what was the
best solution and the best thing for the party and the best thing for
the candidates. It went along before these individual schisms occurred.
It was this group that wanted something for themselves, and this group
wanted something for themselves and so forth and so on.

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Success-Breeds-Failure Syndrome

Fry: You mean, with success comes your downfall. Is that what you're
saying?

Kent: That's right. When you get a success, a big success, you start to
break it up.

Fry: And you get into a lot of individual power plays.
Kent: That's right.

Fry: Okay, Roger. For future generations of politicians, how could you
help avoid this decline and fall of a party once it becomes in
control and on top of the political scene?

Kent: Well, what you do — I don't think that a party officer can do a hell
of a lot about it, because a party officer is an important guy when
his party is not in power. He can be an important guy, and he can be
a leader and he can propose programs and he can get things done. But
once the situation occurs as it had occurred in '58, where Brown was
the governor and Engle was the Senator and Mosk was the attorney
general and Cranston was controller and whatnot. Then I don't think
that a party organizer could — He probably, if he was very skilled,
could maybe keep them from tearing each other apart, but it would be
awfully difficult to do. I think I told you about that, the meeting
that Engle called at my place in '62, where Engle said, "What I
want is, I don't want a Republican governor sitting in Sacramento when
I'm running for the Senate in '64. Therefore, I want to do everything
I can to help the Brown campaign over whatever rough spots they may
have in '62."

It was his advice and his influence that prevented, say, Brown
from appointing Stanley Mosk to the Supreme Court right then, which
he had promised to do, and appointing Bob McCarthy, who was another
San Francisco Irishman.

Fry: That prevented him from appointing a San Francisco Irishman. [laughs]

Kent: Another one!

Fry: As attorney general.

Kent: This would have meant that Brown would be running for governor and

Bob McCarthy would be running for attorney general. Even in California
in 1962, this didn't make any sense. Engle was taking the lead, but
all of us agreed with him and talked Brown out of that. He said, "Well,

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Kent: somebody's got to talk to Mosk," and, I told you before, that's when
I got the assignment of going down and telling Mosk that he wasn't
going to go on the supreme court and that we wanted another run out
of him for attorney general.

Fry: Roger, am I understanding that a party chairman could find ways in which
he could convince a potential leader of a faction that it's to his
interest to get behind another major figure in the party, as Engle
backed Brown for Brown's race against Nixon. Would that be one thing he
could do?

Kent: That happened to be one thing, but really what I was getting at was

the extraordinary influence that Engle had without being pressured by
me or anybody else. He was his own man and he was a very, very bright
guy. He also was the guy who came up with the strategy on the Chessman
case that I talked to you about, and with several other things. You
asked what might have kept this thing from falling apart. If Engle
hadn't died in '64, he would have become a very important Senatorial
leader. He would have become a very important California leader because
he had this perfectly delightful sense of humor and familiarity with
people and a touch with people that Brown didn't have and Mosk didn't
have.

He had, in my view, a much more acute political brain than these
guys had, so that had he lived, it could have been a dynasty, a
Democratic dynasty that would have gone on a good deal longer. He'd
have been smart enough to take on Jesse Unruh. He would have probably
destroyed Jesse Unruh long before Jesse Unruh could get around to
destroying Brown.

Fry: Unruh brings up another factor that created a major crack in party

funding and financing and cohesiveness . Is it true that until Unruh
began to control funds for legislative races, particularly the assembly,
that the party — meaning your gang at 212 — was able to coordinate
campaigns and put money where it was needed for high-priority purposes
within the campaigns and, therefore, keep the efforts of the Democrats
more coordinated in an election, and then as soon as this got out from
under a coordinated effort, the cracks got larger. Do you think
that's right?

Kent: Yes, it is. Of course, the animal was changing. The requirements
were changing and were becoming increasingly much greater. We were
able to win these special elections, for instance, a great many of
them with twenty- five hundred, three thousand dollars and the services
of Bradley as secretary and my services in raising money and sending
wires and getting support and this kind of thing. Well, all of a
sudden that became just an absolute drop in the bucket. Unruh began
to collect this slush fund. It was perfectly clear that the people
who contributed to this slush fund to Unruh were people who knew that
sooner or later they would want to kill legislation that was proposed

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Kent: in the assembly, where they would want to ask for legislation. It's
much more difficult to ask for legislation and to get it, but it was
just ABC to kill legislation. There was no problem about that at all,
because Unruh [as speaker of the assembly], under the rules of the
assembly, appointed committee chairman of every committee. If some
guy came in [from Unruh] and said, "I don't like this bill which
requires a dog to wear a bell," that committee chairman would just say,
no matter what the tally might have been at the table, he'd say, "The
motion is lost. Send it to Interim Committee for study." Unruh was
able to deliver to the people who gave him the money for this purpose.
He was able to deliver because he would pass out money to the assembly
men that — He admitted this, as much as admitted it. He would pass
out money to people who didn't need it at all.

We had an example with this Leo Ryan here where one year he lost
by six votes or eight votes. Then they reapportioned and he didn't
run, which was a dirty trick to us, because we were all geared to do
it. The next year, when he had a 62-38 Democratic district before him,
he didn't need anything. We said, "Leo, we'll come up with five hundred
or a thousand dollars for you," but he didn't want it. Unruh gave him
five thousand which he could put in his pocket because he didn't need
a nickle to be elected.

Unruh became tremendously influential with the assemblymen.

Fry: This may become a kind of a unique period in political campaigns in
California if we go on into more public financing of campaigns now.
One of the most difficult periods for candidates in a party to handle,
because it was after the advent of television, when costs just soared
for a candidate, for before any help from public financing came into
the campaign reform laws. You may have had an unusually difficult
financial period during this time.

Kent: Oh, I think we did.

Fry: When you've got to scratch for money from private sources, this kind
of sets you up for cracks appearing.

Kent: Well, sure. Look, you don't have any public financing yet for most
of these —

Fry: I'm speaking as if it were twenty years from now, looking back on it.

Public Financing for Political Campaigns

Kent: Yes, yes. Now you have this desperate situation, as far as I'm

concerned. I just thank God that I wasn't the chairman as this thing
began to occur, where they say, "Well, if I win I'll be able to hold

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Kent: dinners and be able to raise three hundred thousand dollars." This

is what Cranston said and Salinger said and Tunney said the first time
around. The Cranston-Salinger thing just absolutely destroyed the
party, practically.

Fry: They got into debt?

Kent: They got into debt and they go into debt to people that have to be

paid. They got into debt to the old Democratic donors who have always
supported. You could hardly go to Cyril Magnin or somebody and say,
"Lend us twenty- five thousand dollars," and then just say goodbye, and
then ever expect to get any more money from him. Or go to the telephone
company or American Airlines or something of that kind and say, "We
can't pay you." You had to raise the money after the election, and if
you lost, you were in terrible shape. Your costs had skyrocketed and
you would find it impossible.

My analysis is that you've got to have public financing. You'll
never have clean and uncommitted money in a campaign until you do
have public funds.

Fry: Not in those amounts.

Kent: Because in these amounts — You're going to collect, if you have to
have two hundred thousand dollars, say, for an assembly race or a
state senate race, you're very lucky if you're going to collect ten
or fifteen thousand from sources who are just interested in good
government. You'll be very lucky if you do that. And where do you
get the rest? You get the rest from people who are expecting something.
They're expecting something. They may not be expecting something
individually, in terms of "I want to get this gas lease" or this
thing, but rather, "I want to make damn sure that you don't pass a
tax law that's going to be very penalizing to me and my friends."

I can just hear the conversations that would go on with the guy
going in and saying to the congressman, "Now look Fred, I agree with
you. This reform movement is definitely needed, but you can see that
this one has been poorly drafted, and I think it should go back for
furthur study. I would surely appreciate it if you would do what you
could to get us a better bill and vote no on this one and come up with
another one." Well, it's just so easy for a guy to sop his conscience
and say, "No, I'm not voting no on this bill because I got $25,000
from this fellow. I'm voting no because we can get a better bill."

You'll never have tax reform until you have public financing.
It just follows, it seems to me, as day from night.

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Private Fund- Raising Techniques

Fry: Well, in this period in which we're still struggling along, what are
the major sources? You mentioned some of the industries and
corporations, such as American Airlines. I suppose some of the banks —

Kent: Well this would just be for tickets.

Fry: Oh, for tickets for campaign travel, which is a big lump, isn't it?

Kent: Well, sure. What we used to have, we used to have a committee of more
or less wealthy Democrats that would meet once a week at the Fairmont.
They'd give them a free drink, and they'd have me in there. We had a
list of contributors that might run a couple of hundred. From this list,
and with a great deal of help from the wealthy — from the Hellers and
Madeleine [Haas] Russell and Swig and some of the others, you'd get
up to a hundred thousand or a hundred and ten thousand or something
like that. You might get up there.

Fry: You would have this meeting to draw up names?

Kent: We'd have a meeting, and everybody would be given a list, and they'd
say, "Now check off those you will be able to approach and those
you'll do."

Fry: And whom you know.

Kent: And whom you know. "Come back to the next meeting and come back with
your check in your hand." It became a matter of pride that people
would do this, and there were the old-timers who would be there at
these meetings. These would always be on statewide or national
elections .

Fry: Yes. Do I understand who these people were? It would be Magnin and
Swig. Who else?

Kent: Well, Madeleine Russell and the Hellers and — I mean, these would be
the big money. Swig could always shake down Adolph Schuman for
some money, and George Killion had his sources from the American
President Lines. There were a good many lawyers. I suppose some of
them who aspired to be judges and who were pretty successful would
come up with money. There were just some old-line Democrats that
would come up with a hundred dollars or something. This is where they
would raise, at a series of meetings, say four or five meetings,
they might raise a hundred thousand or thereabouts.

Fry: These meetings were more or less weekly?

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Kent: That's right. You'd go there and see all your friends and have a

drink and talk about the campaign. Very often the candidate would be
there, and he'd tell you what he was doing and what he was saying
and what was going on some place else. A lot of interesting political
events. Then, of course, there were always the big dinners, the
hundred- do liar dinners. Matt McCloskey of the national committee
introduced me to the hundred-dollar dinner. I guess it was in 1954.
We'd never had one until then. I think we had Stevenson out here at
the height of his popularity and we got about two hundred people to
come at a hundred dollars. Two years later, we got two thousand to
hear Brown.

Fry: The Democrats seemed to be getting affluent! [laughs]

Kent: Well, everybody got affluent I guess. Then I only went after this
lobby money. One time — that is, I was in Washigton — and Engle gave
me a list of the principal obvious ones for the railroads, for the
shipping industry, the steel industry or something of that kind. I
think I told you about that.

Fry: Yes. It was between Pat Brown's primary and his final election, was
it?

Kent: I think so. It was after the primary and, as I said, the only reason
that I was getting any money was because I told these guys, "Engle
is going to win in California," and they'd nod their heads and say,
"I agree with you" and then they would never say, "Mr. Kent, here's
five thousand dollars for you." They'd say, "We'll get in touch with
our people in California, and we'll tell them to go around and talk
to the Engle chairmen and make their contributions in California.
We'll explain to them that we think Engle is going to be elected, and
we want to damn well know that when we need to go in and see him
about something that the door is going to be open and he'll have a
handshake for us."

Fry: Why did they want to give it locally?

Kent: Because they wanted to conceal the fact that it was being given from
Washington, from national, I think. That was the major reason. That
may be the way they financed it, but I suspect that's the major reason.

Fry: Another thing on the money. You had the hundred-dollar-a-month plan.
Then according to your papers, there was some diminution of that. I
noticed a memo written December 10, 1963, from you noting that next
year the obligation would decline to fifty dollars a month. Four
months later, in April, your memo alludes to some difficulties in
getting this money.

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Kent: Yes. Well, these were all stunts that we were trying to raise money
for to support the state committee.

Fry: Yes. Do I understand this right? The hundred- do liar- a-month plan
was a hundred dollars a month from each of the northern California
congressional districts?

Kent: It wouldn't be fifty. Well, it was about eighteen or nineteen. There
were fifty counties. That was a scheme that a couple of the county
chairmen came up with. They said, "Why the hell don't we — we can
raise a hundred dollars."

Fry: I think you told us about that. Then what happened to it in '63?

Kent: Then they began — that, you see, would raise — You see, if we got it
all in, that would be maybe twenty-five, thirty thousand dollars.
Then we would have our share of Dollars for Democrats. The '54
Dollars for Democrats, I think, raised $185,000 in one weekend, north
and south. We never got up that high again, but we might raise fifty
to a hundred thousand dollars in northern California on Dollars for
Democrats. We put on a hell of a drive and got an awful lot of people
involved in going out and collecting. Then we would figure that that
would be two- thirds of what we'd need to run the office, to pay the
girls and Bradley and the rent and whatnot. Then the other third would
come from our share of the dinner for some dignitary, a Senator or a
cabinet officer or something like that.

That was just money to run our office. If there was anything
left over, it would be going into registration or going into money to
support candidates we thought should be supported. I think I told you
before that because the Dollars for Democrats money had to almost all
be raised by volunteers, it had to be raised by CDC. It couldn't be
raised by the state committee. The state committee didn't have that
kind of people to go out on the street. The guy who goes out on the
street was going to collect ten to twenty dollars. If he puts in a
good three or four hours, he's going to get that amount of money, and
that's a lot of money if you have a lot of people.

But we said to CDC, "It's not fair that you go collect all of that
and we use it all. That will be a contribution to your share of the
office, and it also will entitle you to sit in on a joint committee
to decide what candidates are going to get that money." We used to sit
with a committee of CDC and the state committee and decide how that
money, the Dollars for Democrats money, was divided up.

Fry: I see. Well, that was a strong unifying factor too, I should think.
Kent: Oh, sure.

302

Fry: But why did this hundred dollar a month plan decline to fifty dollars
a month in that formal obligation agreement at the end of '63?

Kent: I guess probably only one or two or three districts were coming up

with a hundred dolalrs , and we just decided it was damned unfair. I
remember over there the Contra Costa district always came up with its
hundred, the first district would damn near always come up with its
hundred, San Mateo had an interesting little guy there who started
the buck-a-month club, and he got a hundred people and they each put a
dollar in, and they'd pay their hundred dollars. But then a whole lot
of others just wouldn't pay anything.

Fry: This was in order to spread it out more and make everybody, every
district responsible?

Kent: And when they'd say to us. "We can't raise a hundred dollars," I'd say,
"All right, goddammit. See if you can raise fifty dollars, and let's
drop it all to fifty dollars."

Fry: I guess that was a continuing struggle to keep everybody happy. [laughs]

Kent: Oh, yes.

Fry: Regular contributions always seem to require a lot of prodding.

Kent: Yes.

Fry: Were you the prodder?

Kent: Well, I had some very, very good people working for me, so that I would
be in on the prodding for sure, but the mechanics of it would usually
be handled by one of the splendid secretaries that I had there from
time to time.

Selecting Delegates for the Presidential Conventions

Fry: We have one more thing here to pick up on the presidential campaign,
and that's a description from you on the methods of selecting the
delegates .

Kent: Oh, yes.

Fry: We're talking about 1956, 1960, and 1964 because those were the ones
you were most —

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Kent: Well, Pat of course was there in '60. In '60, I think he named Engle
chairman of the committee, and Gene Wyman and me vice-chairmen of the
committee .

But anyway, aside from that, I think he consulted with his
kitchen cabinet. That would be Don Bradley and with me and Champion
and perhaps some of the others, and some people down south. I've
forgotten exactly how it is. You have to have at least two people
from each congressional district. Then you can spread it out at large.
Of course, if there's more than one congressional district in a county,
you get a lot of leeway there so that there was a lot of leeway in
Los Angeles and a little leeway in San Francisco.

I was on each one of those, and I'm sure Libby was on each one.
Then he'd put a congressman, usually, and an assemblyman and a state
senator on there. That, to my mind, is probably a mistake.

Fry: Oh?

Kent: Because of this — a public official like that, a congressman or state
senator or assemblyman, they are going to have a primary loyalty to
themselves to get themselves elected. This may conflict with what is
in the best interests of the Democratic party. So I've always had the
feeling, and I've seen this happen, that to have them [on the committee]-
particularly if they have control — is a very bad idea.

Fry: Was it Richard Richards — Who was the Democrat in southern California
who could make a lot of fiery speeches on the delegation in order to
forward his candidacy?

Kent: That's right, he did right along. Then there would be labor guys on
it. It never was a very big committee, and it was picked by Brown.
I think in each case — now that would be '60, '66?

Fry: In '64.

Kent: In '64, right.

Fry: Yes, that was Johnson's.

Kent: Yes, that was Johnson's. And as I say, there were only usually about
eleven or twelve people on that district, but then it was a jigsaw
puzzle. We would try to put it together.

Fry: You mean eleven or twelve people — ?

Kent: — on the committee that chose it. They would have to choose. We would
have half votes, and they would have to choose maybe 120 people,
something like that. We would have to get a number of them out of
each district. Then we'd have to — where we could, and we felt we had

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Kent: to, we'd get them out of other districts. Now what we wanted was a

mix of party workers, of finance people, of labor, women, minorities.
We would try and come up with the mix that we thought would be
satisfactory.

This is one of the reasons I was not in favor of the widespread
election selection reform of the national committee. In California,
we'd already had it, because in California we had a contested primary.
Therefore, any guy who's going to run and run in a contested primary
just can't afford to go out and pick sixty millionaires or sixty
working men or sixty women. He's got to have a balanced delegation
to go to the public, because they're the guys on the ballot that the
public knows who they're voting for.

In California, the built-in system that we had required that the
delegation be balanced. I'll warrant, if you went back over the
delegations that we had say in '60 and '64 and '68, that they were
just better balanced than the ones since the election reforms. But
anyway, that was the way it was chosen.

Brown would — I think what he'd do — sorry, this is not so crystal
clear in my mind — I think he'd have to have three people who would go
up to the secretary of state and sign a paper and say, "Brown is our
guy-"

Fry: To head the delegation?

Kent: " — to head the delegation, and to be our candidate. We, the committee
that will choose the delegation — " I think you had to have a minimum
of three. I don't know whether there was a maximum or not. It turned
out in each case, in my recollection, to be about eleven that signed
papers with the secretary of state, saying, "We are the committee that
is going to put together a delegation for Brown."

Then each of the people selected as delegate would have to sign
an affidavit to the effect that they were pledged to Brown and that
they would vote for him as a delegation until it became apparent to
him that he couldn't get the nomination. So this was always construed
quickly that they were committed for the first ballot but not there
after, because you could hardly say that you were convinced that he
couldn't get the nomination if he hadn't even had one vote, but if
he had had two, it could be a contest as to whether the man was being
honest when he said that they couldn't do it.

Fry: Who selected the selection committee?

Kent: Brown would do it.

Fry: Brown did singlehandedly or did he have — ?

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Kent: Well, with his friends.
Fry: This kitchen cabinet?

Kent: Yes, yes. He'd have Champion and Winslow Christian and Don Bradley,
and he might use Libby or he might use somebody else.

Fry: You?

Kent: I would usually be consulted by one or more of these guys — "what do
you think about so-and-so as the labor guy," or if so-and-so was a
woman or whatnot. By telephone, usually. I didn't go up and sit in
on conferences .

Fry: — on delegation selection. If you tried to get a proportion of
delegates who were for the various presidential candidates in a
particular mix, you might want to take each campaign separately.
In 1956, it was Adlai and Kefauver.

Kent: Oh, you mean after the primary?

Fry: No, when you're selecting delegates —

Kent: To hell with them. You take only the ones who are for your man. But
then after the primary, if some particularly very good people have
been for your opponent, and you had some weak sisters or you were
lucky enough to have somebody get sick or to take a trip or something,
you could substitute and take somebody off the losing delegation and
put them on your winning delegation.

Fry: Sometimes the Republicans were able to have just one delegation headed
by a strong figure like Earl Warren and they were able to put
representatives of people who were advocates of each major presidential
candidate on this one delegation, which would be committed to Earl
Warren, much like the Democrats' delegations in the fifties and the
sixties were committed to Pat Brown. Was this ever done here in an
effort to avoid a primary battle?

Kent: Well, they might have tried to, but they never got away with it. They
always had a primary battle. When they tried to do it, and tried to
run Pat — this was when I was in the east in '52, and they tried to run
Pat as the favorite son.

Fry: Nominal candidate.

Kent: As a nominal guy. He got beaten badly by Kefauver. We figured that
you can't beat somebody with nobody. You can't run a nobody. This
business of running — Well, that there occurred in '60. Button again

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Kent: thought that Pat had a chance. There were a lot of people that went

on as delegates and they said that they were going to vote for Pat, but
a lot of them there for Kennedy and a lot of them were for Johnson and
a few were for Symington. But at our meeting, these were people who
said that they were going to vote for Brown until Brown released them.

Fry: Was there no talk of all these other candidates?

Kent: Oh, there was considerable talk about the fact that Brown was not

going to come out as the candidate. But in accordance with state law,
they announced that they would vote for Pat until he released them or
after the first ballot was had.

Fry: But that was the delegation which split apart so badly at the

convention, wasn't it? I wondered if there was no thought given to
who everybody was really for at the time the delegation was put
together. I think there was thought given to it. My impression was
that there was a great deal of thought given to it.

Kent: Let's see. Now on '60, it was pretty well assumed — I think maybe
I'm think about '56. Or '54? No, '54 was clearly Stevenson.

Fry: You mean '56?

Kent: Yes, '56 was clearly Stevenson. In '60, there were all kinds of deals
being booted around about Brown and Kennedy. This was, I'm sure,
brought to Brown's attention that if Kennedy didn't win the next two
states or something of that kind, that Kennedy would support Brown,
that if he did win them, then Brown would support Kennedy. This was
never signed, sealed, and delivered.

Fry: By winning the next two states, are you talking about a primary
election?

Kent: Primary elections, yes. But then, let's see —
Fry: That was a rumor?

Kent: I had it on pretty good authority that that offer had been made to
Pat.

Fry: By Kennedy forces?
Kent: By Kennedy forces.
Fry: Early, I guess, in the primaries, like before Virginia?

Kent: I'm not sure. I'm pretty sure I told you, and that was the year that
Joe Alsop called me up when I was out here and told me that Kennedy
might enter the primary and that if he did, he very likely would win.

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Kent: And what would I do if that happened? That's when I told him that as
far as I personally was concerned, I would go out and get everybody
that I could to agree to throw everybody off the delegation that was for
Kennedy and do everything in our power to see that Brown was elected.

That's when he said, "Why would you do this?" and I said, "Oh,
hell, I can't blame Kennedy for wanting to do this." He said, "What
do you mean? You'd do this trick to him and you say you can't blame
him?" I said, "No. He's playing for the highest stakes in the world.
I wouldn't blame him, but I wouldn't be a damn bit happy if he set out
to destroy everything that we've tried to create here in California in
the last six or eight years."

So he didn't come into California, and Brown won it uncontested.
But there were — Brown didn't announce that he was going to go for
Kennedy until 'way late down here in Los Angeles. Unruh had miscounted
and had lied to Bobby Kennedy and to Jack Kennedy about what he had.
Unruh 's excuse was that Brown didn't come out soon enough and say
that he was for Kennedy, but [in looking at] the congressmen and Engle,
you could tell. Some of them came flat out for Johnson. Engle went
for Symington. You could just tell that this was Johnson's long reach
warning them to go for anybody but Kennedy. He figured he could win
on a second ballot if Kennedy didn't win it on the first.

Fry: In 1964, was the delegation more unified?

Kent: When you've got an incumbent president, it's just cold turkey.

Fry: [laughs] And a recently assassinated president.

Kent: Nobody would have the guts to oppose him.

Fry: What do you think, then, is the ideal way to handle the delegates

selection, if not by these congressional district elections as they
tried in '72 and '76?

Kent: I think the ideal way would be if you could put together a knowledgeable
group of people who knew what they were doing and set up a balanced
delegation. This used to create terrible problems for us, because
all of a sudden Brown would — we would have the jigsaw puzzle where
we'd have this many women and this many in the labor union and this
many contributors and this many party people, and he'd say, " I want

tthis person." As soon as you say you want this person, it destroys
the whole pattern, and you have to go back and put the whole thing
together again.

That makes it very difficult. Nevertheless, I think that again
my principle is that a system doesn't really work. It's the people
operating within the system who make it work. If they're good people

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Kent: and they understand what they're doing, and they do have a balanced
delegation in order to pick a president who is representative of
the people of the United States, they're better able to do it than a
whole bunch of caucuses.

Fry: I observed that Muskie caucus the first year that they had the elected
delegation system. The thing that struck me was that there were so
many people there who had always tried to break into a power structure
within the party and couldn't. This gave them a chance to get on a
delegation, such as some of the blacks from west Oakland — I guess it
was east Oakland — and some chicanes, farm worker types, a lot of
women, a lot of the new student vote. At that time, they'd just
lowered the voting age. How would you accommodate a system where you
have a very carefully selected delegation, selected by those who are
knowledgeable and who have the wisdom of past campaigns within the
party to this other need to allow voiceless political minorities to be
a part of it.

Kent: I didn't go to any of those caucuses, but I did have occasion to

note that — I got this secondhand from people in whom I have a great
deal of confidence — that a tremendous number of the people who were
selected went off happily on a trip and enjoyed themselves no end in
meetings and in dinners and in cocktail parties and whatnot, and came
back and never did one goddamn thing as far as the work of politics
is concerned .

Fry: You mean they didn't follow through and work in the election?

Kent: That's right, that's right. I was offered to help in McGovern's

election, and I said, "This idea of yours of getting people to give
twenty-five dollars is a damn good idea. It's just about the right
amount; it might work." They said, "What do we do? Where do we
start?" I said, "Just start with every one of your goddamn delegates,
and have each of them get ten people. Now they may get two, if they
work." They just got absolutely no one to go out and do that, of the
delegates !

Fry: You have to have really committed people don't you, to do this?
Kent: That's right.

Family Responsibilities and Political Life

Fry: To follow through on it. That brings up another thing. One question
we always ask our women in politics is how are you able to make this
commitment to politics with home and family and so forth? We think
this question is equally valid for men. It is a big commitment, and

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Fry: how does it affect personal life and marriage? Do you see it as a

detriment, or do you see that it might be a choice of one emphasized
over the other, that you can't have a commitment to both, that
politics is like having another mistress in another city, almost?
[laughs] How would you see that issue, as you look back over your
years?

Kent: Well, there certainly is a tremendous amount of separation from family
in politics for anybody who does a great deal of work. I think there's
probably a happy medium. I think I probably went beyond the happy
medium because I spent so much time on politics, but I also had a wife
who was very much interested in very many interesting things, and who
could take care of herself without undue hardship.

It does take a lot of time. A lot of time if you're going to do
a good job, there's no doubt about that.

Fry: Do you see advantages in it for your family, for your children?

Kent: Oh, yes. I was writing out some of the things. For instance, I might
be asked by Anne, you said — Well, the people who came to our house
when I was a kid. First it was all those [National] Woman's party
things that were going on in the house in Washington then. There
was Gifford Pinchot and Franklin Lane, and Dad had during the war,
a hell of a lot of important congressmen and Senators. He had Walter
Camp out conducting exercises for these guys out in the back yard.
We had a lion tamer and John Muir and all the rest of it.

My kids, on the other hand, have had the opportunity of dining
and digging clams with Stevenson and Muskie and Frank Church, and
Earl Warren has been there, and just a hell of a lot of great people.
I remember my dear daughter Molly speaking, when we went into the
Supreme Court. First we saw William Douglas, and then we went in and
saw Warren. She said, "It's prefectly extraordinary to reach the
conclusion that so many people reach. That is, the bigger they are,
the nicer they are." Both Warren and Douglas were just perfectly
charming and smart as hell with Molly and didn't look down their
noses at her or anything of the kind. I think it does you a lot of
good to see people of that kind.

Fry: Well, Roger, I didn't finish my list, but it is a little bit after
twelve.

Kent: I can give you some more time after lunch. [tape turned off and
restarted]

310

Oil Conservation Proposition of 1956

Fry: In your papers, there's a whole folder marked "Oil conservation
proposition" or "proposition 4" or whatever it was in 1956.

Kent: I think I have the unique distinction that I was the only politician
of either party of any position who wasn't paid by either the
billionaires of the majors — Standard and Shell and whatnot — or the
millionaries — the independent oil companies — to take a position on
this bill. This bill — the best I can remember about it is that it
would permit the unitization of an oil field involuntarily, without
the consent of the producers of the oil field.

This guy Shults, who was a lobbyist for Standard Oil and a
friend of George Miller's, had told me about the effect of non-
unitization in a particular field in southern California where one
of the major companies had a field that was very well defined. They
were producing from that field — it was only a hundred acres or something
of this kind, and one of these thieves of the independents came in,
took a lease along side of the lease where the oil was being produced,
drilled a well, and pumped salt water out of that well until they
ruined the field, for blackmail to have the lease taken off their
hands by the majors because they were in a position to destroy the
field.

Rather than having the field destroyed, the majors wanted to pay
blackmail. Anyway, well, I don't like that kind of thing. And even
if this might have made a little dough for these people, I would
be inclined to support a conservation measure. Prop. 4 was pretty
well documented as a conservation measure, and the independents got
in Harry Lerner and some of these hatchet men to make it appear that
it was plain robbery, and that the majors were stealing the oil from
the independents, and they were going to break California and so forth.

I caught holy hell at the state committee because I had signed my
name as being in favor of Prop. 4. As I've said, there wasn't anybody
on the floor that would come out and speak either for or against it.
They were all paid by one of these oil companies except me, I'm
damn sure of that. That's all I can remember about it.

Fry: Can you explain how they lined up for and against it?

Kent: Just on pay.

Fry: I mean, who was paying those people?

311

Kent: Standard Oil and their allies were paying those who were for it, and
Texaco might have been small enough at that time to have been an
independent in California, but it probably was Union Oil. Union was
probably one — I'm almost certain it was one of the major minors.

Fry: One of the main minors, yes. The Texaco oil company?

Kent: No. I said Texaco, but I don't think Texaco was in it . I don't

think Texaco was out here, particularly. But Union and some of these
others were against it.

Fry: I've noticed a letter to Joe Shell from the legislative counsel

explaining the effect of the oil and gas conservation act.. This is
the April 12, 1956, letter,* I think largely in terms of what powers
it would take away from the state lands commission and what powers
it would give to the proposed state oil and gas commission.

So I wondered what Joe Shell's role in this was. Wasn't he a
lobbyist at that time for the independents?

Kent: Could have been.

Fry: But you weren't aware of that?

Kent: No , no . I took very little part in it. I had this one lunch on it, and
then I read a good deal on it, and then I became convinced that it was
a better conservation act than the way things were. You had this one
here. [goes through papers]

Power Play Following CjLem Miller's Death

Fry: Yes, I had a few things that I xeroxed from your papers so you can

explain them to us . I wondered about that power play story, for one
thing, which is the December 1962 story about the election.

Kent: After Miller's death, it was so funny. This guy [long pause] was a
guy named John Stuart, an alleged Democrat. He came from I think,
Placerville, and he came down and saw me in the office at 212. There
had been first a big hoohah about whether Grader, who had been Miller's
assistant, or I should run to replace Miller. Don Bradley said that
if they don't take Grader, they're just taking a terrible shellacking
in this election, but if they beat Grader they don't gain much, but
if they beat the state chairman, they're gaining a lot, and why risk
it? I said, "Okay, better not run. I won't run."

*See Kent papers.

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Kent: This guy John Stuart once before had gone into another district, not
the district he lived in, and filed as a Democratic candidate. So
he came and he saw me and he said he was intending to file against
Grader in the First Congressional District. I said, "What the hell
are you doing this for? You're from Placerville, how many people do
you know in the first district? What kind of chance do you have to
win?" Of course, you know that for Congress you don't have to live
in the district that you run in. He said, "Well, I know a lot of
people and I'm going to run. I think I'm going to win. I bet I can
beat Grader."

I said, "Now this is absurd. You haven't got any chance at all,
and the only thing you're doing is getting in there to split the vote
so Clausen can win." This is what my article says. And he said,
"Well, I've already spent a lot of money on this." I said, "How much
money did you spend? Your filing fee and your traveling expenses?
What are we talking about, a couple of hundred dollars? If you
actually spent that amount of money, rather than have this election
sabotaged for no good reason, we'll pay you back what you spent."

That's when McCarthy and Bill Bagley made the accusation that I
tried to buy the guy out. The Republican party — [pauses] They said,
[reading] "The Republicans called the power play by Kent 'a predictable
(backfire) of the matter of public policy to encourage candidates to
run for public office. It appears to us that public policy is being
thwarted on a wholesale scale in the first district.'" "So McCarthy
and Bagley 'think it reprehensible,' Kent replied in an interview,
'I had no doubt that Clausen, Bagley, and McCarthy would welcome
droves of Democratic candidates in this sudden-death special election.
Their solicitude for alleged Democrats that we supposedly forced out
of the race is touching.'

"The Democratic chieftain said that one reason that Clausen had
no Republican opponent is that 'we didn't sponsor or encourage one.
I repeat my charges that Stuart was imported and subsidized as a
spoiler by enemies of the Democratic party. There was wholesale
illegality in securing the necessary signatures. It will probably be
proved that 60 percent were bad.'"*

Then we had a bad judge and we were not able to go down through
all the lists and prove all the things, so he was allowed to stay in
the race. But he wasn't instrumental in getting Grader beaten,
Grader was beaten quite badly. But this hurt in that race. We lost
that race.

*See Kent papers.

313

Fry: You suspect that Grader would have lost anyway?

Kent: Yes, the way it turned out, he did. But this guy had clearly been
bought and paid for, this Stuart. They just found a whore to come
down, and for a couple of hundred dollars probably, file and just go
through the motions.

Fry: Just to split the Democratic party?
Kent: Sure.

Fry: Somebody could make a lot of money that way, I guess. First getting
bought by one party and then going to the other one and saying, "How
much do you offer me to get out of the race?" [laughter]

Looking Back to_the Equal-Time Debate

Fry: Let's see. There was another story about you in the 1962 race, a

protest by you that Nixon was getting more media coverage, free media
coverage, and that the Democrats deserved equal time. This got to be
kind of a debate between you and the Nixon people, who felt that Pat
Brown was getting enough equal free time as it was. Do you remember
anything about that? I just wondered what its significance was, if it
was out of the usual controversy over free time allocations.

Kent: I don't remember that one. I remember — now wait a minute. Are you sure
this isn't '60?

Fry: The reason I think it was '62 was that it mentioned Pat Brown. The
Republican state chairman said something about Pat Brown getting
coverage, too, every time he makes a public address. I gather the
opposition was Pat Brown, so that would have been '62.

Kent: Yes, and yet I remember something really very dramatic in '60. Pat
could have been involved in it.

Eisenhower finally decided to say a good word for Nixon and a bad
word against Kennedy. He was scheduled to speak here at the Commonwealth
Club. At that time, I was chairman and I knew that Eisenhower was not
going to restrain his remarks to international affairs, and particularly
during the question-and-answer period. He had indicated — I think
Kennedy had needled him a little bit, and he had indicated anger at
Kennedy. So I notified all the TV stations and the press that I was
reliably informed that Eisenhower was going to deliver a partisan
speech at the Commonwealth Club, and that I directly hereby served
notice on them that I was demanding equal time to answer him.

314

Kent: About that time, we had some friends in the press corps traveling with
Eisenhower. We got a bootleg copy of what Eisenhower was going to say.
And sure enough, it was a real good blast — part of it — against Kennedy.
A mean, tough blast against Kennedy, clearly political — completely
and totally.

Kent: We got word that Eisenhower's speech was going to be political, was
going to be anti-Kennedy and was going to be pro-Nixon. So we
repeated this, and we had a funny reaction. One television station,
one of the major ones, got it and read it and said, "Mr. Kent, you are
right. We are not running the Eisenhower speech." Two others. Two
others said — Eisenhower's press secretary, Haggerty — what was his name?

Fry: Jim. James.

Kent: James Haggerty said, "It is not political." KQED said, "It Is political,"
and would give equal time. Somebody then asked Jim Haggerty, and said,
"How is it to be determined whether a speech is political or not,
and whether equal time is entitled?" He said, "I make that decision."

Fry: Who said that?

Kent: Haggerty said that. [laughter] Haggerty said that. So we kind of
laughed at that and booed it. Then we made as much hay as you could
make out of a failure to give equal time. I'm sure this is what you
must have in mind, because I can't remember any other brouhaha that
approached this in intensity. Some years later, the Senate committee
headed by Hugh Scott was having hearings on this kind of matter. At
that point, the Republicans were trying to get equal time every time
that Jack Kennedy, President of the United States, spoke.

So it is not surprisingly that I was greeted most cordially by
Hugh Scott when I took the stand before the committee. He said,
"Mr. Kent, I want you to know that I think you were exactly right."
[laughter] "You should have been granted equal time."

Fry: The shoe was on the other foot.

Kent: Yes. They wanted to go the other way at that time. I'm sure that that
was the time that you're talking about, because I can't remember any
other time when it was any more than an exchange of wire with the
editor of the Los Angeles Times or something like this, saying, "You
have given this guy this kind of a plug and we're entitled to equal
time," and that would be about the end of it.

Fry: Yes, you hear these complaints with every campaign.
Kent: Sure.

315

Fry: Do you think that there's any answer to this problem of the incumbent
always having an edge on equal time? It makes it awfully hard to get
an incumbent out of office as a result.

Kent: That's right. I don't see any answer to it, really, because suppose
the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor again. Is the incumbent supposed
to keep quiet on it? I mean, what's news and what's campaigning?

Fry: There's never been any special set of guidelines drawn up to help

you decide what is a public service type of a speech on the part of
an of ficerholder, and what is political?

Kent: Well, I think that both parties have attempted to do this in terms of

who was going to pay the freight for a presidential trip, say. I mean,
they are pretty careful about saying, "He's going out to Puget Sound
to address the navy yard." And he'll go out there, and there'll be
a picture of him riding through Seattle in an automobile covered with
American flags and people around him on a platform, and admirals and
this that, and the other thing. He'll make a speech about the glories
of the U.S. Navy, and he won't mention his opponent and he won't
mention his candidacy. And at that point, they'll say, "It's all
public service, and the public pays for it."

But if he goes out and makes a partisan speech, then they get
pretty holier than thou and say, "The Republican National Committee
is paying for this," or, "the Democratic National Committee is paying
for this."

Fry: What if he had mentioned his opponent in a speech that was paid for by
the White House or by the Sacramento governor's office?

Kent: Well, if he does, then in the first place, the party should pay for it,
and in the second place, the other guy should have equal time.

Fry: Was Pat Brown fairly careful about this?

Kent: I think that most of the time when Pat was campaigning for governor,

that we just conceded that everything was political. I don't remember
that we ever tried to — I guess that sometimes we did. Pat had that
old broken-down [plane] — it wasn't a DC-3, but it was the next model up-
that he'd fly around in, and he had pals flying around.

Fry: You mean, the State —

Kent: It was in the State, on a State plane. Hardly one of Mr. Reagan's
$165-an-hour Lear jets! But Pat — I'm not sure whether the campaign
picked up because of those trips or not. You see, I wouldn't be into
that finance part at all, really. I would never get down and write
the checks or figure out what the payroll is. I mean, I might talk to'

316

Kent: Don or talk to somebody else and say, "What the hell are you guys
running here, this circus that you've got this kind of a payroll.
What are your costs in traveling?" But I never got into the detail.

Fry: In a state as big as California, television time is important. I
wondered if the Federal Communications Commission ever took a hand
in this or sent any directives to the political parties. Do you
remember anything like that? In this time, was this left up to your
discretion?

Kent: The FCC, I'm quite sure, does not undertake to say to a television

station, "You gave Candidate X so much of a speech, you will now give
Candidate A so much of your time." They would probably say to the
television station, "We have received a complaint from Candidate A
that you gave such-and-such time to Candidate X. We have not received
the full text of this. When it is received, it will be examined and
what it says and the actions that you take with respect to this matter
will be given careful consideration at the time when your license is
up for renewal," which is just about like taking a gun and putting it
at the guy's head. I am quite sure that that is the way they voice it.

Fry: Did you ever have any communication emanating from the Democratic
political party here to the FCC when you complained? Or were your
complaints largely just to the press?

Kent: No. Well, I'll tell you what we did was, and that was one time where
we split off this responsibility. Paul Ziffren, of course, was a
Los Angeles lawyer very much wound up in the theatrical work. In the
theatrical world, he also had a lot of his friends and his close
political allies, who were young guys who were experts in radio and
television. He had prepared a brief by these laddies of his which
presumably covered most of this legal area.

When we got a case involving what we thought was a proper matter,
we brought it to the attention of the FCC where we thought that we
were entitled to equal time. We actually either got the ball directly,
or it would be taken up through Don Bradley or through somebody else
with him or with his boys or with his brothers; I think [they] were
in on this. We tossed that ball to them. The only time that I remember
getting into the business was in that Eisenhower speech at the
Commonwealth Club .

Fry: So if we ever interview Ziffren, this might be something to ask him.

Kent: Yes. Let's see. Oh, it's so funny. I was at the Commonwealth Club

speech in 1960. We clipped the newspapers, and when I appeared before
the Hugh Scott and Warren Magnuson committee back in Washington, I had
these headlines that were as big as the Second Coming, which said,

317/318

Kent: "Eisenhower Blasts Kennedy at Commonwealth Club." I just held them up
in front of the committee and for the television cameras that were
there. I said, "We don't really have to go any further than what the
press of San Francisco thought about whether this was nonpartisan or
not." [laughter]

Lieutenant Roger Kent receives the Silver Star
for Gallantry from Admiral John Henry Towers,
Commander of the Air Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet,
on October 31, 1943, Pearl Harbor.

Official U.S. Navy Photograph

319

XIII THE THIRTIES TO THE FIFTIES: SEC WORK, WAR YEARS, LAW PRACTICE

Accord with Eccles on Japanese Surrender

Fry: In 1969, along with the Vietnam controversy, there was controversy on
that Safeguard, antiballistic missile, that was supposed to cost
anywhere from $7 billion to $14 billion. There was a controversy
between Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird and Admiral Levering Smith,
who felt that it wasn't necessary. You have quite a bit of material
on that in your files. Was that something that you were helping out on?

Kent: That was one of the times when I just got so mad that I took my pen in
hand and I wrote that letter to the San Francisco^ Chronicle about the
ABM.* Is that in there?

Fry: Yes.

Kent: I got the most extraordinary response from that that you can imagine.
I'm just trying — if you can lay your hand on it, and lay your hand on
Marriner Eccles's letter to me about it. He wrote to Fulbright and
about a dozen other Senators. He said, "Here's something by Roger
Kent on ABM that I think is the clearest and most devastating critique
that I've seen." It was put in the Congressj.onal Record by William
Fulbright and by Cranston and I don't know who-all else. But if you
could possibly pick up that letter. There was a copy of the letter
that Eccles wrote to Fulbright about that, because at this very moment,
I am reading this Marriner Eccles book by this guy Sidney Hyman or
Kyman** or whatever it is. It is a fascinating book. Marriner Eccles

* Appeared April 7, 1969.

**Hyman , S idney . Marriner S. Eccles: Private Entrepreneur and Public
Servant, Stanford, California: Stanford University Graduate School
of Business, 1976.

320

Kent: was really a great guy. He and I saw absolutely eye to eye on this
ABM thing. Then I just am reading the tag end of the book, where he
met with the principal brass of the Pentagon at the termination of the
war with Germany, and advocated that this vastly expensive and
inflationary and devastatingly costly in terms of manpower redeployment
for an assault against Japan be scrapped, and that Japan be left to go
by attrition.

Right at this very time, I was in Washington as assistant to the
air plans officer on cominch's [Commander in Chief's] staff, and I
was aware of the regulations that said, "You can write a letter to
the Commander in Chief about any subject, provided you send it through
circles." So I sent this through circles, through my channels, for
first the air plans officer on cominch's staff, who was a good friend
of mine.

Fry: On what staff?

Kent: Cominch. Ernie King's staff. It was to go to the president. I said,
"Assume these facts. We have taken Okinawa, we have taken — our big
planes are based in the Philippines and on Taiwan." Of course, we
had a little island at that time. "We have spent four years destroying
the Japanese means of transportation in terms of ships and air. We
are in a position where the [Japanese] homeland is utterly defenseless.
We go in there and blow up the railroads without fear of loss, and
the attack which we just learned was the most effective thing that
ever took place as far as the European war was concerned was the
attack on transportation. We can bring these guys to their knees in
no time at all with nothing except blowing up the coastal railroads
with shells from ships. They can't defend themselves with airplanes.

"The thing to do is, define the terms of surrender to them — tell
them what we mean by unconditional surrender. We don't mean that
they're all going to get killed or castrated or that they're even
going to lose the emperor. We mean this , and that they will surrender."
That was just before Potsdam, and in effect, they did it at Potsdam.
They didn't quite say that, but anyway, Patterson — secretary of war —
told Eccles (in this book that I just read), and said, essentially,
"Look, the American people won't hold still for that. They want this
war to be over decisively and quickly. So we are going to redeploy,
and we are going to attack Japan."

I later read that there was more stuff in the pipeline, in terms
of airplanes and tanks and ammunition and trucks and uniforms and
shells and whatnot — there was more stuff in the pipeline when the
Japanese surrendered than had been shot during the entire war. I
mean, there was a waste of the deployment to defeat Japan, which was
absolutely crushed! But I couldn't find that.

321

Fry: Well, I looked for that.

Kent: If you find that letter that Eccles sent, I would love to send that
to him, reminding him some time about the fact that we had seen so
much eye to eye. I'm pretty sure that you won't find this Truman
thing in here, because I don't think I brought that. I've got it
somewhere in my papers, but I don't think I would have sent it over
to Bancroft.

Naval Air Combat Intelligence

Fry: I'd like to get all that put together. One thing that we haven't

talked about is your stint in the navy and your work there with the
naval air intelligence.

Kent: Naval Air Combat Intelligence.
Fry: And Guadalcanal.

Kent: Well, I was in the first class that went through with this Quonset

indoctrination program. Then I was in the first fifty of that class,
that went into air combat intelligence. Another guy and I were the
first guys out in combat area. We were out there on Guadalcanal
and talking to the pilots that were just coming down from fighting
three times a day — what they saw, and how good these Japs were, and
how good their airplanes [were] , and what ammunition they had. So I
stayed there for quite awhile. And then, when I came out in April,
they had just fought this battle at the Bismarck Sea, off of New
Guinea, with these army flat bombers, skip bombing. They had
destroyed a Japanese convoy of small ships that way.

So I went up to New Guinea and saw all of the people over in
New Guinea who had had anything to do with that battle, and then came
back and wrote a report to the navy on that.

Fry: So this is all in the navy archives. But this also gave you a pretty
good view, then, from an intelligence point of view of what was
actually going on, right?

Kent: I should think it did. I got a pretty good idea of what the Japanese
fighting man was like. I was in on the interrogation of a couple of
them, through interpreters. Then I was very close to the fellow who
was the crack intelligence guy for all the Japanese intelligence on
the deployment of the Japanese navy and air force, a close friend of
mine who had gone out the same time that I had. Then I was assistant
to the air plans officer on Ernie King's staff in Washington the last
year of the war. I was seeing just about everything.

322

Kent: I must admit that I was just amazed [that] I didn't know anything
about the A-bomb, because I was seeing all this translation of
messages being sent by the Japanese Swiss ambassador to Tokyo. I
mean, this was called the ultraintelligence, which was the radio
intercept translated, and the plans to blow Shimonoseki tunnel, and
the plans to do all kinds of dirty tricks to the Japanese. But I
never saw a whisper of the A-bomb.

Fry: That's amazing, that it was really kept that secret.
Kent: It really was.

Fry: Well, in all of your work on intelligence, did you ever run across
any Japanese ripples of sabotage. I'm thinking about the Japanese-
Americans .

Kent: No, no.

Fry: On Hawaii, for instance. Or would that have come through you?

Prewar Securities and Exchange Commission work

Kent: No. I think I told you about that. [searches for something] I
haven't seen this in a hell of a long time. It's the story of my
investigation of the sale of Japanese government bonds in Hawaii to
finance the China incident. This was before the war and when I was
with the SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission] here and was sent
out there. It's really a fascinating story. A lot of it funnier
than hell.

Fry: I think you've mentioned that, but what I'd like to do is take that
with me if that's all right.

Kent: Send me a copy.

Fry: And then we can talk about it.

Kent: I don't know whether I — in that memorandum, I think I probably did —
said that what happened when I got there, back to Hawaii, this navy
guy met me. He took me in, and we talked about this business. And
then I got up and walked down the hall and went into my own room.
He came and rapped on the door, and he said, "Look, we're going to
be working on this together. I don't think we can possibly have any
secrets that aren't going to come out. We have a full tap inside the
telephone company on the Japanese banks and the consulate and
everything like that.

323

Kent: About that time, I began being fed that material about what they were
doing. One of the things that happened was, a lot of these Japanese
guys, and one of them — Kawasaki, I think his name was — had been a
lawyer in Japan. He just said to me, "I'm aware of the securities
act, and I'm selling Japanese bonds out here, and I'm quite sure that
it's illegal, but," he said, "what do you expect me to do? I came
here. I was a lawyer. You denied me the right to become a citizen.
You denied me the right to practice my profession." He said, "I am
a Japanese." You can imagine what happened to him on the day after
Pearl Harbor! Along with most of the people that I interrogated — a
great many of the ones that I interrogated that had anything to do
with the sale of Japanese government bonds out there —

Fry: You mean that they were immediately detained?

Kent: They were detained. Of course, they were only a tiny fraction of the
Japanese in Hawaii, but they were the ones who had been actively
engaged in this unlawful sale of Japanese bonds. It comes out in this
story at a certain point that they all became jolly well aware that
what they were doing was contrary to United States law.

Fry: And they went on anyway. I'd like to take this back and read it. I
may have some more questions on that, and maybe some more on
Guadalcanal and the operations there. If you have things that you
want to say that cannot be found in the naval archives —

Kent: No, I don't think so.

Fry: You know, if you give people leads in these interviews of things that
went on, then they can go and look it up.

Kent: You know, my brother Sherman kept just a hell of a lot of my letters.
I've got those there at Kentfield, and I've been meaning to take a
machine home and dictate. He said, "At least say where this was,"
when I don't have a date or a place on them or whatnot. I think
that rather than do that, I would find it much easier to pick up that
whole bundle and bring them in here [in the law office] , maybe on
some Saturday, and put them on my machine.

Fry: Yes, and get the context for each letter put down. You could number
the letters and key it that way.

Kent: Right.

Fry: Now are those letters going to Yale?

Kent: No.

Fry: They're coming to us?

324

Kent: If you want them.

Fry: Fine. It looks like we're going to have to have just one more

session, Roger, before your other interviewer takes over. [laughs]

[Interview 15: March 8, 1977] ##

Fry: The last time that we met, you were talking about your experiences
with the Securities and Exchange Commission and this case with the
Imperial Japanese bonds that you discovered in Hawaii. Now since
that's very well spelled-out — that whole case is spelled out in your
papers in a large document, I wonder if you could just tell us what
they were selling bonds for in Hawaii.

Kent: The Japanese were saying that it was to finance the China incident.

They always put that in quotes , and that meant that it financed their
invasion of China prior to World War II. They would proudly tell me
this. They would say, "Why do you object to this? What we're doing
is, we're selling bonds in Hawaii to raise money which we will use
to buy airplanes in the United States, which, in turn, we will use to
bomb the Chinese."

That was discovered — not by me, but it was discovered by naval
intelligence because naval intelligence as a matter of routine read
the Japanese newspapers. Pretty soon, a lot of the stories about the
sale of Japanese bonds to finance the China incident began to show
up in the local Hawaiian Japanese press. Then there were indications
that some of the people who were smarter than others said that they
didn't see how the Japanese had the gall to do this when they knew
that this was unlawful and contrary to the laws of the United States.
Well, that alerted the naval intelligence [people, who] wouldn't have
had any idea that it was unlawful if it hadn't been for something like
that. And so they passed it on to the U.S. attorney out there, and
he passed it back to the SEC, and they passed it back to Douglas, and
then they caught me.

Fry: To who?

Kent: Well, Douglas was the chairman of the SEC, Bill Douglas.

Fry: Oh, William 0. Douglas.

Kent: Yes. He knew that I had gone out to Hawaii on this business where
my child fell out of the car and had this bad skull fracture. He
has asked them — I heard this later — and said, "Is Roger still out
there?" and they said, "No, we think he's on his way back." [laughs]
He said, "Well, send him back out!" Well, that didn't meet with the
approval of my family at all, because we had come home for Christmas.

325

Kent: Well, anyway, I then went in and was able to develop the evidence that
showed that they were, in fact, selling government bonds out there,
and that they were having meetings and selling them, and that they
were transmitting them through the banks out there, and that they
were using the mails, which was then means of interstate commerce and
radios and things of this kind which gave the SEC jurisdiction. (You
had to have a federal basis for your jurisdiction, and that's what
that was .)

So I, eventually, got an injunction in federal court in Hawaii.
The thing, presumably, was stopped. But the thing you were mentioning
about, when you get into one of these wide-open investigations where
you just call in people and give them a subpoena and bring in a
stenographer and ask them questions, and an interpreter and whatnot,
you can accumulate in a very short time a fantastic amount of information,
which would take you months and years to accumulate if you were doing
it in a covert manner. I mean, if you were having spies out to find
out who was in this society and who went to this kind of meeting and
this business and so on. But you could gather — which I did — a vast
amount of information.

Fry: Just by interviewing?

Kent: Just by interviewing. I'd say, "Bring the records of the club, and
the names and number of the players, and bring the bankbooks, and
bring this and bring that — " all the materials that you can acquire
with subpoena power. Well, that perhaps was the most interesting job
that I had in the SEC.

Fry: Roger, when you don't do it covertly, though, it seems that it puts
you in the public eye as a target of opposition. I read there was
a lot of talk about this in the press — what was going on and what
Roger Kent was doing. [laughs] It was not always complimentary!

Kent: They didn't like him at all. This was very funny. There was one
little clipping that I used to have on my wall that said that they
had received word that "the investigator, Roger Kent, positively
will not leave Hilo until all the papers were gathered. Please, bring
them in!" [laughter] But anyway, there was another angle on that.
Later, I went to Quonset, this navy indoctrination school, and we
got through with the first course, and people were assigned to various
things. I was assigned to, presumably, the intelligence school. There
was a [person of] German- extraction and [one of] Italian-extraction,
and I that were not assigned, and were kept at the base, at Quonset
at the navy base.

During the course of the time that I'd been there, being a very
naive guy, some mail had been forwarded to me from San Francisco.
Among them, was a letter from this totally loyal and dedicated Japanese

326

Kent: kid who had risked his practice — and really, almost his life — by

being my interpreter and staying with me and serving subpoenas and
going through the investigations. He got caught up in the state of
Washington when the war started. So I wrote him a letter, and I'm
just absolutely sure that that letter was picked up by the navy and
that the reason that I was held there was that they thought there
was something very peculiar about some guy going to the navy school
writing to a Japanese.

Fry: Was he a Japanese Japanese or was he an American?

Kent: He was a Nisei. He was American born, in Hawaii. I didn't get out
of that until Dean Mendell of Yale arrived, and apparently [laughs]
gave me a clearance, and said, "This man is probably not going to
betray the United States." Finally I went back on my assignment and
went to my school.

Fry: But you were suspect?

Kent: I'm sure. I mean, I couldn't think of any other answer, and my

company was such [inaudible] . The other stuff about the SEC was that
I was primarily engaged in the enforcing of the criminal frauds, which
was a lot of fun. These ingenious frauds — most of them took place
in Los Angeles, which was sort of unpleasant; I had to spend a great
deal of time down there. I also would prepare cases for criminal
prosecution, which would go back to the SEC and go, in turn, to the
Department of Justice and then from the Department of Justice, in
turn, come back to the U.S. attorney out here. Then I'd work with
him and we'd have a criminal trial.

Some were injunctions , civil matters. Then I did some sitting in
the office and answering letters and answering questions and answering
the telephone and whatnot.

Then we got into this just terrific war with the Giannini forces,
because A. P. Giannini was really quite a character. He was the most
arrogant man that you could possibly imagine. I remember I came in
with a fellow named Pat Dowd, who was a tough guy in his own right
from New York. He'd been associated with Bet-a-Million Smith, and then
he moved over to the SEC .

Fry: He'd been associated with whom?

Kent: [chuckles] A guy who went by the euphonious name of Bet-a-Million
Smith.

Fry: [laughs] That's what I thought you said.

327

Kent: Who was a tough guy himself. Pat Dowd came in, and we sat down, and
we were talking to Giannini, and Giannini said, "What are you men
doing here? This is just absolutely ridiculous." He said, "This
is the goddamndest conspiracy! This is Jewish conspiracy, the worst
thing in the world! That Morganthau, and that so-and-so, and that
so-and-so." He said, "They're just all conspiring against me, and
we haven't done a thing, and you guys should be leaving us alone; you
should be out getting after these big controversies."

Fry: Was this when they were charged with filing false financial statements?

Kent: Yes, that was part of it, sure. There were about four different things
that went on that we took after. One of them was the filing of the
false financial statements, which was principally handled by the
accountants out of Washington. They then had a plan out here that
they called "time trusts," in which they were selling securities which
were something like investment trust certificates, but the only
investment that the monies were put into was stock of Transamerica.

And so in fact, this was used as a means whereby they stimulated
and increased the price of Transamerica stock. They had various
inducements to brokers to handle that. Well, we eventually got an
injunction against their continuing with that program. In the middle
of this, one of the lawyers I had been working with, a fellow named
William Haney — all of a sudden it turned out that he had changed
horses, and that he had left the SEC and was just working for them,
although he had told us — this was when I was in Hawaii, and I wasn't
here [in San Francisco] — that he was working for the American President
Lines, and not for Bank of America-Transamerica.

Fry: Was there a connection?

Kent: So we went down and got an injunction against him in federal court.
He was telling them everything he knew about what the SEC cases
were against Transamerica.

Fry: They just hired him away, at a very high salary?

Kent: They hired him away, and of course his salary was actually not what
it should have been.

Fry: You mean for Transamerica?

Kent: Yes, he needed money. Then there was a fourth one where A. P. Giannini
and his brother [son] Mario and his sister decided that they would
have their own brokerage outfit. I've forgotten the exact ramifications
on this, but it was Walstein and Company. It was, in effect, their
brokerage concern. The articles and bylaws of the —

Fry: Their—?

328

Kent: It was in fact the brokerage concern of the Gianninis . They could
at any time move in and take it over from the nominees who were
holding it, as far as the stock exchange and the SEC were concerned, and wh
were the nominal people who owned and operated the brokerage firm.

There was also another gambit they were doing, which was called
the Pacific Coast Mortgage Company. This was really where they were
going to make a lot of money themselves. In a lot of these places,
they were not going to really selfishly make a lot of money for
themselves. But in Pacific Coast Mortgage, they had it squared away
where they — Pacific Coast Mortgage owned a lot of Transamerica stock.
They were using money of Transamerica 's and of other affiliates of
this. Giannini empire to acquire and support the price of stock.

Then, eventually, they sold that stock out and it became the
assets of Pacific Coast Mortgage, and they pulled a lot of money out
of Pacific Coast Mortgage, and they did make a lot of money out of
Pacific Coast Mortgage individually. But anyway, those were five
things that were going on when I was working a hundred hours a month
overtime, and so was everybody in the office in the last stages of
my work for the SEC .

Navy Intelligence Work

Kent: When the war came on, and we were looking around, seeing where we

could get in where we could be helpful. Then the navy came out with
this program, which was [long pause] — It was to train civilians in
age brackets twenty-eight to forty, I think — people who had
administrative and executive experience. They'd give them an
indoctrination course in how the navy did business, and then in the
individual fields of where these fellows would go to work.

The idea of this was — I think this was Admiral [John Henry]
Towers' idea — was that in the prewar navy, the fliers each probably
would have an assignment. One would be an engineering officer, one
would be a personnel officer, one would be an intelligence officer, and
one would be a mechanical officer, or something of this kind. He
would, in addition to his flying duties and training of young fellows
coming along, he would have a vast amount of paperwork to do to keep
up with what all the navy wanted him to be doing.

So the idea of this indoctrination course was to get the
relatively smart and successful fellows of this age bracket out of
civilian life and give them this short course, and then throw them
into the naval aviation arm to take on the jobs of doing the
engineering, personnel, intelligence, and whatnot.

329

Fry: For desk jobs?

Kent: Yes.

Fry: And administrative?

Kent: That's right. Administrative jobs, desk jobs. So I signed up for
that and went back to Quonset. We had, I think (I've forgotten) a
month or two months there. Then came this break with this story I
told you about, about how I and two others were stuck there and didn't
go on. Then we went on into the second half of the school, which was
air combat intelligence. That was kind of a foolish business, because
all they had at that time was the European experience. So we, getting
ready to go out and fight in jungles and in the vast expanses of the
Pacific, would be shown cities and blockhouses and rivers and small
craft, you know, in Europe. This had about as much relevance as
fighting on the moon to what we were coming up against.

But we did have some very talented guys come out, and then, just
through the luck of the draw, the right guys happened to be landing
at the right place, almost. There were five of us who went out
together. One fellow had been a publisher, and he was the senior guy,
so when we got to Noumea he stayed there. He had immediately gotten
hold of the presses that were available, and he immediately got hold
of the navy fliers, and said, "What kind of maps do you want?" They
showed him what kind of maps they wanted — these little circular maps
or the square ones with directions on them, and islands and prevailing
winds, and whatnot.

Hell, this guy just immediately went to work and we handcranked
these things out, which were just what they wanted and [what] they'd
never had before. Then four of us went on up to Espiritu Santo, and
two guys stayed there with the PBYs and the search planes. Then
another guy and I went on up to Guadalcanal, where the marine fighters
and a good many navy fighters were stationed. They were carrying on
a junior Battle of Britain up there for September and October of 1943.

I actually — this other guy and I came out for awhile, and we got
a week in New Zealand. Then we went back and finished up a tour of
duty in Guadalcanal around April of '43. That was when I came out,
and we had been attacking the Japanese destroyers that would bring in
supplies and take off. We didn't know whether they were bringing
in reinforcements or taking people off. It turned out that they
were taking people off. That's when they were evacuating.

Our divebombers and torpedo bombers could just reach these guys
before dark when they were coming down, and they could just reach them
at dawn on their way back. They didn't do very well with destroying
them. So when I got back to Noumea, they had just fought — I gave
you this before.

330

Fry: No, you didn't mention it.

Kent: The battle of the Bismarck Sea, which was fought by the army and

fought with B-25s and A-20s and other level planes that were doing
skip bombing of these small Japanese ships. They did really
considerably better in that battle than we had done with divebombers
and torpedo bombers against destroyers. Now that would not have
held true had they been bigger ships. Had they been bigger ships, our
guys would have done a lot better, I think, than the skip bombing, but
nevertheless, that happened. So I spent two or three weeks up there
on New Guinea, and I was over where they had PT boats stationed and
where they'd had fighters stationed and where they had bombers
stationed and where they had a lot of these guys who had fought in
this battle and I talked with all of these guys.

Then I went back to [Port] Moresby and then, having done all of
this hunting all my life, I made friends with an Aussie who said,
"All right, let's go hunt ducks." So we went into a marsh, and I
didn't know whether I wanted to get into that marsh or not, because it
looked as though it was full of crocodiles and whatnot. We didn't
get any ducks there, but finally we went to another pond and I was
finally able to shoot a couple of ducks in the air with an Australian
rifle. I came to the conclusion that if you were going to hit a duck
in the middle with a shotgun, you probably will hit him with a rifle,
so we made a fire and cooked up those ducks. That was one of the few
cheerful incidents of the wartime.

Fry: Was Moresby where you went for your — was that a recreation leave area?

Kent: No, but that was the main base on New Guinea. But where I went, I

went to Moresby, and I went to Milne Bay. That was the base for the
PT boats. Doba Dura — your spelling's as good as mine — was the airfield
across the island. You had to go over the Owen Stanley mountains.
That was the takeoff place for the attacks on Lae and Salamaua.

Fry: And these places were all on New Guinea?

Kent: These were all on New Guinea. These were all places that I went and
interviewed these guys. I had a perfectly delightful time there with
these nice young guys who were doing a great job of it.

Fry: Who were these guys?

Kent: These were army pilots. They were just as curious to know about what
we were doing — we, the marines and the navy — in the South Pacific, in
the Solomon Islands, as we were to know what they were doing in the
Southwest Pacific, in New Guinea and north of New Guinea, and what the
submarines were doing and what the navy ships were doing. We had long
and most interesting conversations with these guys. I got a lot of

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Kent: information and I wrote up several long reports of the battles

themselves, and then a whole lot of the tricks that they had learned
and were using and which were of subsequent help to the navy.

Fry: That was your report on the battle of the Bismarck Sea?

Kent: Yes. Then there were a lot of miscellaneous reports on what these
guys had learned about what they thought were valuable for jungle
warfare, and airplane attrition, night mining, and that kind of
business .

Fry: Mining at night?

Kent: Yes, they would go into Katiang and Bowl Harbor, and they would drop
mines in there at night and raise hell with the Japanese.

Fry: It sounds like there was constant ingenuity required to develop new
tactics all the time.

Kent: There was. There were some very smart guys that had some very good
ideas and were working on it. Then I got back — Moresby was a great
big base, and they had a long runway and fairly adequate food. I
went back from there to Brisbane. You fly over the Great Barrier
Reef, a great deal of it, which is quite beautiful. Then I arrived
back in Brisbane, and almost immediately developed this damn dengue
fever. [spells it] It's one of those mosquito fevers, called bone-
breaker fever. I went into the hospital with that, and stayed in the
hospital about a week or so.

I was doing some work, and then I went back to Noumea, which was
my base. Incidentally, there is another one of these lost documents
that I could just kick myself that it's gone. That is, that I went
over there and, apparently, the guys in the South Pacific command
didn't adequately take care of the charisma or whatnot of General
MacArthur. So when I arrived, there was a lot of talk about what the
hell was I doing? I mean, here I was going to go look at all the
photographs of all the attacks on all the ships that had been made
in the battle of the Bismarck Sea and talk to the pilots and talk to
everybody else that knew anything about it, and bring back to the
navy what might be of value to the navy.

MacArthur, in effect, practically said, "Throw that bastard out,"
and then somebody on Halsey's staff got down and wrote a long
explanation, and then there was this signal that came over, and I
_lojst it. It said, "From MacArthur to Halsey. Glad to do everything
to facilitate Lieutenant Kent's mission." [laughs] I'm mad that
that one is gone.

Fry: In other words, he was objecting to your coming in and —

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Kent: Because he hadn't been warned enough, presumably. I don't know.
Fry: A navy spy, hmm? [laughter]

Kent: Then I went back to Noumea and almost immediately got malaria and
was pretty good and sick with that. Then I had to do a couple of
reports on that before I left Noumea, on some of the stuff that I had
done up in Guadalcanal that I had never finished (because I had been
sent off in such a hell of a hurry to New Guinea) and on some of the
stuff in New Guinea. Then they sent me back to Pearl, We had some
very good friends there in Pearl. Admiral Towers was a great guy.
My group that I was working with was working directly under him. He
took one look and just immediately said, "Well — " I weighed about a
hundred and thirty pounds and was yellow as a Chinaman because of

eating aspirin for six months. He said, "You go right home," and
I came back home.

I had thirty or sixty days leave, and then I went back on out,
after being in Hawaii for a week. I was reassigned as the intelligence
officer for the admiral who had charge of shore-based air [activities]
in the central Pacific, a fellow named Hoover, John H. Hoover. I
stayed with that for eight or nine months.

##
Fry: You said you had some pretty good fellows.

Kent: Oh, I had some very good assistants in doing the work. It was one of
those crazy coincidences. I was on the Curtiss , which was one of the
big seaplane tenders (spelled with two s's). That was the first ship
that I was stationed on when I got down to the South Pacific, before
I went up to Guadalcanal . I was only on there two or three days .

Fry: Oh, so you returned to it.

Kent: I returned to it, and of course when I arrived on it, there wasn't

anybody, I guess, on the boat who was any more junior [in experience]
than I was. I was a lieutenant, but because of ray age (they
commission you pretty much on age) . A couple of days after I came
back to the Curtiss , [I was in] the dining room. About 150 guys
[were] standing there, and they were all standing up. One of these
guys finally turned to me and said, "Sir, you are the senior officer
present. They're all waiting for you to sit down." [laughter] So
I laughed like hell and sat down.

Things moved a little rapidly then. We were processing the
intelligence work that these guys were doing. They were flying both
army and navy. Mostly they were flying B-24 or the navy equivalent
of B-24. They were doing some of this low-level photographing, and
they were also doing low-level skip bombing in the lagoons. I took
off — I went back to Pearl Harbor just about the time that they moved
on.

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Diving for Sunken Intelligence Materials

Kent: But at this time, I did something which was perfectly fascinating,
and that was this diving. Did I tell you about that?

Fry: No.

Kent: Well, there was a guy — I've always been mad about diving in the water.
The chief of staff was a guy named William V. Davis who later became
commander of all Allied NATO war vessels in the Atlantic. He was a
very, very smart guy. He was captain at this time and he was chief
of staff. So I was out dragging around behind a boat one day and
looking down with my glasses. When I came back, I told him I had
seen a couple of Japanese small ships that had been sunk. I said,
"Go look at them."

So after that, practically every weekend he and I would get
these guys to take us out. They had shallow-water diving gear, which
is not the rigid suits. It was just a pair of pants with lead pigs
which would take you down, and a gas mask with flaps that went on
your cheeks. The air would come in the top and you could breathe it,
and then it would go out over your cheeks.

You could go down without any discomfort to ninety-five to a
hundred feet. If you get a little deeper than that, you start to
feel it when you come up. But Bill Davis and I went down on these
ships every weekend for sure. We would go in first to the cabin
and we'd get out the code books and we'd get out the logs and we'd
get out the maps. We put that in a big hamper that would be let down
by these guys up above, and then we'd give a tug and they'd take that
up .

Strangely enough, in those lagoons — this was all in lagoons —
there was not much water [damage]; these things kept remarkably well.
They didn't disintegrate. They'd bring them up very cautiously and
then put them in a hot room, and they would just dry out and become
immediately legible. We brought up sacks and sacks and sacks of mail
of these Japanese kids and the officers and whatnot, which was a
fascination to our intelligence people. We dried that out and sent
that back to Pearl.

Fry: Did you ever find out what sort of information was in them?

Kent: Yes, we got some of it. We knew that we were — some of it was very,
very valuable information, except that chances are that most of it
had also been secured from some other source. That is, when you went
into one of these lagoons taking soundings, it didn't do you a hell
of a lot of good, because you would have these needlepoints of coral
sticking up out of the bottom, so that you might miss it with the

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Kent: plumbing. So what they did was they wire-dragged it. That is, they

had the long boom and wire and they'd pull it behind. Then they would
show a cross-hatch where there had been wire dragged, and where, if
you believed the Japanese, you could count on the fact that there
wasn't going to be any spears of coral that were going to damage the
bottom of the ship.

They went in to one of those big lagoons, atolls, and they
anchored damn near the whole Pacific fleet just on the basis of these
wire —

Fry: Wire-drag maps?

Kent: Maps. And as I said, we found some that they had already found. Then
we found some which they never got around to using, but we found that
the whole —

Fry: You're talking about the maps?

Kent: We're talking about maps, one set of maps. We found a set of maps on
the Yangtze, which they [inaudible] didn't need to use.

Mining the Shimonoseki Straits

Fry: You mentioned to me last time about how two or three fellows came in
to talk to you at once and had this idea about mining the Shimonoseki
Straits.

Kent: Yes, yes.

Fry: Why don't you tell that story on tape?

Kent: It's Shimonoseki. [pronounces it slowly] It's the straits between
Kyushu and Honshu. Those are the two major southerly islands of
Japan. It is also the entrance from the China Sea to the eastern side
of Japan. Anyway, these two guys came in — they were overweight, and
their uniforms were dirty, and the gold braid was green. They were
Captain So-and-so and Lieutenant Commander So-and-so. They came in
and they talked to Admiral Stroop, who was then captain, and to me.

They said, "Now, dammit, what we want is we want two B-29s. We
want to plant five hundred or a thousand mines — " I've forgotten
what it was. " — If we do, and we plant the various kinds, the clock
mines and the sonic mines — " The one dirty one that they had was the
new one, which they hadn't really used, was the pressure mine. They
said that they wanted to put those in. They said, "And if you give us

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Kent: these two B-29s, we'll plant this number of mines in the Shimonoseki
Straits. Then what the Japanese will do is they will take some
losses, and they will say, 'We can't afford these losses,' and they
will close Shomonoseki Straits. Then they will all of a sudden
realize that they can't operate Japan without the straits, and they
will have to reopen them and accept the losses, and the losses are
going to run very substantial — two, three, four, five or more ships
per night." They said, "That's what is going to happen."

Stroop was a very bright guy. He said, "Well, you guys have
been right in the past. I'll see what I can do about getting you two
B-29s to do this." And he was able to do it, and he got them for
them, and they did go in and they did mine. And everything that they
said was going to happen, happened just the way that they said would.

Fry: They pulled out all the shipping first, and then — ?

Kent: They pulled out the shipping — they lost a few ships — and they pulled
it out. Then they found that they couldn't operate without it, and
they had to put it back and they began to lose four and five ships a
night.

Fry: What a brilliant idea!

Kent: Well, of course mining was done all the time, but these guys had about
five or six different kinds of mines. This pressure mine — when the
time came to try and sweep it, the way they'd have to do it, if a
big boat went over it, it would create pressure on the bottom and set
off the mine. So the way they finally had to sweep it would be to
get about four destroyers in a row, and they'd have them going at about
thirty- five knots, as fast as they'd go. They'd be going in a line,
and then they'd all turn together and throw up this great big wave.
The wave would go on, and the wave would sometimes set off these
pressure mines.

That was very shortly before Hiroshima.
Fry: Oh, that was toward the end of the war.
Kent: Yes , yes.

End-of-the— War^ Wagei:
Fry: Tell me about that bet that you made. What was that about, Roger?

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Kent: Oh, well, we were talking about ABM, I think, and about the fact that
Marriner Eccles agreed in his book, as he agreed with me on ABM, that
they probably should go and not redeploy forces from Europe [to Japan]
at enormous expense and vast inflationary results and tragic results,
as far as deaths and woundeds are concerned. They should take it as
a matter of attrition, because Japan was cooked at that particular
time.

I felt the same way. I felt very much that they couldn't hold
out. I was seeing — the guy I made this bet with was the chief of
staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was a lieutenant general. He
was — I'll tell you this, so [you'll see] that I wasn't taking
advantage of anybody who didn't have the sources of information that I
did. I said — this was in July — "I bet the war will be over before the
end of the year." So we finally arrived at three hundred dollars that
we bet on it.

He was getting the same material I was getting. We were getting
the intercepts of the Japanese wires that were coming from Switzerland
and Holland or some other place, which said the Japanese ambassador
was telling the Japanese government that for God's sake, get out of
this thing. The Americans are not going to quit. If you don't quit,
your decision is that you will see Japan destroyed for a thousand
years, and this is no bono, and get out of it on any terms that you can.

But that wasn't the whole thing. Then there was a lot of other
stuff about the fact that they were gathering turpentine from pine
trees, and they were carrying orange peels and they were making fuel,
airplane fuel, out of this. This, obviously, could only be used in
jets, and you'd just have a hell of a time getting enough of this to
make a jet go a mile or two. But it became so apparent that they
were in deep, deep trouble if they had to go for this kind of fuel.
And this, we were quite sure, had happened because we had been using,
as a major target, all the fuel-processing plants in Japan. We had
pretty darn well flattened them all. So there was very, very little
left.

That was why I said to this guy, "Look, they can't hold out."
Meantime, I had sent my letter in to Truman under this doctrine that
you are able to — the humblest man can send a message to the commander-
in-chief if he sends it through channels. I said, "Attrition has
arrived. You'll have these big planes on Okinawa and on China and
on Iwo, and you will have the carriers free to roam anywhere they want,
and battleships free to blow up anything they want, and you can blow up
the tunnels and the roads, and you can completely destroy the
transportation system of Japan."

Fry: Without invading?

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Kent: Without invading. It will become very apparent to the Japanese that

this is the case. The only thing that will keep them from surrendering
is that they may be scared to death about what is meant by the terms
of unconditional surrender. You explain to them that that does not
mean that you're going to rape every woman or you're going to kill
the Emperor or you're going to burn down every temple and that you're
[not] going to do this, but that it does mean that you are going to
be firmly in command, and that you are going to go in and prosecute
them, the real war criminals, not including the Emperor. If you define
the terms of surrender, in my view, they will surrender.

Well, something very like that was done at Potsdam, and I'm
quite sure that it wasn't because of any letter that I wrote to Truman.
But pretty soon, it became apparent to the Japanese and to the
leaders that the alternative of surrender was one hell of a lot
better for Japan than to carry the thing down to the end.

Now, in this Eccles book, he says that Patterson, who was the
secretary of war, said that the American people wanted this redeployment,
and they wanted a swift victory. They wouldn't hold still for anything
else. I always had the feeling, because of my real thing about
MacArthur, that the reason, the major reason that they were going
to go and invade was that MacArthur wanting to see himself striding
ashore at the head of an army of a million men invading Japan when it
was absolutely unnecessary! Totally unnecessary! But anyway, thank
God, they did quit, and it saved hundred of thousands of lives and
saved us untold billions, which we would have had to put up to rebuild
Japan if we'd destroyed them.

The Atomic Bomb Decision

Fry: Do you think the atom bomb was necessary?

Kent: I was asked that when I was — I was twenty years out of college, and I
said at that time —

Fry: What?

Kent: It was for the yearbook, when we were twenty years out of college. I
said, "I suppose — " because I was right there, and I'd seen the
carnage on the beaches, and read the reports when they were coming in
and on the kamikaze diving on ships that were killing people by the
hundreds. I said, "I suppose that Hiroshima was necessary in order
to save a vast number of lives."

Fry: You mean in order to keep us from invading Japan?

338

Kent: Yes, in order to keep us from invading Japan with the consequent

losses. I said, "I think that Nagasaki was a tragic mistake. Once
you had demonstrated to the Japanese that you had something as
horrible as this, you sure as hell didn't have to go and do it over
again."

Fry: Roger, do you know — ? Well, I guess you wouldn't know, because you
said that you didn't know about the atom bomb. I just wondered if
there was ever any talk that you were aware of in rehashing the
dropping of the atom bomb while you were still in the navy. Was
there ever any talk of dropping the bomb in a place less populated?

Kent: There's been a lot of things written about that.
Fry: Were you aware personally?

Kent: No, no. I certainly was never aware of it before it was dropped. I
wasn't aware of its existence until after it was dropped.

Fry: You didn't get any scuttlebutt on that immediately after?

Kent: No, no. I didn't. I think that it wasn't as bad as it could have
been, because they weren't positive that the damn thing would work.
Suppose they'd done this, and they'd said, "We've got something
perfectly horrible we're going to show you," and then they'd showed
them and it fizzled? They might have encouraged them to continue
their resistance or something. I just don't know all the reasons.
Obviously, it would have been the best thing to do.

Fry: Were you aware at all of what was going on in the inner councils of
Japan during this time when you knew that they were running very low
on petroleum supplies and things like that? Did you know anything
about the internal politics going on for an early surrender or for
sticking it out to the very end in those two groups in Japan?

Kent: The only place that I would have known that, [from] any reliable
source, would have been these intercepted radios. I don't think
that they were talking about that in the radios.

SEC versus the Bank of America

Fry: I'd like to go back to what you were telling me about A. P. Giannini,
I wondered if you could give us some idea how he fought in these
cases that the SEC was bringing against the Bank of America and
Transamerica. Do I have- that phrased right? Were those the two
main targets?

339

Kent: Yes, and then there were some other subsidiaries with other names.
Oh, of course, he was absolutely furious. We got [this story] from
one of the bank examiners who had come from the East, and who had
never met anybody like Giannini. He came in, and he said, as he
was looking at the books. "This entry here in the books has to be
changed." He changed it, and it didn't amount to a damn, as far
as the importance or the item was concerned, or the meaning of the
document. The [bank] guy said, "I can't change that." He said,
"We have to take that up with Vice-President So-and-so." They took
that up to Vice-President So-and-so, and he said, "I can't change
that. We have to take that up with the boss, with the president."

So the guy went in to see A. P. Giannini, and he said, "[inaudible]
Mr. Giannini, there's a simple problem here. This is a standard
procedure that's used all over the United States. This item here,
this treatment here is to be changed." [laughs] Mr. Giannini looked
at him and he said, [mimics Giannini 's voice] "That item is not going
to be changed. You're not going to change it, and he__^s_ not going to
change it, and _I'm not going to change it, and the Lord God himself
is not going to change it!"

That's the kind of guy he was. As I said, he told Pat Dowd and
me that we should get out of his office and go prosecute the Jewish
conspiracy that was ruining him. He really was quite a man, of
course, and his accomplishments are legion, but, boy, he was tough!
What he did to so many of these small banks was just unbelievable.
I mean, he'd say, "All right, Transamerica stocks are selling at
twenty-five. I'll take your bank over, and we'll pay you twenty
dollars a share for your bank in Transamerica stock at twenty-five.
If some of the assets which you show on your balance sheet don't turn
out to be as full value as you say they have, then you'll have to
pay us the difference," from between twenty and this quoted amount.

So on a number of occasions, he had the guy who sold him his
bank pay him for the privilege of buying his bank! Then very often,
of course, Transamerica stock was going like a yo-yo. It would go
down, and this poor guy who had sold his bank for Transamerica stock
would probably decide that he was at the bottom of the yo-yo. It
was a rough and really fraudulent operation there for a good many
years .

Fry: Did he have his own staff of attorneys, or did he use other outside
attorneys?

Kent: They had regular bank attorneys, but then in addition they had
favorites that they would bring in.

Fry: I'm trying to remember who else I interviewed who said that they

handled a lot of A. P. Giannini 's business. I think it was the law
firm that Oliver Carter worked for early, when he was a young man.

340

Kent: I'll be damned. I didn't know that Oily Carter ever worked for a
law firm here in San Francisco. I thought that he always was up
there in Shasta County.

Fry: Tell me how this story came out. Who won?

Kent: Well, eventually we got our injunction about the employee that passed

the information to them. We got an injunction against this time trust.
Eventually they did change the financial statements .

Fry: That was when they were supposed to be filing false financial statements
in the Washington office.

Kent: Yes. They had about ninety accountants out here working on that for
two years. It was an enormous thing. The time trusts — they ceased
and desisted. We got an injunction.

Fry: What about the Walstein and Company brokerage?

Kent: Oh, the Walstein — we gave them a good solid slap on the wrist. We
closed it for a period of six months, something like that. Gave
them a suspension.

Fry: And the Pacific Coast Mortgage Company —

Kent: The Pacific Coast Mortgage Company — that they got away with. The guy
who went back there to really tear that thing open got back about two
days before the statute of limitations ran on the thing. He claimed
that he never could get a hearing and that he couldn't get an
indictment. So that was never followed up.

Fry: He went back where?

Kent: To Washington. He was here.

Fry: Where are these records now? Would they be in the old SEC — the things
that the United States Archives has kept?

Kent: Oh, I suppose.

Fry: How would a historian go about finding them?

Kent: Oh, boy, I suppose there are just warehouses full of them, of the
pleadings and the papers. I'd kind of like to have that Bank of
America-Transamerica stuff sealed up until I pass on.

Fry: Okay, we'll —

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Kent: Because at this moment, there are some of the very finest guys there
are in the world working for Bank of America, like this Louis
Lundborg. You know, he's one of the major guys who came out against
the Vietnam war.

Fry: Yes, one of the first ones.

Kent: Yes, I saw him just the other day. Then Roman Perotti was a friend
of German's, and was a great guy, and was with him for a great many
years. I just wouldn't want to, you know, just go out and slander
these people when the ones I want to slander are —

Fry: It would be interesting to know who on the other side could give
some accounts of this story too, if there are any of their own
attorneys or vice-presidents who are still alive that —

Kent: The guy who knows more about it from our side than anybody else is

a guy named Leonard Townsend. Leonard Townsend lives down at Indian
Wells. He put in years and years and years — he's a very skilled
lawyer. He won most of these cases.

Fry: Your letter against the ABM was entered in the Congressional Record on
April 14, 1969, which is exactly one week after it had appeared in
the San Francisco Chronicle. It was entered by Senator Fulb right.

Kent: Yes, that's when Marriner Eccles wrote Fulb right and said — he
suggested that he do it. Then it also went to Cranston, and I
think Cranston put it in too, but then I think there was something
in the Recor_d which said that this was already in.

Fry: Do you think that and others who held the same opinions had a lot to
do with this problem?

Kent: Well, what I say there makes so damn much sense!
Fry : Yes .

Kent: It just asks for trouble, the plan does, and at vast expense and for
the benefit of nobody except the goddamn bureaucrats that are going
to profit by it with bigger empires and bigger constituenties to
go out to work for.

The At,omic Cannon Development of the 1950s

Fry: You gave us an example — the case of the atomic cannon that came up
while you were in the Defense Department.

342

Kent: Did I put that in here?

Fry: You just allude to it, and say it's like the atomic cannon.

Kent: Well, that was just the most absurd thing that ever happened. That
was my one boondoggle of my two years, practically, as Defense
Department [counsel] and that is again that my shooting privileges
I had heard that down at Aberdeen Proving Grounds that they had —

Kent: So I went down, and I talked to the commanding officer of Aberdeen

Proving Grounds, and brought up the subject of ducks, and was invited
[to hunt] down there. In the meantime, I watched this atomic cannon.

Fry: At Aberdeen?

Kent: At Aberdeen. And if you could believe it, the guys who were giving
these demonstrations of accuracy in shooting from tanks at high
speed across rough terrain were civilians! I mean, I would have
thought that they'd be training military personnel to shoot a tank
moving across rough ground at high speed, but these were civilians.
Then in addition, they got out this atomic cannon — this enormous
thing; it was about a hundred feet long. They had some tanks or
other simulated targets about sixteen miles away. We could see with
telescopes, and they would shoot this cannon at these things. I
think it was further away than that. They said that they could shoot
this cannon twenty-five miles.

Well, this was just as the rockets were emerging!
Fry: Simultaneously.

Kent: And I don't know what this cost. This cost a couple hundred million
dollars to build this machine and the motive power to drag it around.
And yet, here it was clearly again. Anybody that had the sense they
were born with would clearly see that it was going to be displaced
with the rockets within a matter of months.

Fry: So you think it was largely because of the impetus of the need for
jobs and to do more production?

Kent: I really don't know, Chita, as to whether or not the guys were as

venal as that. I think that some guy had a brilliant idea that with
radar, he could use the cannon of this kind under adverse cloud
conditions and [that] it could be effective on certain kinds of
battlefields, and that it was worthwhile having this in the arsenal of
the country. I have no idea whether he just figured, "Well, if I
have this, then I'll have a squadron of these and that will require
that somebody be a major general that commands a squadron of these."
I don ' t know .

343

Fry: You mentioned that they were teaching civilians to handle the tanks
and the guns? What did you mean?

Kent: I just was utterly astonished.
Fry: I don't understand either.

Kent: Well, I was just utterly astounded. I suppose that they wanted to
demonstrate the success of the equipment, that the equipment was
so damn good that they could hit these tanks , which were being pulled
on a line at twenty-five miles an hour, going that way. This tank
[with the cannon] was going thirty-five miles an hour this way over
rough ground, and that the instrumentation and the guns were such
that a man could hit that other tank with a shell from this gun.
But all it was doing was proving the equipment, and not proving the
skill and ability of American- trained personnel who were combat
people.

I mean, I should have thought that they would have — I was
intensely surprised when I found that this was not a crack combat
unit that was doing this shooting, that it was a bunch of civilians
from the armory that had created a tank.

Fry: The technicians and people like this, I guess, who are oriented
towards the development of the hardware , is that right?

Kent: Yes, yes.

Hawaii Statehood Effort

Fry: I see. How are you feeling? Want to go on the next thing? We're
about to go into the story of your efforts for Hawaii statehood.
We lack that and the story of your law firm. Want to leave those
for the next time?

Kent: What time have we got?

Fry: I think I just heard the noon whistle.

Kent: Well, I think I could do them both. I don't think they'd take very
long. The Hawaii thing —

Fry: Let me show you a chronology. [goes through papers]

Kent: I don't think I need to go into the chronology. The thing that we
had was a confederation which was called the —

344

Fry: — the Western States Democratic Conference?

Kent: Yes, the Western States Democratic Conference. That originally was
eleven states.

Fry: May I interrupt and say that this is in carton three of your papers,
okay? There is, in your papers, a resolution that they passed on
February 17, 1957, for Hawaiian and Alaskan statehood. Also in your
correspondence, there are letters from a man, Oren Long (spells it),
about this .

Kent: Yes, he was a —

Fry: Excuse me for interrupting.

Kent: I did a lot of work on that. It's in the boxes there. I'm pretty
sure that you can dig out —

Fry: That's all that's there.

Kent: Oh. Well, I'm surprised, because what I did was, I received a

commission from the conference that I and a gal should be in charge
of doing what we could to get Alaska and Hawaii admitted to statehood.
So I started in then. I had known a great many of the Senators and
a number of the congressmen in the West. I just commenced writing
letters and corresponding with these guys and saying, "The Western
States Conference is very much in favor of the admission of Hawaii
and Alaska to statehood. We are most hopeful that we're going to
have your support when this thing gets on the floor of the Congress."

I suppose that I had about eighty answers, and I had about one
negative. It was the easiest political campaign that I was ever
involved in.

Fry: There is a note — a paragraph or a sentence — in one of these letters
from Hawaii that is worried about Senator George Malone of Nevada,
who must have been in quite strong opposition to Hawaiian statehood,
right?

Kent: Of course, you remember the jingle that went around at the ladies'
Congressional quarters in Washington. "Senator Molly, Nevada's
folly — " at which point Molly and his wife got up and left. [Kent
answers phone]

Fry: Did you have to deal any with the controversy which, apparently, was
going on between the United States Congress and the Hawaiian
Legislature over there being lines of reapportionment for the
Hawaiian legislature?

345

Kent: No, we didn't have anything to do with that.

Fry: Because apparently that happened just before it finally passed. But in
1957, after the Western States Democratic Conference passed a
resolution, statehood failed to pass Congress for the twenty-second
time. But then it finally did pass in '59, I guess it was.

Kent: Alaska passed first, didn't it?

Fry: I don't know about Alaska. [laughs] I just know about Hawaii.

Kent: I'm pretty sure that Alaska passed first. I had a talk with Humphrey.
I said, "Why don't you combine them?" and he said, "This is the way
we're going to do it, and this is the way I can do it, and the
commitments are in. We will pass Alaska and then Hawaii will come on
next." And that's the way it was.

Fry: Well, in order to help explain your papers, did you do any work with
Senator Malone, or Molly and the folly of Molly? [laughs]

Kent: Probably I wrote him, and probably got a nasty letter back from

him. Of course, the opposition to Hawaii, I guess, was always based
on the fact that it would be another anti-Southern state in its votes.
Malone — he might just as well have come from Mississippi or Arkansas
or whatever. He was just that kind of a guy.

Fry: You mean it was a racial issue?

Kent: Yes, yes. I mean, an awful lot of Hawaii was a racial issue in a

lot of those early votes. They didn't want to have either Japanese or
Oriental representatives, nor did they want to have people who would
be sympathetic to blacks as representatives in Congress or the Senate.
I'm sure that that was one of the major reasons for it.

Fry: Apparently Hawaii had always been Republican until 1955. For the
first time, Democrats achieved a majority in both Hawaiian houses.
Then at that point, the Western States Democratic Conference got
interested. Is that right? Because they felt that this would yield
another Senator.

Kent: [murmurs assent] What happened was, say, about in '55 was the

maturing of the Japanese combat troops from Italy. Dan Inouye was
one of them and Sparky Matsunaga was another, and a lot of these
other guys. They came back from fighting in Europe, and they said
that by God, enough of them had been killed, and they were not going
to let that go for nothing. They decided that they were going to
take over Hawaii. There were a lot of old-time Hawaiian Democratic
friends of guys that I knew and liked, but these fellows just took
over.

346

Fry: You mean they formed their own little political caucus?

Kent: They started out to go get the votes. The votes lay with them.

The Japanese were by this time probably the major ethnic group in
Hawaii. They had vast numbers of friends among other groups as well.
The Democratic old guard had been very much tied in with the Republican
old guard. This was a breakthrough, and this was '55 when they took
over the legislature. They got themselves in a position where they
could throw out these guys who had been the old, respectable and
respected Democrats and take on the jobs themselves.

Fry: The old Democrats were not Japanese before?

Kent: Well, the only one I think of particularly was Ernie Kai. He was
part Hawaiian and part Chinese. He was one of the old Democrats.
Then there were — some of the others were — one of them was Rice, a
white guy.

Fry: His name was Rice?

Kent: One of them yes, he was a Senator.

Fry: And then the new group that came in was characterized by being

Japanese, and the leading World War II veterans from the Italian
front?

Kent: Mostly, I guess.

Fry: They did form a new rising political establishment, is that it?

Kent: Yes, they did. Yes, they did.

Fry: That's the one that is in power right now, right?

Kent: That's right.

Fry: And at the same time here in California, the Democratic party was
becoming viable for the first time, with you as its chairman.

Kent: After Stevenson, yes.

Fry: Because of your natural connections with Hawaii, was there much give-
and-take in communication between the two political Democratic groups
in California and Hawaii?

Kent: I went down there a couple of times. I knew Burns, who was the
governor.

Fry: John Burns .

347

Kent: John Burns. One of Alice's brothers-in-law, Al Steadman, introduced
me to Dan Inouye when he was a member of the lower house of the
Hawaiian legislature. He said, "This is one of the finest men you'll
ever know." He's been a good friend ever since. I met a lot of them.
At one stage, I cut a TV program out there for them at one election.
I've forgotten what it was about.

Fry: I see, then. I wanted to get some kind of a picture of the — maybe
you'd call it the influence of California on the Hawaiian political
picture at that time.

Kent: And this Bill Richardson, who is the chief justice of Hawaii now — he
was a part of that new group. But he was the chairman of the
Democratic committee.

Fry: In Hawaii?
Kent: In Hawaii.
Fry: So he was your equivalent there?

Kent: Yes, he was my equivalent there, except that during periods when I
was the chairman of the conference, then he was one of my guys as a
state chairman or a national commit teeman. This was the conference.

Fry: Well, this was before you were chairman of the Western States
Democratic Conference. Is that right?

Kent: I probably was.

Fry: How long were your chairmanships?

Kent: Two terms.

Fry: I know you were in '62 and '63 —

Kent: Yes.

Fry — but maybe there were other years too.

Kent: No, I was two terms, I'm pretty sure.

Fry: Two terms in two years?

Kent: I'm pretty sure, yes.

Fry: It was after Hawaii became a state?

348

Kent: Yes. We cancelled out the big meeting that we were going to have

here, when Stevenson died. We were going to have that — I guess that
was '62 or '63.

Fry: You also were made chair — in a January 2, 1959, letter, you asked

for a hundred more pamphlets on statehood. You are the new chairman
of a subcommittee to circularize all federal committees and governors
and legislators and so forth at that point. This was just before
statehood passed.

Kent: Yes, I guess that was what I was doing. I got a hundred copies of
this pamphlet. It was a good pamphlet. Then I sent it out to all
the congressmen and Senators. Everybody was going to have a vote.

Fry: Well, you probably were in a position to talk to a lot of these
people too.

Kent: Oh, yes. Sure I did. I did. But it's a pretty widely scattered
area.

Law Practice

Fry: Yes. [laughs] Your law firm — first you were in Chickering and
Gregory, from 1931 to 1936.

Kent: Right.

Fry: And then you left that for SEC. Is that because all attorneys were
starving to death at that point? I mean, the other attorneys I've
talked to about the Depression say it was really a bad time for
lawyers .

Kent: Well, yes. What this was, was that a friend of mine, John Kenney,
who had gone back to Washington and worked for the SEC in the oil
and gas division — he wrote me and said, "This is a hell of a lot of
fun, and certainly you can make more money in it than you can in
private practice, and you can accomplish something. If you don't
apply for it, you're nuts." So I went over and talked to the regional
administrator, and shortly after that, I got offered the job.

Fry: Oh, I see. Well, what about the firm of Chickering and Gregory?

Was that the type of firm where you had been doing work already with
the Securities and —

349

Kent: I had been doing some securities work, yes. I had done some

registration work for PG&E and some of the big ones. I'd done some
work for some of the brokers and whatnot. But to a very large extent,
what I'd been doing was keeping a library.

Fry: Doing the research?

Kent: Yes.

Fry: Was that an already going firm?

Kent: Oh, yes. It's one of the oldest in San Francisco. It's still very
big.

Fry: Then in 1946, after you got out of the navy, you told me that you
formed your own law firm.

Kent: That's right.

Fry: Could you give us a rundown about that and how you did it?

Kent: Well, I was taking some time off after getting out of the navy. I
met Lalor Crimmins , who had been at Chickering and Gregory with me.
He was three or four years older. He said, "How about starting a
firm?" He had Jack Bradley in mind, and I had this fellow Larry
Draper in mind, and we said, "Well, why not? We might be doing it
someday, why not do it now?" So we talked it over some more, and we
decided that we would, we would go ahead and form a firm and put out
a shingle for the practice of law.

Fry: Did you immediately get Bradley and Burns in?

Kent: Bradley was in the hospital with TB that he had gotten in the army.
No, we didn't get Burns in. Burns was over working with Brobeck,
Phleger, and Harrison, another big firm. We immediately got Draper
in. Draper has been a close friend of mine. When I went to the SEC,
I turned over most of my individual law practice to Draper. He
handled it for my other clients. So he [Draper] said fine, that he
wanted to come in. So the three of us opened — Crimmins, Draper, and
myself.

Fry: What is Draper's first name?

Kent: Lawrence Draper. The poor guy is in the last stages of alcoholism
at the moment. Damn shame. Some time after that — I don't know
whether Bradley got back out of the hospital or not first — Burns
came to us and he was handling some very big antitrust litigation
for a client over at National Lead Company. They liked him, and they
wanted him to stay on. They, in fact, suggested to him, "Why the

350

Kent: hell should you be working for Brobeck, Phleger, and Harrison? Why
don't you get yourself set with some backup? We'll go with you."
So he did. He came over to us. He needed us, because he didn't have
backup. You can't be practicing alone. If you get cold, you can't
work.

He then came to us. He had kind of a special arrangement for
many years. And then he got into the business of arbitration. He
started with the American Arbitration Association and then when you
get into this labor arbitration, you are paid for it. He just does
a tremendous amount of this work. I mean, he had the confidence of
most of the unions and most of the employers in San Francisco, and he's
[inaudible], and he's acceptable as an arbitrator to almost anyone.

Then from time to time, we had other damn smart and talented
guys come in and stay with us a few years and then move on. One
of them went to Los Angeles to a family firm, and one of them moved
over to Brobeck, Phleger, and Harrison and became their number-two
guy in the tax business. They're all good friends of ours still,
but we were naturally newer and smaller.

Fry: Is this firm largely concerned with taxes, securities, and financial
law?

Kent: Not necessarily. We're very, very diversified. I mean, a lot of

probate, a lot of securities work, a lot of contract work, a lot of
business law. Very little domestic law. Substantially no criminal.

Fry: I'd like to have you comment some, if you can, on the development of
the federal court. We're about to set up a history project on the
district court here. We want to get the view from outside the court,
as well as the views from the judges who have been on the court.
You would be probably a good person from your vantage point, wouldn't
you?

Kent: No, I'd probably be a real bad one, Chita, because I did very little
litigation in my career.

Fry: Oh, I see.

Kent: Now the one case that I mentioned to you, and I think you have it all,
it was that case that I got appointed to, to represent that fellow
on Alcatraz.

Fry: I don't remember that. I don't think we've talked about your law
experiences at all.

Kent: I think I may have talked about it, but maybe without the machine
on. A few years after we started the firm, I get a letter from a
clerk of the United States Supreme Court that says that I am selected

351

Kent: to represent a man who has a petition before the Supreme Court. They
do not have any money to pay anything except printing the brief, and,
so as far as transportation is concerned and anything else is
concerned, any assistant or typing or whatnot, it's got to be on you.
No stigma will be applied if you don't care to take it.

So I talked with the boys, and they all said, "What the hell.
A man never gets a chance to argue a case before the Supreme Court, so
I'll take it." [Fry laughs] So I did.

It turned out that at that point we had with us a very, very
bright young guy who my brother Sherman had known at Yale. He'd
been a marine and wounded at Okinawa and whatnot. He's at Brobeck
now. But I brought him in to help me with this thing. It turned
out that this guy was serving thirty years on Alcatraz for counter
feiting. When we went over and saw him over on Alcatraz, I said,
"What the hell, you must have signed the governor's name to the state
bonds to get thirty years for counterfeiting."

He said, "Oh, I tried to take a run out of Leavenworth ." Well,
anyway, I went over and saw this guy in Alcatraz. That's quite an
experience. You go down and get in a boat, and they examine your
credentials and they let you off at Alcatraz, and you have a man with
a gun walk behind you. You walk up, and you walk into a guard house,
and the guy says, "Take out all the metal in your pockets," and you
take out all the metal in your pocket just like the new airplane
check.

Then you are permitted to go through two doors and they lock
behind you, and then you're locked in a cell with open bars with
your client. And so we discussed this matter with our client. It
turned out that what he had done was, he'd got a pistol and he held
it at the head of the engraver and he told the engraver to make a
plate for a ten-dollar bill. The engraver had done so, and he made
some very crude ten-dollar bills with this, and he got thrown in the
pokey for this.

Fry: [laughs] Because he was caught — ?

Kent: But he pleaded guilty to two counts of possession of a plate for

engraving a ten-dollar bill, and possession with intent to issue bills.
So we wrestled with the case for months, and came up with a pretty damn
good defense that was double jeopardy. If he was guilty of one offense,
of possession of the plate, that the evidence that would prove that he
was guilty of that —

Kent: Well, anyway, we filed a good brief. I went back, and I was just
scared absolutely to death, and argued the case before the Supreme
Court. Bill Douglas was sick, which was unfortunate. I got three

352

Kent: votes. I got Murphy and Black — I guess that's what I got. I would
have gotten Douglas. But clearly, this case would have been won
easily ten years later, or even five years later. But at that point,
they were pretty rigid about —

Fry: About what?

Kent: About saying that we can hold you for two offenses when there are,
in effect, only one. I mean, split up an offense into five
components and give you five years on each part of it. They pretty
well knocked that out now. But anyway, that was clearly the most
exciting business that I had in the law practice.

Then after that I did a couple of registration statements, some
permits and some business law, and some probate. We were plenty busy,
and we were quite successful. Then came this opportunity to go to
the defense department.

Well, first, I was approached by these guys who were the Marin
County chairmen of the Democratic party to run for Congress in '48.
That was going to be thirty-two years after my father had vacated
the seat and turned it over, in effect, to Clarence Lee. So after
doing some thinking about that, I ran, and I ran in those eleven
counties and got myself a pretty liberal education on a whole lot of
things I didn't know anything about, and then became entranced with
it and ran again in '50.

Fry: Now when some member of your firm does something like that, either in
politics or in community service, is the firm able to give him
minimal support, so that he can — ?

Kent: Well, I never asked for it. At the state that we were at, I don't
think that we would have been able to do it for anybody.

Fry: I was talking to somebody in another law firm that had a policy of
encouraging its members to either run for the legislature or be
head of some community drives, fund raising, or whatever they wanted
to do. The law firm would continue to give them a living kind of a
salary while that's going on. Other law firms, too, are careful to
keep a political balance within their firms, like Democrats and
Republicans . Did you ever have anything like that?

Kent: Yes. It just so happened that that was it, that Bradley and Burns
are Republicans. Crimmins is a very backsliding Democrat, and Bill
Porter was a Democrat. Cappen was a Democrat. But yes, you will
find a lot of places — you go upcountry into Yuba County or one of
these counties, you'll go into the law firm of A and B, and A will
be the chairman of the Democratic committee, and B will be the
chairman of the Republican committee. [laughs]

353

Fry: You were so active in ACLU that I wondered if your law firm ever

happened to help in any of their cases, or if you did, in the actual
foot work of the bringing up a legal case.

Kent: I helped in some cases that were related to ACLU problems, a couple
of matters involving the military and getting canned for no good
cause and whatnot. But I think I better quit.

354

XIV RECENT POLITICAL AND CIVIC INVOLVEMENT
[Interview 16*: April 13, 1977]«

Helping Launch Muskie' s Candidacy

Brower: I would like to ask you about the presidential candidate poll that
you made in December of 1970, January of '71.

Kent: I was of the opinion that Ed Muskie was the strongest candidate and

would also make the best president. Also, I had received indications
that his popularity was very high. I thought that what I would do
would be to take a poll in northern California of — as I recall it,
it was of all Democratic officeholders.

Then, as I recall, I picked three or four counties, the bigger
counties — San Francisco, Alameda, perhaps Santa Clara and San
Joaquin, Sacramento — and I determined who were the public officials,
who were registered Democrats. Then I sent them a poll, asking them
to return in a postpaid and addressed envelope [the names of] their
first and perhaps second or third choices for Democratic nominee.
I didn't in any way indicate what my own preference was.

As I recall, I listed the aspirants alphabetically. That went
out, and it came back very, very heavily favoring Muskie. As I
recall at this time, something in the neighborhood of 70 percent
favored Muskie. Then, strangely enough, I had another occasion
to verify this with more or less the rank-and-file voters. I was
asked to speak in, I believe it was Stockton, to the Consolidated
Women's Clubs of San Joaquin County. I think there was something
over a hundred people there. When I got through, I said to the
ladies, "I would very much like to get some information from you.

*Interviews 16 through 20 were conducted by Anne Brower of the
Regional Oral History Office.

355

Kent: You may have gotten some from me. Would you please take a piece of
paper and write down your choice for the Democratic nominee in the
coming election."

Strangely enough, nearly every one of them answered; the result
was almost identical with the results that came from the state
senators, the assemblymen, the supervisors, and other county and
city officers who were registered Democrats. So there was very,
very heavy Muskie sentiment at that time.

I furnished all of these results to Muskie. Incidentally,
I had had some contact with Muskie when it was quite strange, I
think, for people to [do] that. In 1960, Adlai Stevenson — he was
honorable and he said that he was not going to seek the nomination,
but that if it came to him, he would run. In that, he was unique
as a politician, because most politicians would say that they
wouldn't seek it, and then they would have sought it. But he didn't,

He told me then that he thought that the best man for the job
was Muskie. Now I think, of course, that reflected that there had
been antagonisms growing up between him and Jack Kennedy. But that
wasn't mentioned, and it was mentioned that he thought that Muskie
would be the best candidate for the Democrats.

Muskie came out here. I believe it was in 1954, when he was
the governor of Maine and the Senator-elect. That was at the time
when Maine voted before the rest of the country. We took him on
a tour, and I laid down a schedule for him for the weekend. The
word came back from Muskie — "the governor will not engage in
political action on Sunday," so I wired him back. I said, "If the
governor won't shoot Republicans on Sunday, maybe he'd like to shoot
ducks with me on Sunday."

The answer came back from Muskie that if it was lawful, he
would do it, [laughter] which of course reflects the New England
ethic, where they keep the honest working man from shooting on
Sunday, and the other people can do it all week. So I took him up
to Colusa, on a day which was about like today, which is maybe
seventy-five degrees and bright and clear. I just thought that he
had never shot in his life, probably, if it wasn't ice and snow and
blizzards and cold weather. But he had a very nice time, and we
had a very pleasant time with him.

I, of course, also was tremendously impressed with his answer
to Nixon's diatribe. That was the '68 election, wasn't it?

Brower: I'm quite sure.

356

Kent: In any case, Nixon spoke like a wild man about the fact that he'd

been insulted and had eggs thrown at him and so forth down here in
San Jose, and ranted and whatnot. Muskie, speaking for the Democrats
and for the Democratic candidates — principally congressional and
senatorial candidates — gave a very well-considered and tremendously
well- received speech, which precipitated [his movement] into the
foreground. He, of course, didn't make it — the nomination. But
I well remember it was quite apparent in early July, I think, of
that year — that was '72, the election? — that Humphrey was going
to be the presidential nominee. He had backed away from it originally
and back into it again. There was a party, a lunch party at the
Fairmont, and I had no chance to talk with Humphrey alone.

Prior to that time, when I went through the line to say
goodbye to him — they were taking pictures and so forth — at that
time, I said, "Hubert, I hope your man is Ed Muskie, your choice
for vice-president," and he said, "So do I. Get some letters in
if you can." So I did get some letters in, but strangely enough I got
a negative response from a number of people, more than I had expected,
including some that Muskie had helped.

But anyway, of course he went forward and got the nod from
Humphrey and went ahead and did a really great job in the campaign,
and probably would have had the best chance to be the Democratic
nominee in the next go-around if it hadn't been for the dirty tricks
that were played on him. He was the target because I think Nixon
and Nixon's people realized that he was the strongest candidate
that they would have to face, and therefore they set out to destroy
him, and through those really filthy and fraudulent —

Brower: The attack on his wife that moved him so much. I think that had a
lot to do with it.

Kent: Oh, of course that did. But you'll remember that one guy got out
that false letter on Muskie 's stationery that Muskie was accusing
I think Jackson and Humphrey of indiscretions with women and that
Muskie had done this and done that. They just set out to smear him.

It probably was a unique experience for Muskie; he had not
been through the rough-and-tumble, really, of national politics.
Things had probably been pretty fair and square and on the up-and-
up in the state of Maine. When this kind of thing started, this
business of the letters that were put out — I've forgotten exactly
what they charged him with.

Oh, I recall. Prior to the New Hampshire primary, they put
out a fraudulent letter that had very derogatory remarks about the
"Canucks," in which Muskie was alleged to have told the Florida
people, "You may have your niggers, but we got our Canucks." It
was just a vicious attack that was highly insulting to a very large
proportion of the New Hampshire electorate.

357

Kent:

B rower:
Kent:

Well, I have diverged a long ways from why I set out to get that
poll on Muskie. Incidentally, there was one thing that happened
almost immediately. That was that Jack Tomlinson, who had been
Pat Brown's appointments secretary and then had become the
secretary of the Democratic State Central Committee when I was
chairman, and who was a very close friend of mine, went to Hastings
Law School and distinguished himself with a brilliant academic
record. The young men in our office talked with him and said,
"If we could get him, by all means get him."

So we got him, and Tomlinson was working in our law office,
and had been for perhaps a year, when he was offered a very high
position in the Muskie campaign by a group which had normally
been the group that I worked with in northern California politics.
They wanted him very badly, and they wanted to pay him a substantial
salary. The question was, could we and would we give him a leave
of absence.

Finally I got a call from Ed Muskie himself in the East. We
released Jack for that campaign. He was an exceedingly able
political pro, and had a most unfortunate time, because most of the
people surrounding Muskie that had come into the campaign were the
worst kind of self-seeking, self-aggrandizing, and ignorant people.
They made every mistake in the book, and pretty soon Muskie, from
being in this absolutely preeminent position of 75 percent, started

to skid and skid very badly,
why, you go downhill.

Of course, once you start to skid,

Probably one of the gravest errors that he made was something
akin to the error that Tom Dewey made in 1948. And that is, when
he appeared to be this far ahead [gesturing] , and he had all these
people on his side, instead of consolidating them and saying, "All
right, you're part of my campaign organization," he took the
position that he wanted everybody. Well, you can't get everybody.

Pretty soon, those people who had been more than willing to
sign up and become firmly committed to Muskie for the effort, in
terms of campaign and with their friends, and in terms of money,
drifted away to other people who offered them real places in a
campaign.

Why do you suppose his judgment was so poor in that instance?
In the people he selected?

B rower: Yes.

Kent: I have no idea. I have no idea. I suppose it's very, very tempting
to pick up the guys who are the smoothest flatterers, and he had
some of those. It didn't really bother me a great deal. I rode out

358

Kent: to the airport from the Sacramento convention with Muskie and one

or more of his boys. I said, "Look, I don't want to be bothering
you, because you're just going to have too many people talking to
you and writing to you and whatnot." I said, "Who would you want
me to keep in touch with if I have information that I think you
should have?" He gave me the name and address and telephone number
of this young man who was in the automobile.

At that time, I was only a few years away from having been,
say, chairman for eleven years, and having been the chairmen of
the Western States Democratic Conference for two or four years,
and had a reasonable position and a reasonable following. I
never heard from that guy again! I wrote several times to him
with suggestions. So Muskie's campaign was badly run from the
inside and it was terribly sabotaged from the outside.

Then, of course, you mentioned that episode where they insulted
his wife and where he broke down in New Hampshire. I mean, they
made a great to-do of this.

Brower: I realized this in the last election, when two of the Republicans
broke down in public and wept. Mr. Ford, of course, was given to
that rather. The vice-presidential candidate, I recall, in his own
home town wept quite openly. It reminded me of the production the
Republicans made of the Muskie episode, as if somehow people
didn't _do it.

Kent: Well, that certainly covers thaj^ subject. We haven't anything to
say on it. [laughs]

Brower: The use made of the poll, then, was it that you sent it to Muskie?

Kent: I sent it to Muskie. I leaked it to media, I'm sure. I'm sure that
it was well known that the leadership, represented by elected
officials in northern California, was perhaps three to one for Muskie.

Membership in the ACLU

Brower: Well, I think that is the final question on political matters that
Mrs. Fry gave me.

Now there is your service on the boards of various citizen
organizations, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, the
Cancer Society of Northern California, the Maritime Museum, the
Commonwealth Club, and Planned Parenthood. Was fund raising your
chief role on those boards?

359

Kent: No. ACLU — I can remember ACLU, for instance in the mid- thirties ,
I guess. I had of course to defend myself when I was running for
office and other times for being a, quote, "Communist," unquote,
because I was an ACLU member. But my mother — this is very
interesting on my mother. My mother was in ACLU from the beginning.
Roger Baldwin was a cousin of hers. She was very, very interested
in ACLU. She had a reasonable amount of what you might call — well,
the best kind of WASP snobbery, in that she felt that ACLU should
be headed up by the people who had written the constitution and
founded the country. It was wonderful that the newcomers liked to
come along and join in ACLU, but she felt very strongly that it
should be under the leadership of people like Roger Baldwin and
some of the others like him, because she was of an old, old
Connecticut family.

Brower: That was generally true of the ACLU then, wasn't it? Bishop Parsons
was a founding member, I believe. It was pretty darn respectable,
wasn't it?

Kent: For quite a while, yes.

Brower: Did it make political difficulties for you?

Kent: I never bothered about it. As a matter of fact, I felt that I was

kind of cowardly about it, because I used to say, "Well, among
the others who called in ACLU to help were General MacArthur and
General Eisenhower," when they had problems after the conquest of
Japan and of Germany and realized that what they were to establish
was not the autocracy that had existed before, but something akin
to a democracy, and perhaps that their best source of leadership
for this was in ACLU.

Then some years later — I always had put a little money in to
ACLU, and I suppose raised some money. Then for a number of years,
we had this old place at Kentfield and the ACLU party was held
there — their fund raiser, which was one of these potluck dinners.
They had many very fine speakers. Alexander Meiklejohn was there.
Helen Douglas was there. Norman Thomas was their speaker, and a
number of others. That went on for five or six years.

At one state, I finally told them that I'd had enough; that
was when the local Marin County guy who was in charge of this thing
put on the microphone an out-and-out Communist who just stated the
straight Communist line. I mean, it was just no ifs, ands , or
buts about it, no innuendos . This was just that and nothing more.
I told him, I said I didn't want any more of that at my house, that
I would certainly defend this man's right to say what he wanted to
say, but I didn't particularly care to have it said at my house,
and I wouldn't have any more of it.

360

Kent: Well, shortly after that, they abandoned having the party at my

house, and they moved it and had it somewhere else. Then some time
later, I was asked to be one of a group of three or four — and
these were very fine people — who were to make nominations for the
board of directors of northern California ACLU.

Then one other involvement was that they knew I was a good
friend of Earl Warren, and they asked me if I would arrange a
meeting and be there myself, where one or two ACLU people and
myself, as an ACLU member, would speak to Warren and ask if he
would be willing to have an annual meeting at which the Earl
Warren award for a personal leadership position in civil liberties
would be granted.

We had a delightful conversation with the chief justice — he
was the chief justice at the time. He said yes, he would. He
raised one question. He said he didn't want them to charge
anything for him. He was so disgusted with, say, the Yorty one-
hundred-dollar dinners that went into Yorty 's pocket and certain
other one-hundred-dollar dinners where the use of the money was
hardly what he wanted to have anything to do with . But he finally
came around and said sure, that they could use it as a fund raiser,

Brower: When you were on the nominating committee of ACLU, what were

your criteria for board members? What sort of people did you seek
out?

Kent: Well, they first asked — they said they wanted some young people,
some vigorous and active people. I made one grave error and
recommended some guy over in Marin County who turned out to be an
absolute no-goodnick. We also nominated Virginia Franklin, who
was that San Rafael High School teacher who had been involved up
there in that Paradise litigation when she was called a Communist
by the American Legion and won her suit, and is a great teacher
and takes her classes to places —

We nominated one very competent black. I've forgotten — he
was an East Bay man, not a supervisor but a councilman or
something of the kind. Our idea was to preserve a balance where
minorities, young, women, and perhaps some of the older political
types who were truly dedicated to civil liberties would be
represented.

361

Role in the Commonwealth Club

Brower: Mrs. Fry had some curiosity about the Commonwealth Club role,

whether you found you could use that politically at all. Did it
give you an avenue for introducing issues and candidates?

Kent: It was really very interesting, because I joined it, and then

I ran for Congress and they had some Republicans running it —
Gardiner Johnson, who was at one time San Francisco chairman of
the Republican committee and a very fine guy and a friend. He
and some others got me first to talk to their political division,
and then they named me as chairman, and I just didn't do anything
about it. I really made a very poor chairman of that committee,
because I just didn't have time enough. I was busy on many, many
other things.

Some time after that, they put me on what is the most important
committee probably, except for the board of directors, which is the
lunch-program committee. Now the lunch-program committee of the
Commonwealth Club pretty well decides what speakers they're going
to have (I'm sure this is cleared through the board of directors
and the executive committee) and sets the dates, sets the places,
and sets the prices. They have quarterly chairmen who do introductions
They, in effect, really decide what the people who are members of
the Commonwealth Club are going to hear.

Now, I'm sure that one of the reasons I was named to the
committee was they had a very, very fair-minded fellow, who's still
alive, Frank Bray, who's a retired justice of the California State
Court of Appeal who's been the chairman for many, many, many years.
He clearly wanted balance on the committee, and he wanted a
Democrat on the committee. And, also, this was because they always
wanted to have a balance in speakers. I mean, they were very
careful about this. So I could serve a dual purpose, really.

I could suggest who would be a good balance, and then in many,
many cases, I knew the person they might want to ask. They at
one time had a perfect idiot in there named Stuart Ward [spells
name] who was the executive secretary, and who was — he had a
license to carry a gun because he had persuaded the cops that the
Communists were (he was an anti-Communist) going to kill him. He
was just a real nut.

When the Vietnam War was going on, and I was violently opposed —

Brower: May we get back to what you were saying about the time of the
Vietnamese war?

362

Kent: Ward was suggesting, one after another, a general or admiral or

State Department or other official who was pro- Vietnam War or who
had just been there and who was fighting it and whatnot. I got
away with vetoing a number of these. Finally, I said, "Look we've
heard enough about this armament — " I don't know whether this was
right at the close of the Vietnam War. I think it was still going
on. Bill Foster, who was the head of the disarmament commission
for the United States was a friend of mine from my Pentagon days.
He had been deputy secretary of defense when I was general
counsel .

I said, "Why in the hell don't we get somebody to talk about
disarmament rather than all of the dirty tricks that you guys
[inaudible] in your opinion, able to lose to the Vietnamese?" And
so they did have Bill Foster there, and it was unfortunately a
very small meeting, which you could imagine it might have been.
But I took a very strong position that if somebody wanted to come
in and it looked to me as if the representative of an ad agency
was going to speak on behalf of some client or something of the
kind, I'd say, move off calendar and argue it, and usually win the
argument. They wouldn't have that kind of speaker.

Brower: Where it was totally self-seeking?

Kent: Where it was self-seeking, where a speaker was putting on a plug
for his client usually. The programs were pretty good. We had
Stevenson there, and once or twice we had Humphrey, and we had
Averell Harriman, and we had Bobby Kennedy, I believe. We had
many, many prominent Democrats as well as, of course, many
prominent Republicans. There was a rather faithful few of something
over a hundred members of the club who would attend just about
every one. They'd hear both sides, but it would of course fill up
with adherents of the speaker.

As I've said, we would have a lunch meeting over at the office
and eat a sandwich and discuss when and who was going to speak.
Then we would insist, usually, that we have clearance of what he
was going to talk about.

The person who introduced the speaker in each case would be
the quarterly chairman. I think the board of directors selected
the quarterly chairman, who became an ex officio member of our
committee.

363

American Cancer Society

Brower: The other organizations that I have listed were the Cancer Society —

Kent: Well, the Cancer Society — I was really just a very, very minor

member. One of my friends suggested that I should be on the board
of directors of the Cancer Society. [laughs] I think I was still
smoking at the time, and I had an awful time not smoking at a
meeting. But anyway, they had very good people running it, and
they had programs — they'd start talking about their programs, most
of which were medical programs, and some of which were the propaganda
programs. I was perhaps of some help with the propaganda programs,
but of course almost of no help in connection with the medical
experiments and plans and programs that they had.

Eventually, I found that I was not attending very many meetings,
so I quickly put in my resignation and said, "Make room for somebody
that will give you a better break."

Brower: When you say you helped with propaganda programs, do you mean that
you helped to frame how they were going to do this?

Kent: Well, really I didn't help them frame it. They would put stuff in
front of us, and I might, from time to time, make comments on that.
I don't know whether they were adopted or not.

National Maritime Museum

Brower: And the San Francisco Maritime Museum* — was this by way of the navy?

Kent: No, no, it was not. It was because of my really very close

friendship with Bill Roth and with Al Gatov. It was at a time
when Pat Brown was governor, and there were a lot of things that
they wanted the governor's office to do. Some of them had to do

*Designated National Maritime Museum at the time it was acquired
by the National Park Service in 1978.

364

Kent: with the Haslett Warehouse,* and some of them had to do with

piers and some of them had to do with this, that, and the other
thing. I think I was helpful to them in —

And then they'd say, "Well, we want to know how the supervisors
feel about this." Well, I knew all of them — a good many of them
knew the supervisors, but I could get a finger into the board of
supervisors and come up with an analysis of how the supervisors
individually and collectively felt about these things probably
faster than almost anyone that was on the board. They used me for
that purpose.

But there again, in expertise about old vessels and sailing
records and old ships and things, I was a total loss, and about
many, many of the things that they were discussing. Scott Newhall
and Karl Kortum had a great deal of knowledge. 1 know that I
helped and expressed an opinion in times, as they'd get themselves
into this money bind and they didn't have money enough to really run
the kind of operation that they wanted.

If they could get a submarine from the navy, which they were
talking about, and they could get clearance from the city to moor
it down there by the Museum, their money problems would be over,
the visitors to San Francisco and the San Franciscans themselves
would pay a great deal of money to go aboard a submarine. [laughs]
They finally got everything squared away, and then Harry Bridges
said that it was a terrible thing, because we'd brought up the
awful business of war and murder and so forth.

Brower: [laughs] Oh, for heaven's sake! What a spoilsport!

Kent: It's still not decided whether they are going to have that submarine

or not, but it was a very interesting and distinguished group of
people on that board. They have done a remarkable job. The people
who would appreciate it would be not people like me, the butter-and-
eggs man to help to keep the show on the road, but those who saw

*Karl Kortum, director of the then San Francisco Maritime Museum,
explained that he "asked Al Gatov to ask Roger Kent to persuade
Governor Brown to put pressure on Director of Finance John Carr
to remove his opposition to state purchase of the warehouse so it
could be part of the San Francisco Maritime State Historical Park.
The warehouse now is owned by the National Park Service as part
of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Park Service policy
states that in due course the warehouse will become the nation's
Maritime Museum."

365

Kent: that the show was authentic, and that real sailing vessel buffs
and early steambuffs and so forth had an opportunity to see what
they were vitally interested in.

Planned Parenthood

Brower: [tape turned off and restarted] I think that brings us to the last
board, Planned Parenthood. I wanted to ask you if your interest
in Planned Parenthood was a legacy from your mother. She said some
very amazing things, for the period, about population.

Kent: Really, I don't think that at the time of my mother's death this
was a vital issue. I'm sure that she felt, as she felt on all
issues, that a woman was entitled to her choice as to whether she
wished to use contraceptives or not. She backed the early Planned
Parenthood women, who were of the same courage and tenacity as the
early suffragettes. But I didn't get my interest in Planned
Parenthood from her. It just all of a sudden dawned on me, as it
dawned on millions and millions of other people, that the environment
was going to hell in a handbasket and the reason for it was people.

I was made aware of the grinding poverty of the underdeveloped
nations in South America and so forth, in India, and the horror of
that situation, where the people were on a treadmill. If we gave
them another million bushels of wheat, why, it meant that they'd
have another X number of children and they'd starve a little slower
maybe, but they'd surely starve.

Then, also, when we lived in Washington, we lived across the
street from an orphanage. The orphans seemed to be having not a
very happy time, and it did seem — this is probably very deep-seated —
that it would be better if they probably hadn't been born.

Brower: When you say "in Washington," are you speaking now of when you lived
in Washington in your childhood?

Kent: Yes, when my father was in Congress.
Brower: So this would have been an early impression.

Kent: Yes, yes. A good many of my friends became very much interested
in it [the population problem], probably most notably Libby Smith
Gatov, who went on te become a vice-president of the national
Planned Parenthood and a director. Then there were some other good
people here in San Francisco that asked me to join the board, and I
did. There again, I served on the nominating committee for a
number of years and was able to touch some bases that the then-board

366

Kent: couldn't touch, in the Chinese community and somewhat in the black

community and some in the labor community. We were able to get
some representation in those areas, which was helpful, everybody
felt, in broadening the base of the Planned Parenthood effort.

I had no part in signing up this very talented quote "Red"
unquote Stephenson, who headed up the San Francisco end and then
put it together with Alameda and made a very strong organization.
I mean, the number of people that they see, and the number of
advices that they give, and the devices that they pass out are
just extraordinary. Of course, it became perfectly apparent to me,
as it did to the other people, that we could not go as Americans
and say, "All right, you underdeveloped folk. You go for family
planning and cut back your population, and we'll gradually go on
and fill up the void." We had to set the example. Well, this was
something that we started in on say fifteen or twenty years ago,
and obviously, what we've quite clearly done is succeeded. We
have set the goals.

Brower: It is especially untenable for the U.S. to go to underdeveloped

countries and tell them that when one white American middle-class
child uses something like ten times what is used by a child in the
ghetto, and heaven knows how many times what's used by a child in
India.

Ken t : S ure .

Brower: There was one general question about serving on boards that I was
asked to ask you, and that is what your impression was of how
volunteer boards worked with professional staffs. Is that always
a problem area, or do some people manage that and some organizations
work that out better than others? Or don't you feel that it is
a problem? You spoke of Red Stephenson, for instance.

Kent: Red Stephenson is a great guy. Then, of course, I, as state chairman
or vice-chairman of the Democratic party for eleven years, had a
professional staff. We just loved each other. There was nothing
that they wouldn't do, and very little that I wouldn't do to
further the objectives of the organization. I think on occasion
at Democratic headquarters we had some problems when, not the staff,
but some of the volunteers got objectionable, and one would just
kind of, one way or another, let it appear that they weren't welcome
to raise hell. Pretty soon they kind of faded out. But I didn't
really have anything to do with the Cancer Society staff. They
seemed efficient. The Planned Parenthood staff seemed excellent.
I mean, not only Red Stephenson, but the women who were under him
were dedicated and hardworking and intelligent.

367

Kent: I'm sure that you will run into situations wherein you'll get a

staff who are just some money-grubbers and nine-to-five people who
are very much concerned with their position and whatnot. But I
just have really never encountered any difficulties, except that
thing with Stuart Ward, that guy at the Commonwealth Club.

Brower: Does that rather wrap up the matter of the board service?

Japanese Prisoner Probation and Parole

Kent: Yes. Well, I served on a couple of others. I think I've already
given Chita this, that I was appointed on this board for Japanese
prisoner probation and parole, along with the counsel for the State
Department and counsel for the Treasury Department. We met in
solemn conclave and reviewed the records of these Japanese war
criminals. I had been out there in Guadalcanal and I had seen
some of these American war criminals.

I couldn't get too much — I realized the ghastly things that
these Japanese had done, but on the other hand, at that time, the
Russians had about three hundred thousand Japanese interned up in
Siberia that they had captured and that they were just raising
hell with, and we had about twenty-five Japanese in a prison in
Tokyo who were supposed to be on probation and parole and there was
no overseeing of what they were doing. Then it would become a
question of whether you should let a guy loose now, because he
killed an American prisoner with a knife, or whether you keep him
in for another ten years because he did it with a club.

I just said, "At the end of five years, what you ought to do
in war criminal problems, you ought to execute everybody that's
entitled to be executed and you ought to give everybody else no
more than five years, and then wash the thing out, because that's
what's going to happen anyway." Except that by this time, the
Korean War had started, and of course, as soon as the Korean War
started, we had to have all the favors from the Japanese. You
can be damn sure that things eased off on the Japanese war criminals

So I wrote Truman a letter and told him that — well, just more
or less what I've said here, and that I didn't see that it served
any useful purpose whatsoever for me to go and review the records
of these Japanese guys, and that in my opinion, they ought to turn
'em all loose (it was more than five years now) and get out from
the criticism of the United States that was totally unnecessary in
contrast to what was going on in Russia.

368

Kent: The State Department guys were just absolutely scared to death.
They thought that this was the opening of my springing this in a
press conference or something of the kind. Of course, I was just
peaceably resigning. So I resigned, and I think that was in
January of '53. I got a very nice letter back from Truman accepting
my resignation, and that was it. I served on that, but of course
that was a kind of board that about once every three months the
Japanese Embassy would invite us out there for lunch and give us
the finest lunch you ever ate in your life and some drinks. So
that wasn't too bad a board.

Brower: [laughs] You shouldn't have resigned!

North Pacific Fisheries Commission

Kent: Then I was on this fascinating North Pacific Fisheries Commission.
I think I've gone into that.

Brower: Well, you did briefly when I was here with Chita the first time.

Kent: I'll just go into it very, very briefly. This was just the four
Canadians, four Japanese, and four Americans. It stemmed from a
treaty right after the Korean War. The Japanese agreed not to fish
east of a certain line on the high seas, and the Americans and the
Canadians agreed to protect the source of salmon and halibut in the
rivers and the lakes and so forth. Actually, it was a great success,
and even though the Russians were not a party to it, they pretty
well obeyed it.

I found it just fascinating doing business with these people,
particularly with these Alaskans, who were a great crowd. Always
the question of extending the miles of jurisdiction of the land body
was up. So it is obviously fascinating to me to be living at this
moment with the two-hundred-mile limit established, watching what
the Americans are doing with the Russian fishing boats and trawlers,
because we had, at the time that I was on the commission — we had
an invasion by Japanese over the line that they were entitled to go
in, by two vessels. They were taken in to Anchorage and they were
penalized plenty. I mean, they had their entire cargoes confiscated.
They were fined about twenty- five thousand dollars, I think, for
each boat, and the skipper was fined about five thousand dollars.
They were sent back in high disgrace. I hope that we take the same
kind of action as far as the Russians are concerned.

Brower: If this issue had come up when you were on the commission, would you
have supported the idea of the two-hundred-mile limit?

369

Kent: I don't know. I don't know. I was very much of a newcomer on

[the commission], I did support a view at the last meeting that I
was there, when I said, "I'm the lamest duck yet," because Nixon
had just won that day. I, of course, was resigning. I said, "You
guys say that the Japanese waste fish by fishing with gill nets
[inaudible] sixty miles or more off the end of the Aleutian chain.
They catch fish that are too small. They kill fish that they lose.
It is a very wasteful thing. Why don't you offer to catch the fish
that you're going to give the Japanese as their quota at the rivers,
where it can be done economically and the fish will be bigger and
you won't have the losses that you have now?"

One of these guys said, "Well, then we'll be giving up the
rights we have under our claim of the treaty, which is the Japanese
don't have any rights to fish for any American-grown salmon." I
said, "That's just plain absurd, because you've been talking that
way ever since I've been on this commission and, I judge, for
twenty years before. And you've never gotten anywhere with that
argument, so why not forget that argument and go this route?"

In other words, what I was going to do — wanted to do as far as
salmon was concerned — was to extend the limit out a long way, as far
as the sockeye salmon were concerned, beyond, say, sixty-five
miles and extend it out to maybe a hundred miles. Then the Japanese
had rights, under treaty, to fish in this area between sixty-five
and a hundred. And then make arrangements to sell the Japanese the
fish at their cost of catching them. That would have been what I
was thinking about at the time. Well, I was getting absolutely
nowhere with it.

Brower: It's one of those ideas so practical and simple that it probably
didn' t appeal .

Kent: I don't know. It might eventually come through.

Before I went to Washington in '50 as general counsel for
defense — I guess it would have been around in '49 and '50 — I served
on a wage-stabilization committee. I was a member and I did
practically nothing. But I was appointed by Truman. Very shortly
after I was appointed, I was appointed general counsel of defense.
There was one other commission that I can remember that I did serve

Brower:
Kent:

on.

The fishing commission was the most interesting?

Did Chita Fry say anything there about the stamp advisory committee?
Did we ever talk about that?

B rower:

370

The days I was here before with her, we did. I remember it especially
because I remember that Nevada wanted a mushroom cloud [laughs], and
you persuaded them that this was not the best PR.

Kent: That's right. You've got that.

PG&E's Atomic Plant for Bodega Head

B rower:

Kent:

B rower:

Kent:

Brower:
Kent:

Brower:

Kent:

There is an underlying conservation attitude in all this. Is that
what brought you into the Bodega Head controversy, or did you think
of it as a good political move?

Really, I did it as an accommodation to a very nice young man
[David Pesonen] who came in to see me.

That's what David Pesonen said to me, when I asked him.
"He did it because he was a decent guy."

He said,

Yes. We were going to have this meeting of the committee in Santa
Rosa, and I had a deep interest in conservation. There was no
question about that. If this was in that area, why, I was more
than willing to give it a push, to give it a chance, to give it an
airing.

It turned out to be a pretty hot potato, didn't it, politically?

It certainly did. It certainly did.
with PG&E cancelling it out.

And it wound up, of course,

With a little help from the earthquake fault!

[murmurs assent] I'm quite sure that David Pesonen and most of his
friends didn't really give too much of a damn about the earthquake
fault when they started out. They just didn't want to have an atomic
plant put there on the Marin coast. Of course, I got into some hot
water on it, but it never bothered me any, in that some of the
members of the [central] committee were affiliated with PG&E or with
other energy manufacturers and sellers.

Wasn't there one prominent Democrat who was a developer in that
area?

I think so. Who didn't like it? I don't even recall whether we
passed a resolution in which we condemned the project. But we may
have. I just let him have his say. I think somebody spoke on the

'-371

Kent: other side. I'm not sure.*

Brower: I hope we can talk a little more about Bodega.

Kent: I don't think we really could talk any more about Bodega, because
as I said, I was very, very happy that they didn't build a great
big enormous plant on Bodega Bay, because I am very fond of western
Marin and southern and western Sonoma. That coastline I think is
perfectly beautiful. I think it would have been — I'm just very
happy that it wasn't cluttered up with a great big —

* According to the Santa Rosa Press Democrat of December 9, 1962, the
Democratic State Central Committee "heard a presentation from David Pesonen
of Northern California Association To Preserve Bodega Head and Harbor, who
outlined what he considered 'light treatment' given consideration of potential
dangers to life and property from construction of Pacific Gas and Electric
Company's nuclear power plant on Bodega Head.

"Mr. Kent appointed a subcommittee to investigate and report back to the
main committee."

Meeting that same weekend, the California Democratic Council "accepted a
resolution calling for 'complete review and re-evaluation' of the proposal
to establish an atomic reactor power plant on Bodega Head.

"Leaders of the state's Democratic club movement urged the Public
Utilities Commission to grant the petition for rehearing on PG&E's
application [San Francisco Chronicle, December 15, 1962]."

Eight months later, Kent, who had served as chairman of the DSCC sub
committee charged with studying the PG&E Bodega issue, released to the press
a copy of a letter to Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Glenn T. Seaborg,
conveying the subcommittee's unanimous opposition to "any industrial
development on this unique and beautiful part of California's shoreline,
urged the AEC to hold "extensive public hearings in Sonoma County. . .
and pointed out that "it would seem that there is greater risk to adjacent
and, in this case, heavily populated areas in locating a nuclear power plant
near the San Andreas Fault or other 'earthquake areas' than outside such areas
We ask that your commission determine the degree of risk and then determine
whether or not such risk is justified by other factors."

Kent's press statement stated that "expenditures made so far by the
Pacific Gas and Electric Company had been made at the risk of the Company
without the required authority from the Atomic Energy Commission.14
He urged that "no weight be given to such expenditures in passing on the
application [California Democratic State Central Committee, press release
August 21, 1963]."

372

XV FOREBEARS AND FAMILY LIFE
[Interview 17: April 20, 1977]##

Parents

Brower: Today we're going to talk about Elizabeth Thacher Kent.

Kent: My mother. Yes. She was the daughter of Thomas Thacher, who was
the dean of the Latin department of Yale College. He had been
married to "Lizzie" Day, and they had five or six sons, nearly all
of whom became very successful. Then Lizzie Day died, and he
married "Lizzie" Sherman. This is one of the extraordinary things
of the youth of the United States, in that Lizzie Sherman was a
grandaughter of Roger Sherman, who of course had been in the prime
of life at the time of the Articles of Confederation and the
Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and so forth, one
of the most prominent of the people who constructed the United
States.

I knew my grandmother. She was a very old woman when I knew
her, but, in other words, I knew the granddaughter of Roger Sherman.

Thomas Thacher was a graduate of Yale about — I think it was
in the late 1820s. He graduated from Yale just about a hundred
years before I did. But particularly we're talking about that
extraordinary woman, Elizabeth Sherman Thacher, and then [her
daughter] Elizabeth Thacher Kent. She was the only girl of — that
was eleven boys .

My grandfather Kent moved out to California. He had gone to
Yale. It was a Connecticut family also. He wanted my father to go
to Yale, and somehow or another — I don't know the method by which it
was arrived at — William Kent boarded with the Thacher family. It
must have been quite an experience for the Thacher family, because
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373

Kent: He was a good student and an excellent rider. I think he was the
assistant to the editor of the Yale literary magazine, and was
quite a good student, and very much interested in local and
intramural sports.

He was a relatively slight-built young man of perhaps five
nine or ten, and a weight of one hundred and sixty or thereabouts,
so that he didn't participate in sports particularly at college.
But he was very popular. He was a [member of] Skull and Bones.

Brower: Could I ask you about that? It seems just a little bit out of
character, because he was a loner up to that point, was he not?

Kent: Well, he had had not much opportunity to be anything else. He had
been here in California, and there wasn't any particular school
that my grandfather had use for, and so my grandfather employed a
tutor for him; I think [he] was an Englishman. A great deal of
that [schooling] was done over at Bolinas, but some was done at
Kentfield. His preparatory work for Yale was done primarily with a
tutor.

Brower: Then he was at Hopkins Grammar School in New Haven?
Kent: In New Haven. That is correct.

Brower: At that time, I think, he boarded with the Thachers , prior to his
going to Yale.

Kent: That, I think, is correct. That is correct. When he went to the
Hopkins Grammar School, he boarded with the Thachers. Now I'm
ashamed of myself that I can't recall the education of my mother, any
formal education. She was, throughout her life, an avid reader.
She and her family were Victorian to the core. When she was in her
seventies , some of the words that are commonly used by five- and
six-year-old children today were unknown to her. I am quite sure
that she married when she was about nineteen or twenty — you have
that there — and obviously did not go to college.

But meantime, of course, she was brought up in a family which
was dedicated to education. Her father, as I said, was dean of
the Latin department at Yale. And her brothers —

Brower: Were these full brothers or half brothers?

Kent: The brothers that were the Thacher School brothers were full

brothers. There were, as I recall, four brothers in that second
family of Lizzie Sherman. There was Sherman who, I think was the
oldest, and William Thacher, Edward Thacher, and George Thacher.
Edward Thacher had some problems. He went out to the Ojai [Valley]
and George Thacher had — I'm quite sure it was TB , and he went out
to the Ojai for health reasons.

374

Kent: S.D. Thacher — Sherman Day Thacher, who was a brilliant student and
man throughout his life — went out to see what he could do to help
George and Edward. This would have been probably in the seventies —
the other records will tell us of this.

At that point, there was a New Haven family who had a boy who
had a health problem and needed an education. In the meantime,
Sherman Day had graduated from Yale Law School very high in his
class and was offered an opportunity to go to Wall Street as a
New York lawyer. He came out to California to help see that
George's health was perhaps restored. Then came this opportunity to
tutor this young man from New Haven. So he stayed on in Ojai, and
shortly a couple of other people came.

Then — I'm really just making this up — his father must have
died, because his mother (always known as Madame Thacher, at the
Thacher School) moved out the the Ojai. The school started, and
William Thacher, who was an interesting guy and an intercollegiate
tennis champion (which was I think the thing he followed all his
life) , but without anything like the mental equipment of his brother
Sherman (though he was no stupe) , came out to become associate
headmaster.

They j us t gradually built the school up over the years.
Sherman Thacher was a very good friend of Horace Taft, and they
compared notes about the Taft School. He always compared notes with
the headmasters and the people running other top-class preparatory
schools in the east.

Mother, I'm quite sure, came out to the Ojai. She either came
out just before she and my father were married, or they had made the
decision to get married when my father was in college, just graduating.
In any case, they were married in the Ojai. I, of course, have seen
pictures of that wedding. Then she became very busy with the raising
of a family — seven.

Brower: In fifteen years.

Birth of Siblings

Kent: Yes. Of the seven, the first two were boys — Albert and Thomas. The
third was a daughter, Elizabeth, and the fourth was William Kent,
Jr. The fifth was my sister Adaline Kent [spells name], who became
a very good and well-known sculptor. Then Sherman and then me.

375

B rower:

Kent:
B rower:

Kent:

I think the order in which your mother dedicated the biography she
wrote of your father* is the order you've just given. That's the
order of birth?

That's correct.

But Elizabeth — I have a note that Elizabeth was born in 1891. I must
be mistaken. It must have been Albert who was born in 1891.

I should think that would have to be true. [laughs] The date that
people graduate from college never changes. You can remember that.
But I have difficulty remembering the dating of their birth. My
father graduated from [Yale in] 1887 and was married very shortly
after that.

B rower:
Kent:
B rower:
Kent:
B rower :
Kent:
B rower:
Kent:
B rower:
Kent:

B rower :

Kent:
B rower :
Kent:

Well, I have about 1890, and I think that may b«

Well, you're wrong there. It was '87.

I got that out of her own biography, however.

I'll be damned.

We'll get another check on it.

That must have been when they were married, in '90.

Yes, married in Ojai.

In '90, yes. My father had graduated from college in '87.

Right.

It's probably quite true that Albert would have been born, probably,
in '91.

Do you remember roughly how the grouping was? Were you and Sherman
about two to four years apart?

We are two and a half years apart.
And Adaline?

Let's see. Adaline was born in 1900. Sherman, in 1903 or 1904.

He was born in December. I was born in June of 1906. I guess, through

more or less natural business, the family broke pretty much so that

^Biography of William Kent, Kentfield, California, 1950.

376

Kent: the three of us, even though we were very young and used to do all

our fighting and what not, were very close, perhaps closer than any.
Although the family was a very, very closely knit and friendly
group. I mean, my mother would almost sometimes complain about the
fact that there' d be a party at the place and, the next thing she'd
know, she'd find all the Kent boys and girls over in one corner
talking to each other instead of talking to the company.

Brower: I wondered if that large family was dictated by the fact that your
father had been virtually an only child, and he wanted a large
family? Or was it just accidental?

Kent: I haven't the foggiest idea. I think it was long before any effective
contraception or any drive on that. I kind of think it just occurred,
the way it did with the very large families of the nineteenth
century and [with] those New England people who did have very large
families .

One of my earliest recollections of the family and my mother
was when we were living in the house that later was lived in by
the [senior Stanleigh] Arnolds [on what is now Orchard Way] . I
think a man named Gushing, who was kind of an overseer of the
Kentfield place, had lived in it. Then my father and mother moved
into it. We were there at the time of Halley's Comet. I remember
they woke me up and took me outside and showed me Halley's Comet.
I wasn't particularly surprised. I figured if you stayed up that
late, that you'd see the comet any night, any night. [laughs] But
that would place when we were there at Kentfield. Of course, pretty
soon my grandmother and my father both got Stanley Steamer automobiles
and, of course, had chauffeurs and mechanics to run them in Kentfield.

Father's Campaign for Congr^ess_in 1920

Kent: I have just finished reading Walton Bean's Abe Ruef book.* Even

though my father later took a very vigorous part in the California
progressive movement with [Hiram] Johnson and with Spreckels and
these others, he is really not mentioned in that book. My supposition
is that that was 1910 and that he, at that time, had made up his
mind to run for Congress. He was running against a man whose name

*Boss Ruef's San Francisco: The Story of the Union Labor Party,
Big Business, and the Graft Prosecution, Berkeley, California:
University of California Press, 1952.

377

Kent: I forget now, but who was the — "Stand-patter" was the word in those
days for the arch-conservative. He [Kent] wanted to move forward
on a large number of fronts.

Later on, when [George E.] Mowry wrote a book on The California
Progressives, which was published by the University of California
Press in 1951 — I think it was in '54 that I was chairman for Dick
Graves for governor in northern California, and I met Bob Kenney,
who had been attorney general, out at a party given by Jesse Carter,
who was a Supreme Court justice. I hardly knew Jesse Carter, but
he turned to me and he said, "Have you read the book?" He said,
"Your father comes out better than any of 'em."

Brower: In the references in that book?

Kent: Yes. It appeared that the Spreckels and a good many of the others
had been interested very properly, and to the great value of the
people of the United States, in conservation and in the use of
public property for the public and [in] prevention of exploitation.
So I strongly suspect that my father was busy running for Congress
in 1910, preparing for the race of 1912, when he was elected. It
was a perfectly enormous district. It went all the way up to the
Oregon border and clear across to Nevada and down into San Joaquin
at that time. It included Sacramento.

Mother, I know, did a lot of traveling with him on the campaign.
Years later, in 1948, when I ran for Congress in the abbreviated
first district — which even then included eleven counties , all the
coastal counties plus five counties in the Sacramento Valley — I was
at a luncheon at some service club in Colusa and [I met] I.G.
Zumwalt, who had become enormously wealthy in Colusa as the
Caterpillar distributor and a landowner in that area — He was an
old, old gent but still a very powerful man.

He came to this lunch and he said to me, "Good luck to you,
young man. Your father beat me, but I never figured it was your
father. I always figured that it was your mother. She was really
quite a campaigner!" I know that my mother, in going through all
those small towns which made up the vast part of the district in
those campaigns, had a remark that she and the old man would stop
at these "ham and egg-lets" and then stay overnight in these little
tiny hotels.

I remember how she and my father told about being in the Valley
when he wanted to be talking with the leading men. The coolest
place that they could find would be out on the stacks of lumber,
which would have some evaporation and some cooling effect. They
would talk of the problems of the country and of the district,
sitting out in the lumberyards.

378

B rower:
Kent:

Do you suppose she went along, too?

I don't think she would go out in the lumberyards. I would be sure
not. But she would meet with the people, both men and women, in
each of these towns.

Living in Washington, D.C.

Kent: My father went East then and got a house, a wonderful house that is
a very famous one now. It's the F Street Club. It was the corner
of F and Twentieth. It had a good-sized backyard for kids our age —
Sherman and my self then being six, seven and so forth.

Brower: You don't mean that he anticipated his winning the election and —

Kent: He had been elected before he got the house. You had a lot of time
in those days after you had got elected before you had to take
office on the fourth of March.

Brower: When you saw Halley's Comet, was this from the Washington house?

Kent: No, it was from this Gushing house before — Obviously, Halley's
Comet would be well known, but we moved into the old family house
that my grandfather had built after my grandmother's death. I think
that [move] was in 1915, so I had seen it before 1915. It must
have been —

Brower: I think it was around 1910 or 11. I looked it up very recently.
But I would have expected most of your early recollections to
be of Washington, rather than of —

Kent: Well, that is true. Most of them were of Washington. But at that
time, my father had bought a place in Tahoe, and he had quite a bit
of frontage on the western shore. The same chauffeur that ran the
Stanley Steamer used to go up to Tahoe and put our boat, which was
called the Marin and which was a very slow but reasonably comfortable
boat, in the water and meet us at the pier leading from the Tahoe
Tavern. We would come up on the regular railroad to Truckee and then
take the wood-burning railroad up to the tavern and out to the end
of the tavern pier, and then transfer all our stuff from there to
the boat, and then go to our house at Tahoe.

I think that even before I went to Washington, I was such an
ardent fisherman that I was out on the pier — I could be a year or two
off on this. I can't be sure.

379

Brower: You would have been under five. That's quite possible.

Kent: I was trying to catch trout and whitefish. There were all kinds

of minnows and chubs and whatnot around the pier. I was very much
interested in it. It was a glorious place for kids. A little
later, my brother and I used to pack a lunch and go up Ward Creek,
or one of the other streams that ran into Tahoe, and fish and eat
lunch and come back.

But anyway, the Washington one — I remember it so well. We
got in the car, and the old man had bought a — this was in 1912 —
a Cadillac. We had a charming Negro man known as "Brother" Young, who
was the operator. He met us at the Washington station and drove us
to 1925 F Street, which was the corner of F and Twentieth. I
remember staring up at this house which was to be our home. It
was a very, very nice and comfortable home.

By this time, the older boys were away at school, so that
there was an upstairs where they could come on vacation. But I'm
quite sure that Thomas and Albert were at Thacher, and Bill was at
Thacher. I think Tommy went to Andover one year. Albert stayed at
Thacher the whole time. Bill went one year to Hotchkiss. And then
they all went to Yale. Albert graduated in '13 and went out to
manage a large ranch that my father had in Nevada near Golconda and
Winnemucca. My brother Tommy was a very mechanical guy. He moved
into the Mount Tamalpais and Muir Woods Railroad, the "crookedest
railroad in the world."

Evolution of the Big House

Kent: At times, he slept on the same sleeping porch with my brother Sherman
and myself, because in 1915, after my grandmother's death and there
were seven in the family [we moved into the "Big House," the one
we're in now. At that time, it was] the traditional California house
you can still see up in the Valley and elsewhere — a three-story square
or rectangular house, with a palm tree on each corner and very
little in the way of porches, and not much room — it wouldn't
accommodate a large number of people.

My father and mother got the architectural firm of Bliss and
Faville. Faville was a Britisher. His wife always called him
"Laddie." We used to, behind his back, always refer to him as
"Laddie." From time to time, they would come up to Tahoe as guests.
They did some really remarkable things [to this house]. He put a
great big dining roon on, in which there is an enormous redwood
table, one slab of redwood. Then [there was] a big semicircular
living room, with windows that looked up to the mountain, and a great
big fireplace.

380

Kant: Dad was a great admirer of Theodore Roosevelt and the outdoors, and
sleeping porches were put on substantially every room in the
upstairs, so that my brother Sherman and I slept on a sleeping
porch. We had a room where we kept our clothes, and there was a
bathroom between that room and the room for an old English gal named
Eleanor Lawlor. Miss Lawlor had been taken on as a nurse and
governess at the time of my brother Bill's youth and stayed on to
take care of us when Mother and Dad were away, which they were
quite a bit.

Of course, this was the old days, when all families of
reasonable wealth had all kinds of domestic servants. I hesitate
to say what they probably paid them. But Miss Lawlor did sewing
and took care of us and did a few chores. Then an old German gal
named Margaret Stover —

Kent: This is really a very funny story. Margaret Stover was of German

descent and had been working out in the Hawaiian Islands for the
Cooke family. She used to regale my older brothers and sisters
with stories about Clarence, and George, and Teddy [Cooke] and
whatnot. Then she decided that Honolulu wasn't fancy enough, and
she was going to work for the Spreckels. But she couldn't get a job
with the Spreckels, so she finally settled for working for the Kents

It was really one of the saddest things, because she died
about two or three years before I married Alice Cooke, who is
Clarence Cooke1 s daughter. Margaret took care of the parrot and
took care of the chickens and did various sundry odd jobs.

I'm quite sure that the kitchen help at that time — there would
be a cook. These Chinese cooks in the Bay Area would just change
jobs at their own option. "I go. My cousin come tomorrow." But
they would usually bring in a boy, their helper, who would stay on.
He usually would not be qualified to be the cook by the time the
cook left, but he would move on probably.

Then they had two Chinese gardeners who took care of quite an
extensive garden. I really don't recall — I think there was another
Chinese who took care of sweeping and dusting and making beds and
things of that kind, and making fires, because the only heating at
that time was wood fires. There were fireplaces in just about
every room. That would keep it quite warm. Several words are still
used in our family — my sister Elizabeth, particularly, [would say]
"Were you brought up in a barroom?" when somebody wouldn't close
the door, on a cold day when we'd been trying to get the house warm.

And then if the old man came in and a fire was dying down,
he would quote one of the anthropologists — I don't know whether
it was Darwin or anybody else — and say, "The problem with the

381

Kent: apes was that they would sit around and get warm by a fire, but
they never had sense enough to put wood on the fire." That is
still in use among my children.

Then the old man would say, when a door was open, he would —
rather than saying, "Were you brought up in a barroom?" he'd
say, "What are you trying to do? Warm up all Marin County?"
[laughs] I have a very strong feeling about people leaving doors
open when you've expended a lot of energy to warm up a house.

Brower: One of the nicest aspects of that is the business of going to sleep
with the firelight on the ceiling. [tape turned off, restarted]

Kent: You know, actually, Anne, I guess my mother and father might have
done that but, as I said, most of the rest of us slept outside on
the sleeping porches.

William Kent's Shooting Feats

Kent: My father — in my mother's book, there is a chapter, a very short

one of two or three pages, which I think I'll dig up and give you,
about my father's shooting, which was perfectly extraordinary.

Brower: Is this about the bet?

Kent: Well, he had all kinds. There was a whole series of stories in my
mother's book, I think, because Phelps Hunter got this down at the
Ojai and brought up several copies. I sent them out to several
people, but I know I kept one.

Brower: I have one at home right now. I got it from the UC library.

Kent: That little tiny thing about shooting or the whole book?

Brower: The whole book.

Kent: Oh, good.

Brower: I recall he threw the —

Kent: He told the guy to throw his [Kent's] hat up in the air, and said,
"You couldn't hit my hat." Then he said, "Throw your hat in the
air," and he hit it three times before it hit the ground. Well, _I
saw him [do that] after he said, "Oh, my eyes are no good, and I
can't see." Because he [used to] hit empty .22 shells thrown up in
the air with a .22 rifle. He'd guarantee that he'd hit three out
of ten, and he would sometimes hit five out of ten.

382

Kent: When we were in Washington, I went down to Florida. Dad was sick,
and they took me down with him when we went to Tampa. Some real
estate guy took us out in these palmettoes and scrub pine to look
for quail, and all of a sudden Dad said, "Quiet!" and looked up in
the air. There was a hole in these pine trees that was about sixty
feet long and about forty feet wide, and two mallards stuck their
heads into this thing, and bang!

I'll never forget. This real estate man said, "He got one!"
And bang!, he got the other. It was just perfectly extraordinary
shooting by anybody's standards, because it was such a very short
distance [to track the flight].

Then I remember shooting with him in Washington, when Brother
Young laid on a quail hunt in some friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend —
Three or four quail got up, and one went kind of straight away. Dad
killed one, and I saw that one. Another one just went buzzing off
at right angles between the brush and Dad turned to me and he said,
"Did I get the second one?" I didn't think that there was a
Chinaman's chance of it. I said, "I don't think so."

He said, "I had a pretty good line on that bird." We went over
there, and sure enough, there it was. But some of that [ability]
carried on. All of the boys were pretty good shots. I suppose I
was the most avid. When I was at Thacher, I won a number of
shooting prizes down there, and I was a shot on the Yale freshman
gun team, which was no great distinction because there weren't very
many people that could shoot back there. Then I did a lot of shooting
out here.

That dropped down to Kent Arnold, who was just a perfectly
remarkable hunter and shot, and a wonderful boy that was a Marine
paratrooper and was killed at Iwo Jima. His friends said that he
led his platoon — he was a platoon commander — through the objectives
all day long, and then he hunted Japanese behind the lines all
night long, and he lasted about eight days. He was perfectly extra
ordinary, a wonderful boy.

Brower: Was he a nephew?

Kent: That was a nephew, my sister Elizabeth's boy, Kent Arnold.

Kent: Then, the strange thing is that it has devolved on a kid, Fred

Schardt, who is the son of my daughter Molly. Molly never cared
anything about shooting or hunting. She married a guy* who was an
artist and landscape designer and contractor and who is extremely
artistic and doesn't give a damn about shooting. And this kid, Fred
Schardt, is just an absolute natural hunter and fisherman and just

*Max Schardt

383

Kent: goes mad about it and is just very, very good technically in every
way. His whole attitude is just that of the true sportsman and
true outdoorsman.

Well, it is funny. My dear wife Alice was commenting on that
thing going down the generations.

Schooling and Sports in Washington, D.C.

Kent: I'll switch to Washington now, and we can come back to California.
I went to the Potomac School, which was a girls' school. (They
took men through kindergarten and the first and second grade, I
think.) I went there one or two years. It was one day that I was
there that my father came and got me, for this deal that my mother
had laid on. At Kentfield, they had one of these junior cities,
and they had a meeting down there of these kids going to grammar
school and, I think, high school. This must have been when I was
five or six, something like that.

They called on Mother, and my father was in Congress at the
time, and so Mother, not having anything better to say, said that if
they had a message to deliver to President Wilson, then no doubt
Roger would be glad to carry the message to President Wilson.

So one day I'm sitting in the Potomac School — I guess they'd
warned me about it. The old man arrived with the car, and down
we went to the White House, and in we were ushered to the President
of the United States, who couldn't have been more pleasant. There
were just the three of us there, and we just said a few words back
and forth, and I said that here was the message that I was to deliver
to him from this Kentfield civic group. He shook me by the hand
and we left. Now this had to be before my mother picketed the White
House for women's suffrage.

I can remember Mother — I remember one time in that Washington
house on Valentine's day. The doorbell rang, and I rushed to the
door and opened the door and I looked over the side of the stairway
and there was Mother, hiding. I felt ashamed of myself for having
caught her, but that was my Valentine.

Then I remember that I had a vast admiration for all of
Mother's qualities. When we had a baseball game going on outside,
I think finally Mother arrived on our team, and I thought that was
just the greatest thing in the world. She was a pretty horrible
baseball player. They claim that I wept about her [laughs], but
I don't remember that particularly.

384

Brower: You mean about her bad — ?

Kent: Her bad performance, yes. But then one of the things that she used
to do was, of course, as a congressman's wife, go to all these
various parties that were laid on by various dignitaries in
Washington. Most often, she would come back and open up her purse
and bring out some of the tastiest little old candies and cakes and
whatnot you can imagine, which she'd stolen from her hostess, and
pass them around to us kids .

I stayed at the Potomac School those two or three years and
then went to the Friends School, Sidwell Friends School, which was
a very good school. In the early stages, when it was the under-
ninety-pounds class and so forth, I was about the top athlete in
the school, and Mother and the old man used to come out. They
were quite happy and pleased.

My academic work was pretty good. It wasn't as good as it was
later at Thacher. But they were pleased. What Mother would do in
the summertime [was take us to] the Sidwell Friends School [Country
Club] — I think it's where the school is now, out on Connecticut
Avenue, which was out beyond the juncture of Massachusetts and
Connecticut. It was just nothing but countryside. This was the
Friends School Country Club. They had athletics out there in the
summertime, in the spring.

My dear mom had learned to drive an electric, and my father I
don't think ever did. He finally got one and he finally could drive
it. But he didn't like to; he so much preferred to be driven by a
chauffeur. So Mother referred to this as the "bug." She would
ask me if I wanted a ride out to the Friends School Country Club in
the bug. Quite often I'd take one of my friends to ride out with us.
We'd go out, and she'd stay out there in the afternoon for an hour
or two while we played games, and then give us a ride back home.
Otherwise, we could get in [to town] by trolley car and get fairly
close to the house.

Brower: Do you suppose your relation with her was rather special because
you were youngest, the baby?

Kent: I suppose that that just about has to be. It was, somewhat. But
she was very fair and very warm to all of the other ones. My old
man made the remark about my sister Addie. They asked him how
many kids he had, and he said he had six. He had one that ran
around so fast that he couldn't count her. He would be a pretty
strict disciplinarian, and Addie had a very stiff back. Sometimes
they would get into some kind of confrontations. Mother would always
smooth those down.

385

Kent: Addle went to — I've forgotten the school that she went to in
Washington. It was a girls' school. It was a very good one.

First World War

Kent: Of course, the war came on. My father, as I say, he was a very

rigid disciplinarian when he wanted to be. He and Albert — Albert
had been the oldest, and had, I guess, gotten a lot more perhaps
than the rest of us. Albert, being in the class of '13, had a lot
of friends who went into the war. He had one particular friend
from Utah, I remember, Emer Allen, who had been a track man at Yale
and a very close friend.

Albert might have been considered fat, except that he was so
hard that he was not really fat. He was just a rugged guy. He
played water polo. By 1931, he went out first to the ranch in
Nebraska, I think, that they had with Kent and [Ed] Burke Company.
Then he went to take over this ranch in Nevada. He, in the worst
way, wanted to get into the war. The old man just said that his job
of raising food was just so much more important than one more man
in uniform.

In the meantime, Tommy, who had been working for the railroad
and who always had this craze for mechanical things, decided that
nothing would do but that he would be an aviator. Mother and Dad,
as far as I know, didn't try to stop him. They even helped him to
go to a private aviation school. The army wouldn't accept people who
didn't have any aviation training.

Then he got into the army, and he was well advanced at that
time. They sent him to someplace in Louisiana, where he was in one
hell of a typhoon, and a lot of airplanes were busted, and I think
some people were hurt. After that, they sent him to San Diego as
an instructor. Several of his students became members of the
Lafayette Escadrille, and several of them were killed. Almost
everybody in his first class was killed because, of course, they
were flying single-engine airplanes of great unreliability and
they had no parachutes .

Tommy, whose normal build was, I guess, about five foot eight
and a half, or nine, with a weight of about a hundred and seventy
(he wrestled and whatnot and was a strong guy), came out with this
hair-raising experience, plus an illness, at about a hundred and
twenty [pounds] when the war was over.

Brower: Excuse me, do I understand that in addition to teaching other
people, Tommy went himself?

386

Kent: He wanted to go, but he never got a chance. He was always putting
in to go to France, but they kept him there as an instructor.

Bill signed up with the ROTC to go to artillery school, and
he went out here to [the] Presidio. At that time, Mother and Father
built a little house next to the big house, which was called the
overflow. Bill used to have his friends come over on weekends
before they finished their school. I remember they had a game
where they'd lie on their backs and put their feet up into the air
and they'd have me sit on their feet and see how far they could
catapult me. [Brower chuckles] They got a bigger guy than usual
and he kicked me about ten feet, and I came down on my head and
shoulder and broke my collarbone, which didn't please my mother
particularly.

Then shortly after that, Bill went to France and was assigned
to combat unit. He was right up at the front lines when the
Armistice came on, and he had been there for several months. His
outfit had taken quite a beating.

Armistice Day

Kent: I'm going to divert here and tell a story that I saw on TV [inaudible]

the other day. One of the most charming stories —

It was Armistic Day, and they had this fellow who was over in
Layfayette and who, I think, was about eighty- three. They said,
"Well, this is Armistice Day. Do you remember Armistice Day in
1919?" He said, "I'll say I do!" "What do you remember about it
particularly?" "Well," he said, "I was a runner," which I guess
was about one of the worst jobs you could have, running from the
back to the front lines to carry messages. He said, "Every night,
you couldn't smoke a cigarette, you couldn't light a match, you
couldn't have a light of any kind showing out of any place."

He said, "I remember that night. It was November, and it was
cold, and all of a sudden the boys went out into the trees and they
knocked down all the dead wood they could find, and there was
nothing you could see all through those trees but great big fires
going, and people sitting around the fires ." That kind of a
vignette is such a beautiful thing, and so true you can imagine the
impression it would make on someone.

Brower: Oh, yes. What are your own recollections of that day?

387

Kent: Of Armistice Day? Well, I was of course just thrilled to pieces.

I mean, we had seen the beaten up French units march in Washington,
and we'd seen an overfly of airplanes, which thrilled us.

Brower: You were back in California?

Kent: No, no, we were in Washington at this time. You see, this was the
time — Dad once remarked to me, he said, "Damn it, I don't know how
I would have voted if I had had a vote in Congress and voted on
war, because I knew the horrors of it, and I knew the awful things
that had been done. I had been through Germany one whole summer,
three or four months, and in Austria. I'd been fishing and camping
and just in the country with another fellow. I never have met nicer
people. It just horrified me, the whole business."

The Senior Rents ' Independent Political Courses

Kent: But by this time, he had been elected in 1912, in 1914, because in
1912, he had supported Teddy Roosevelt. He was a great friend of
Teddy Roosevelt's. William Howard Taft decided to purge him, as
has been unsuccessfully tried by many presidents in the past, when
he was running for Congress in 1914. Dad was disgusted then with
the regular Republican machine. He had been working for Theodore
Roosevelt, and he had about decided not to run for Congress.

Then he said, "To hell with Taft and the rest of these guys,"
and he ran as an independent in the first district and was really,
as I recall, quite easily elected to the term of 1914 to 1916.
In 1916, he was chairman of Independents for Wilson in California.
At that point, I guess, there were about ten thousand Democrats in
the state of California. Obviously, the only way that Wilson
could conceivably carry California was that he carry a very large
number of the Republican votes and the independent vote.

Of course at that time, Hughes went to bed on the night of
the sixteenth thinking he was president, and it was Siskiyou County
that came in the next morning with about a hundred votes, a
hundred and fifty votes for Wilson, and Wilson was the president.

This was another story that's not completely in sequence, and
that is that my mother had been active in the National Woman's
party and I'll get into that. She had been very much opposed to
Wilson because Wilson would not support votes for women. So she
and her friends picketed the White House, and a number of them were
taken off to jail. The old man had to go down and bail them out
and then, much to my mother's displeasure, had left enough money
down at the jail [with the instructions] that if Mrs. Kent ever
showed up in jail again, that she was to be bailed out. [laughs]

388

Kent: But anyway, Mother came out and campaigned in Oregon for Hughes in

that election of '16, and Oregon went for Hughes and California went
for Wilson by this shadow.

Brower: Did she do it in Oregon rather than in California so as not to
erabarass your father?

Kent: I think that was it. I think that that was just courtesy and whatnot.
I can remember, I'm sure, the 1912 election at Kentfield. We were
still in the old house, and I remember my father, who was never a
great friend of the telephone, just sitting on the telephone for a
day or a day and a half, getting the results of that 1912 presidential
election.

But anyway, at that time, I don't recall exactly why he didn't
run in '16, except that he thought that maybe Wilson would be
elected. At that time, they had — [phone rings]

Brower: We just moved from the 1912 election.

Kent: At that time, one of the great liberal issues, as you probably recall,
was tariffs. The beating that the American farmer was getting in
terms of having to sell in a world market and buy in a protected
market — What they did was, instead of [solving the unbalance] with
a freer trade solution, they eventually did it with a subsidy. But
the old man and his friends were all for a freer trade so that the
guy could buy a Caterpillar [tractor] for half of what he'd have
to pay in this country, and the farmer would be able to — And the
old man was very sensible. He knew that all of this couldn't be
done in a day.

But anyway, at that time, they set up a tariff commission. At
that time, they did something which I guess they later found out
was impossible. They set it up with the idea — [Kent answers door] —
that there would be two Republicans, two Democrats, and an
independent. Well, subsequently, they have made these commissions
so that they're three of the party in power and two of the party
out of power, because it's almost impossible to find an independent.
The old man had all of the credentials of an independent. He had
been a Republican and then he had run as an independent and been
elected as an independent. So he went on the tariff commission.

That was the last year that I was in Washington, when he was
on the tariff commission.

389

Short-legged Walks with Mother##
[Interview 18: April 27, 1977]

Brower: Was your mother an outdoorswoman, Mr. Kent?

Kent: She loved the outdoors. One of the things that she used to do at
Kentfield — I think it goes all the way back to the time when I was
a small child. Certainly it goes to the days of the grandchildren.
She used to have what she'd call a "short- legged walk". That would
be usually Sunday. We'd start off from the house and look in the
barn, and walk back on the place, particularly in spring when there
was water in the creeks and flowers and stones and whatnot.

She'd have the kids back there with her and be looking at
lizards and birds and all of nature. One funny one was that there
was one particular hill that was back oh, a quarter mile, I'd guess.
It had a lot of quite shiny flinty rock on it. I was very, very
young, I guess. She said, "All right, we're going to let Roger
name this hill." [laughs] I guess they expected I was going to
name it after some of the rocks, among other things. I named it
Good Hill. [laughs]

This is quite funny, because Good Hill Road is one of the main
stems of Kent Woodlands at the present time.

I remember one story that I wasn't present at. At Tahoe, they
used to go back and pick gooseberries, wild gooseberries, and make
gooseberry jam. She lost her watch, and my father, who was of course
a great outdoorsman — when they got back and found the watch was gone,
he tracked her back for an hour almost until he found the watch
where it had been pulled off by brush.

Brower: May I ask you, was that the kind of little pin-on watch that they
wore then?

Kent: It was with a chain, I think, a simple gold chain. It was at that
time a thin Patek-Philippe watch which today would be considered
[inaudible]. My brother Sherman has it. He had it repaired and
still uses it. It's a wonderful watch.

She went on all the picnics at Tahoe. We were very often going
out in the boats, going to the beaches. At that time, I don't
think she did much fishing. The kids — I and the older brothers —
would be fishing in these streams coming into the lake, and we also
would be towing rowboats over and we would be trolling for fish.

390

Kent: I'm sure she never did any hunting, although when they were first
married, my father insisted that she learn to shoot with something
approaching his own skill. She was ashamed to have told us that he
insisted, that he would put a cigarette in his mouth and she'd
shoot the cigarette out with a .22 rifle. Obviously she never
missed.

Brower: [laughs] Good heavens!

Trading Plants with John McLaren

Kent: And then she was very much interested in gardens, in flowers and
shrubs and trees and whatnot. That, of course, is an interesting
thing about Kentfield, I think. My grandfather Albert Kent was a
friend of John McLaren. This may have been in some tape before.
John McLaren was much younger than my grandfather, but they became
friendly. My grandfather was importing various trees and shrubs
from other parts of the world, and so was John McLaren for Golden
Gate Park.

They had some trades and exchanges. I can remember, shortly
before John McLaren's death, that he came over to Kentfield to see
how various trees and shrubs and the things that he had exchanged
with my grandfather — how they were doing, as compared with how they
were doing in Golden Gate Park.

Grape Festival at Kentfield

Kent:

Surrounding the house — and this, again, I may have said before —
they planted four really quite large vineyards. I suppose they were
two or three acres each, at least. And a prune orchard. I'm sure
they had fig trees and cherry trees and raspberries. They had a
very, very good vegetable garden. The vineyards — there was a gal
who wrote a book about Marin County and it was her opinion that
Grandpa Kent planted the vineyards very largely for firebreak.
He, as far as I know, drank very little alcoholic beverages.

Certainly they never made any wine out of the grapes,
went over this once before.

I m sure I

Brower: Not with me.

Kent: The surplus grapes became the grapes that were sold at the grape
festival, which is still going on. In the early part of the
century, it was for the benefit of a Presbyterian orphanage. It

391

Kent: gradually built up into a big county kind of fair, participation by
the people in the county with cakes and baseball throwing and rifle
shooting and knitting and handmade goods and things like this that
were sold for the benefit of the Presbyterian orphanage. That went
on for many, many years.

Finally, it became so hazardous that my brother Bill finally
realized it. It used to be [held on] the first Saturday in October,
and that was usually — what?

Brower: It was hazardous because of the possibility of fire?

Kent: Of fire, yes. That was usually a pretty dry time. At that time,

the hills and fields more or less surrounding the house was covered
with dry grass, and pretty soon came the day of the automobile,
and the automobiles would be parked over this entire area, [chuckles]
My brother Bill envisaged what would happen if they ever got touched
off; he'd have a fire of monumental size.

Mother — as I'm pretty sure we said, they had two elderly, very
dark, hardworking Chinese gardeners. Mother was running them in
the cultivation and growth of flowers as well as shrubs , and as
well as vegetables. She was very strongly assisted by a Robert
Cunningham, whom my father had brought down from the Nevada ranch,
when he sold out the Nevada ranch, most of it, shortly after World
War I. Robert Cunningham had been a ranch manager up there, and
my father brought him back down to Kentfield. He took care of the
orchards and processing the prunes and taking care of the water
system and running the Chinese. He was a wonderful man, had a wife
and a couple of kids, and lived right down in front of the Kentfield
place.

They had a May Day [celebration] which was about as far from
the present idea of a May Day as you could get. It was very largely
Maypoles with children in organdy dresses and ribbons going 'round
and 'round the Maypole. All the schools would have delegations,
and they would usually meet up in our place. At least most all
the photographs that I've seen of them were up there. Then they
would proceed down to the site of the present junior college, which
earlier had become the Tamalpais Women's Center.

This again would be a picnic kind of a day. I don't know
whether — I don't have any recollection as to whether this was to
raise any money for any worthy purpose, or whether it was just a
good fun day. I think most likely it was the latter.

Brower: When you say junior college, do you mean the College of Marin?

Kent:

Yes, which was originally called the junior college.

392

Kent: You have here [in your questions] — how did she cope with my father's
absences? Now, he used to go off — there's no doubt about it — he'd
go off hunting and fishing with some of his friends, and that would
be in New Mexico and North Carolina and Nevada and Nebraska. In
a great many of these places, he also had business. In Nebraska,
particularly, he had a cattle feeding business with his classmate
and old friend Ed Burke, who had married one of his cousins with
whom he had been brought up.

Mother's Political Involvement

Kent: Mother kept herself busy. This would probably — of course, I would
have no recollection of anything prior to Washington. I expect
that very shortly after we moved to Washington, Mother became very
much interested in and very active in the National Woman's party
and votes for women. She had a cousin with whom she was very close
who was Mrs. John Rogers, always known to us as Aunt Lil. I may
think of her maiden name later. But it was again an interesting
relationship, because she had been a cousin of my mother's, and very
close in New Haven.

John Rogers, [Jr.], was a magnificent man, and a great big
guy and had rowed on the Yale crew and then become a leading New
York surgeon, particularly distinguished in being either the pioneer
in the thyroid operation for eye problems, or one of them. I think
he was the first and most prominent of them.

Quite often they would come out and visit us in California. I
can remember having spent a day or so in their apartment in New York,
and having gone to shows or something of this kind. Aunt Lil was
very bright, but she was very militant in her attitudes towards the
[National Woman's] party and other matters. I remember that particularly
she was also really more radical in a socialistic — perhaps even
Marxist — way than my mother. My father was certainly much more
liberal than his contemporaries but certainly was not over on this
tangent.

Mowry, in his book on the California Progressives, points out
that my father and a great many of those, such as Hiram Johnson,
Rudolph Spreckels, and some of the others who were the reformers,
were pretty much committed to the idea of reform — being for public
use of public domain, and not exploitation by the individuals — and
were very much interested in honest government.

He pointed out that my father was one of the first of these to
see that in any meaningful, true reform of the system (in which he
could see many, many flaws) that the average man was going to have

393

Kent: to be given an opportunity to make a decent living and support his

family in a decent way, rather than merely these somewhat idealistic
objectives of the Progressives and reformers.

But I think my mother, when my father was away, would be never
idle. She would be working with Alice Paul and with Lil Rogers and
with — I don't remember all of the other ladies who were there. I
can well remember one of the ladies telling me, when I was quite
young, "I hope you don't think your mother is just a mother. She
isn't just a mother; she's really quite an extraordinary person!"
[laughs] I said that I hoped that I felt that way.

Brower: Could I ask about her physical appearance?

Kent: She was small. I think I gave you that one picture where she was

rather full-bodied in middle age. I think she was slim when she was
young, and she was quite thin when she was older. My father died
in 1928, and she continued to run the Kentfield house, which was a
very large house, for a number of years. She went around the world
with my brother Albert, who'd had had a villainous time in the pre-
Depression days. When I say "pre-Depression," it was the depression
that hit agriculture in the United States before it hit the rest of
the economy. Then he came back and stayed at Kentfield.

I had been going to Yale in 1924. In my senior year, when my
father died, we came back — my brother Sherman and I — to the funeral,
and then went back and finished [school]. Sherman was in graduate
school at Yale, and I went to law school. So I was away during the
winters, but I'm quite sure that even then, I used to come back — and
I think Sherman also — to Kentfield for Christmas vacation. We one
time tried to figure out how many times I took that transcontinental
railroad in my life, which must have been between thirty and forty,
I guess, because we went back to Washington when the old man was in
Congress and on the tariff commission, and then I went East to Yale
and came back at Christmas and then went East to Yale and came back
at Christmas and then went to law school and usually came back at
Christmas.

We had some crazy business that we used to go and dive in the
swimming pool, which was ice cold, on Christmas day and New Year's
day, so that we could go back and tell our Eastern friends that we
were out in sunny California swimming on Christmas and New Year's.

Brower: But you didn't go home in the summers?

Kent: Oh, yes. We'd always come home in the summer. The one time that we
didn't come home in the summer would have been the summer of 1918.
My father was on the tariff commission, I'm quite sure, at the time.
He had that F Street house. He had gone to Yale and knew most of the

394

Kent: Yale folk, including Walter Camp, the famous football — the original
ail-American kicker and football player and coach and exercise nut.
He would have Walter Camp come around. I don't know whether it was
every morning or whether it was several times a week. A great many
of the key people in Washington government came to our place there
on F and Twentieth. Walter Camp gave them setting-up exercises.
This was to, presumably, keep them in good physical shape, thereby
contributing to their good mental health.

Family Vacations

Kent: That summer it was decided that the family would not go West. We
went up to Cape Cod, a little town called Osterville. My brother
Sherman went to a summer camp, and I went with the rest of the family
to this little house and caught fish off the dock, and eels, and
went out with some of the fishermen. Then when my brother Sherman
came back from camp, we went out fishing and caught bluefish. I
remember one time we — I guess that would have been 1918. I would
have been twelve and he would have been fourteen, say.

We stayed out too late with a sailboat, a rather heavy one.
Then we got becalmed, and we had to row. We finally rowed to a
place where we could see a light, and it was pretty late — maybe
eight or nine o'clock at night. The family was very much concerned,
and we finally got hold of them, and they brought us home. But we
also went fishing in freshwater lakes there. But otherwise we came
home every summer. As long as my father was alive and able to do it,
we stayed in this big house on the west shore of Tahoe. We had the
boat, and we'd go out on picnics and go camping. Then we'd go back
into the mountains on horses.

We had two or three horses. Again, my father had brought with
him from Nevada an old guy who was George Nichols, an old broken-
down cowpuncher, who was a very nice guy and a most amusing guy,
with a vocabulary which was a great addition to Sherman's and mine.
He took care of the horses and led, I think, a very pleasant life as
distinguished from being a real working cowboy.

After my father's death, and after he — at least, he quit going
to Tahoe. There were three years when I brought some friends out
from the East, maybe two friends and Sherman, and we went down and
went on the east side of the Sierras, from Independence or Bishop,
and took pack trips into the Sierras for a period of two weeks. I
just feel so sorry for these poor guys that are going in there now
with the hordes of people that they see and gasoline stoves. I mean,
we went in and there was all the wood in the world that you could
chop down and build your fires .

395

Kent: We, of course, we didn't carry our garbage out with us, but what
we always did was , we always burned all the garbage that would
burn, including the tin cans. We'd flatten the tin cans out and
dig a hole and bury them so we didn't desecrate the beautiful
mountains. Of course, we did a lot of shooting, a lot of fishing at
that time .

Brower: These would have been horse trips rather than backpack trips.

Kent: Yes, these were horse trips. Oh, we were terribly luxurious. I

mean, we would go in — at least, we never hired anybody to take care
of us. We'd go in — we'd been to Thacher, and we knew how to ride
a horse and how to pack a packhorse. We would usually go in — each
of us would have a horse, and we'd have two mules for pack horses.
Of course, we'd carry in equipment that a backpacker couldn't
carry. [laughs] We'd carry in maybe a dutch oven weighing thirty
pounds. It would be absurd to think of anything like that on a
backpack. Of course, we had sleeping bags. We never had rubber
mattresses or anything like that.

Brower: Did you use boughs for beds then?

Kent: Sometimes. But usually [not] — we were pretty young and in pretty

good shape. What we'd usually do would be to divide up the chores.
One team would be in charge of the horses, and there would be
another team that would be in charge of cooking and cleanup of the
camp. We would usually hobble the horses and mules, but even so
they could travel pretty far with that. The horse team was liable
to have a pretty rugged time collecting the animals in the morning
when we were going to move.

Brower: And you moved every day, more or less?

Kent: Sometimes we'd move every day, sometimes we wouldn't. We were in
that really high country and pretty rugged. It was this broken-up
granite. I remember one time we had to go through this broken-up
granite, and no dirt, nothing, for a period of hours. When we got
down to a camp, I was elected to reshoe the horses, because we
would use these soft lead shoes. They could be bent without being
heated, and put on. But the horses had pulled off about six or
seven shoes, and we'd have to reshoe them.

I remember one time — it was cold up there in the mountains — a
very amusing time. A mountain lion commenced making a lot of noise
one night, and the horses and mules all ran into camp. It was
freezing. The next morning I woke up. I had taken my underpants
off and put them alongside my sleeping bag, and one of the horses had
picked it up, chewed it up with a whole bunch of cud, and then spit
it out, and it froze. [laughter] I want to say that that was one
of the most unappetizing objects I ever looked at.

396

Kent: Occasionally we would unlawfully shoot some grouse up there. We

saw, from time to time, some deer. We never tried to shoot any. We
saw a few coyotes. But that country was just so absolutely
wonderful at that time, in the late twenties.

Then we'd come back, and usually on the way home to Kentfield
stop off at Tahoe at Secret Harbor and troll there. The old man Ed
Schmiedell had told my father, as the lake began to grow up and
people began to buy the beaches, that some of the old-timers had
better buy a beach for camping and picnicking and so forth, or they
would all be gone. So he bought, with my father and three or four
other families — the [William W. ] Meins and the [O.C.] Merrills and the
[Harry] Poetts. I have forgotten the others — a few hundred feet of
lake frontage and some backlands that had some water on it. This
became a perfectly delightful place to picnic and camp. And when
the time came when it became necessary and desirable to sell the
western side of the lake, we, the younger kids and our children and
our grandchildren and thereafter still use Secret Harbor.

Kent: The most wonderful thing about Secret Harbor was that it was

exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to get down to the lake
all the way from Sand Harbor at the extreme north until you got
down to Glenbrook in about the middle of the lake. Eventually, that
entire stretch was bought by George Whitell, so that we in Secret
Harbor were right in the middle of maybe as much as ten to fifteen
miles of unoccupied coastline. It was beautiful country. And,
there again, we used to be able to go fishing and take our lunch and
take a swim and then come back to Secret Harbor for the night.

My mother loved Tahoe, and she also — one of the things I was
thinking about was her imperturbability about bringing up seven
kids. One weekend up there I remember my sister Addie , who I guess
might have been fifteen or sixteen at the time. Her horse stumbled
and fell and stepped on her hand and made the dirtiest mess out of
the back of her hand you could imagine — it was all full of dirt and
was cut and bruised and it was hurt that way. My brother Bill was
splicing a rope for the boat and about cut his thumb off. I
dislocated my knee doing some damn thing. This all happened on one
day, and it seems we spent the day with the doctor, and my mother took
it all in stride. This was the kind of thing that naturally, if you
had a large family, was going to happen to you. She ran the house
just beautifully.

One of the things that they did, which was unusual — well in the
first place, they had a pond back of the house, and they would hire
somebody that would come and chop ice and fill an ice house full of
ice and sawdust. If you can believe it, that would last as ice for
the entire summer.

397

Kent: Then the vegetable garden at Kentfield would go on, and there was
a great big wicker, canvas- covered trunk that the Chinese gardener
would fill up with vegetables and ship up to Tahoe every few days.
We ate the Kentfield vegetables as well as what we got up there.
There were very often large numbers of guests there. My sister
Addie would have two or three girls , and Sherman and I might have a
couple of boys there.

We had fun and games. I remember one particular game was that
the girls were the waitresses at one dinner, and they were flapper
waitresses, chewing gum and very heavily made up and slapping
things around, so that the next day — I don't think we had any "best"
clothes but we [boys] had white flannels and dark shoes and bow ties.
We proceeded to serve dinner as it should be served at the finest
New York restaurant.

There were two enormous rooms upstairs. The girls slept in
one end and we slept in the other. Sometimes bowling events would
take place up there.

Brower: You spoke of guests of the children. Were there adult guests too?

Kent: Yes. I remember definitely Gifford Pinchot and his brother being
there. I remember Faville, the architect, and his wife being
there. I am sure that my father had other guests there. I know
that my aunt Lil Rogers and her two children, who were pretty close —
Ned Burke was very close to Sherman in age and was in the same class
at Yale. He and his younger sister were there. I remember them being
there.

I remember one time again — this would be my mother's strengths —
we started across the lake from Secret Harbor, which of course is on
the eastern side. We had this old Marin, and it was a mistake,
because it was a damn rough day, and the waves were pretty high, and
this boat was a very old boat. The waves commenced washing all the
way over the decks, and we were out a mile or so, with thirteen
miles to go to get to California.

It became perfectly apparent that we weren't going to be able
to make it. They had some kids on there that were able to pump.
There was this one boy, Greg Merrill. I think he and I were about
thirteen or fourteen, and we had a rowboat. Sherman began to get
seasick, and he tied all the anchor ropes together.

He was very, very good with knots, and he better have been,
because he then threw the anchor overboard when they were more than
a half mile off shore. They were drifting in to this rocky shore of
the Nevada shore.

398

Kent: Greg Merrill and I rowed into Glenbrook. It was kind of stiff rowing
until we got into the entrance of Glenbrook, and then there were
these enormous big waves that were just giving us a ride in. We got
hold of some friends on the other side — I think particularly the Meins ,
The had a big boat, very capable of managing rough water. They came
over and picked everybody off the boat and brought them into
Glenbrook.

But as I say, I can just remember that there was just absolutely
no panic. My mother was in charge, and we discussed what we should
do and decided what we would do and how we would do it. It was done.

Brower: Must have been a little scary for her to send off her youngest child
in that rowboat.

Kent: Well, I guess. It was the only thing to do. I guess so, but she was
just perfectly composed. This is what had to be done. She also had
great confidence in us , in that we had had such a vast amount of
experience in handling small boats and other boats.

Brower: You said there were kids who could pump. This was referring to — ?

Kent: There were some other kids. One of them was this Rogers girl, and
Addie, my sister, was there and several of their friends. We had
a pretty good pump, and they could pump it out. I don't know what
would have happened if they hadn't, whether it would have sunk
right there or not.

Mother's Putting Family First

Kent: One of the stories that I want to make sure that I get [on tape shows]
this strength of character of my mother. This will be out of time
context — but [it took place] after she had moved out of the old Kent
house and built this new house, which she called New Haven, for
many reasons — one [being], of course, her having come from New
Haven and this being a "new haven." She had a very nice garden out
in back, and chairs and whatnot. She had, by this time, a number of
grandchildren, and some of us were still young enough so that she
would sometimes read and we'd listen. Then there was a time when I
would go over when she was feeling poorly and I would read to her in
the morning.

But anyway, she was obviously a great influence, particularly
on these grandchildren. She realized it, and she enjoyed them. We
knew she was being very, very helpful to them.

399

Kent: About this time, her brother William, who was just a nice, nice

old guy who never had been — as I think I've said before — never had
had anything like the sharpness of intellect of Sherman Day, began
to get a little softer and softer and softer in his head. He'd
forget things and then wouldn't do things. He would make mistakes
and whatnot.

Mother just loved him, of course. He had a room in her house.
She made it clear to him when he came in there — his daughter, in
the meantime, I think had gotten married and moved away, which made
no place for him. She told him that she had her family and her
children and grandchildren, and she intended to give the rest of her
life to them, and that she loved him and he could move in, but if he
ever became a burden on her and burdened the relationship that she
had with the family, that it was just too bad, he was going to have
to go.

It had been a very tight, close family. The time came when he
did become too much of a burden, and she said, "William, the time
has come to go." As I say, that took such courage and such —
It, I'm sure, just damn near killed her, but she decided that a life
with her children and the grandchildren growing up was more important
than taking care of an elderly and ill brother.

Brower: It takes an unusual capacity to recognize priorities.
Kent: Yes, yes.

Parental Authority

Brower: Can we move to the question about authority?

Kent: Yes. The authority was always exercised very, very gently and firmly,
if it became necessary. My father could get aggravated and be pretty
abrupt with some of the children, but very, very, very seldom. My
mother never. Of couse she, in those days, had this old Miss Lawlor,
who was English [and] who I think I mentioned had been brought in as
a governess for my brother Bill, when he was a kid. She stayed on and
on and on and on until long, long after she provided any function
other than, perhaps, to be a babysitter if any of us were sick, or
something of that kind, and do some sewing and whatnot.

She would instruct Miss Lawlor as to what we were to do. For
many, many years, I remember, we would respect Miss Lawlor's
delegated authority with respect to the colored folk who were
working for us in Washington. Mother always spoke to them quietly
and softly and firmly and ran the house the way she wanted it to be
run. They, I'm sure, all liked and respected her.

400

Kent:

If she said to do something, I mean it would never occur, I don't
think, to any of us that we wouldn't do it. She asked us to, but
it was usually done in such a manner that it was a request gently
put and followed.

The Prohibition Issue

Kent: You have that picture of her campaigning for votes for women here
in California, which I'm sure was 1910, but could have been later.
She was very vigorous in that movement. She also was definitely
interested in the prohibition movement. I don't remember her being
particularly involved in that, or me being in any parades on that.
I do remember being in the automobile occasionally when we were
displaying "Votes for Women" signs.

Then when she was back there in Washington, I said there was
that [National Woman's] party that was picketing the White House to
get Wilson to back votes for women. It was one of their activities,
but then they were very much, I expect, like the ERA today. They
were working, state by state, to get votes for women. I remember
one speech on the floor of the House that must be recorded in some
of the things my father gave, about votes for women.

"Well," he said, "I always concluded that all people should
have the vote. In my opinion, a woman is a person, and I don't see
any reason why women shouldn't have the vote. I am, of course,
dedicated to do what I can to get votes for women."

Brower: Could I return just a moment to the Prohibition issue? Was

Prohibition observed in your family household when it became a law?

Kent: No. It was publicly observed, but my father would have a drink or
two before dinner. The older boys would come home. And if they
had anything, they would bear up and go up to Sherman's and my room
and have a drink up there. But there was never a formal service of
cocktails or wine or beer or anything of that kind.

Brower: May I ask you — do you think that had any effect on your view of the

Kent:

law and the sacredness of the law, or
interpret the law himself a bit?

of a person's right to

No, I don't think so. I don't think so. I think by the time I went
to college in the fall of 1923, a flouting of the Prohibition law
was, you might say, universal. In all of the houses of my friends
that I'd go in, they usually would offer a drink. At Yale we would
buy a bottle from a bootlegger and drink it. I don't think it really

401

Kent: ever occurred to me that I was breaking the law, even though I

clearly was. See, I knew that the bootlegger was breaking the
law.

It certainly has many, many of the similarities to the
marijuana [issue] of some time back. That is, a vast number of
people were drinking. You weren't "with it," really, if you
didn't drink and, as I understand it (because I've never been
tempted by marijuana — the only time I ever tried it, I went to
sleep. I only smoked it a little bit, but I never got anything out
of it), the smoking of marijuana, I think, was very, very similar
to the drinking of alcohol. You weren't with the crowd if you
wouldn't smoke a joint. Most people weren't considered to be with
the crowd if they wouldn't take a drink back there in the
Prohibition days.

Family Decision Making

Kent:

B rower:

Kent:

B rower:

It was the same thing, as far as lawfulness was concerned. [tape
turned off and restarted] Her decision making [showed] that she
was a strong person and a wise person. I'm positive that she was
freely and constantly consulted by my father in all kinds of
things. Now there are other things, I'm sure that she wasn't
consulted in. She tells about Dad coming home and saying that he'd
bought Muir Woods because he couldn't afford to see them go. That
clearly had been his decision, and she concurred in it.

Would you mind telling on tape what he said? Do you remember what
he said, when she said, "This is really not a time for us to have
an obligation like this," and he said —

I remember the substance of it, which was, "Well, it's better that
we go busted than that those trees are lost for the future."

I think, for instance, a lot of things just kind of fell into
place. In other words, it was almost certain that the boys should
go to Thacher because of her connection there, and that they would
go on to Yale because of her father and family and Dad's going to
Yale and his father going to Yale.

But not the girls,
their choices.

There wasn't quite that inevitability about

402

Kent: No, no, there wasn't. Addie — I don't know. I think she kind of

made up her mind. She went to a school in Washington, the name of
which escapes me. I suppose that she went to that because the
larger number of her close friends went there. Elizabeth did not
go to college.

Siblings and In-laws

Kent: It wasn't very long after we had moved to Washington that Elizabeth
was married [to Stanleigh Arnold]. Elizabeth's oldest daughter, who
was also named Elizabeth, is only eight to ten years younger than
I am, is all. So the Arnold family — the next Arnold child was a
girl, and then the next four were boys. Particularly the two
oldest boys, Stan and Kent, were just like brothers to me, and so
was, to a lesser extent, Pete. They were far older than Tommy's
two adopted daughters or Bill's kids, who were not born until after
the war.

Incidentally, Tommy was in the Air Corps and flying for the
army, and then announced that he was marrying Anne Thompson of
Long Island. [She] was this very cheery and nice gal who was a
librarian down in Long Island. I remember that because it was the
summer of 1918, because Mother and Father went down to the wedding
and we did not. We stayed in Osterville and, as I said, Tommy
lived through the war [although] the perils of being an instructor
without a parachute and with ignorant flyers was probably more
perilous than being in France. Then Tommy got into the real estate
business in Marin County, and Bill came out and commenced to work
for my father.

FDR Wins Mother's Allegiance

Kent: She certainly did have this amount of vigor of mind. She certainly

did have a very vigorous mind. One of the things that was interesting
on the political spectrum — I, in I guess it must have been '28,
went up to San Rafael and saw the old county clerk. I said, "I
want to register to vote," and he passed me a Republican ballot
and I said, "Not me. I want to register as a Democrat." He looked
at me as if the eyes would fall out of his head, and he said,
"You're the only member of your family." I said, "I expect I am,
but I'm going to register Democratic and I'm going to vote for Al
Smith."

403

Kent: I don't know what happened to the other kids. If Sherman and

Addle bothered to register and vote at all, which I expect they
probably did, they probably went along on it and registered
Republican. But then after Roosevelt's election, and after
Roosevelt began to do some of the things that we felt had to be
done, there was a switch. The two other younger ones — Sherman,
two and a half years older than I was, and Addie, who was six or
more [years older], became very firm New Dealers. So did my mother.

It became apparent in a number of conversations that I had
with Mother that she felt that my father would have just been
absolutely delighted that FDR had come along and was accomplishing
many of the things that my father regarded as of the utmost
importance. Mother continued to be a Democrat, [laughs] even
though she was the president of the garden club and other things.
Practically none of the old ladies that she — and the reading club! —
that were her old friends — I'm sure there weren't any of them,
practically, that were Democrats. But Mother had a Roosevelt
sticker on her car, and that was that.

She helped me in my campaign in 1948. We discussed many of
the issues of the day and were substantially always in agreement.

Brower: It came a generation late. Do you remember that your father, when

he was congratulated on his twenty-firt birthday, sent a wire to your
grandfather saying, "You have just congratulated the first Democrat
in the Kent family," although he had no real intention of being a
Democrat. He just said it to excite a little controversy. [laughs]

Kent: [incredulously] I'll be damned. I hadn't heard that. I remember
after he lost that Senate election in — was it '22, I guess. Or
'20 — when he ran against Wallace and against Shortridge and ran as
a Republican.* I remember him saying that he wished that he had
abandoned the Republicans at that point completely and had run
independent again, as he had successfully run in the congressional
election of 1914.

Brower: I suppose it might have made a difference.

Kent: It might. It would have been exceedingly difficult, even in those
days .

*Kent ran as a Progressive against fellow Progressive Albert J,
Wallace and Republican Samuel Shortridge.

404

Life at Kentfield##
[Interview 19: May 4, 1977]

Brower: After the account of your mother, we were going to talk about life at
Kentfield.

Kent: Yes. The first question that you had here was did we dine with the
adults? The answer is yes. We would enter into the discussions
in some cases. I think all of us were somewhat interested in the
political scene, and certainly my mother and father were particularly
interested in the suffrage business. My father, of course, was very
much interested in his trips and his hunting and fishing, and would
encourage us to kill all the varmints in the Kentfield place. That
was the blue jays, the crows, the cats that were preying on the
other birds and on small animals. We had an armory of guns that he
had. He, of course, bought all the ammunition for them.

High Schooling

Kent: This was when I was going to Tamalpais High School, which was the
two years after he left Washington on the tariff commission. I
think that was 1919. I went to Tamalpais High School. I went from
seventh grade in the Friends School in Washington to first-year
high school in Tamalpais High School. It was a reflection on the
public education of California that it was just a breeze. Further
more, I took the college board examinations, I guess, after the
second year. I think I got 27 in one examination and 28 in the
other and passed the third with 60. I don't think I ever flunked
another examination in my life. The California public education at
that time was terrible, but I had a wonderful time playing light
weight football and swimming, because we had a swimming pool. I
naturally had a great advantage over the other kids who did not have
a pool.

Then we would have a lot of kids up at Kentfield playing
football in the fields and baseball and things of that kind and
swimming. The swimming pool went in about 1917.

Living Off the Land

Kent: When we talk about dining with the family, remember that my father

was very fond of ducks. Most of his descendants have been. We would
bring on the ducks, and the old man would carve the ducks and give

405

Kent: everybody half a duck. Then he would usually fill up the kids with
what they called "carcasses," which would be what was left of the
duck after the half had been carved off. We were permitted to
just get into a terrible mess. Somebody would then say, "Open
the door," so somebody would open the door and we'd go out holding
our hands up in the air to get to a sink where we could wash our
hands. I remember those very well.

I also remember that in the days before freezing, and even
in the days before large-scale refrigeration, the game was always
taken care of by a screened shaded area they used to call a game —
I've forgotten. But anyway, it would keep it cool and keep flies
off. But it's clear where the old tradition of the British eating
game — where "gamy" came from. I mean, they didn't have the means of
really refrigerating anything heavily — certainly not freezing.

When my father, possibly with the older boys, would come back
from Tule Basin up in the Suisun marsh, and at a time when the limit
for ducks was twenty-five, they might come back with seventy-five
ducks. They might send us down the street near the house with ducks,
just pass [them] out to anybody who might want them.

We had a similar situation to that at Tahoe at about that time.
I guess probably about 1917 or '18, when Pyramid Lake was just
teeming with big cutthroat [trout], and we'd come back with maybe
forty or fifty big fish, five-pound fish perhaps. We would put them
up in salt brine, but then in addition to that, my father would say,
"Well, take them down to some of these poor damn campers that are
camped along the lake and who will never catch a fish around here
anyway." So we'd pass out the fish there. [tape turned off]

Brower: The swimming pool wasn't standard equipment, as it is now, was it?

Kent: That's right.

Brower: Yours must have been the first in the area.

Kent: Ourswasone of the very, very first. It was a very strange one,

because they were worried at that time that you might hit your head
on the bottom, so the pool was eleven feet deep. It was sixty feet
long and thirty feet wide, which is certainly larger than it is now.*

We were just extraordinarily lucky, because the water for the
pool came from a well down near the present highway that
goes through Kentfield, and it was very heavily mineralized and quite

*Reinforcing in the 1950s reduced the square footage of pool area.

406

Kent: muddy, so that you couldn't see the bottom in deep water. I still
think that — having that pool that way for twenty years — we
were awfully lucky that nobody drowned or got in bad trouble, when
you couldn't see who was in the pool.

That same water was used for the garden, and the domestic
water came from springs.

Notable Guests

Kent: Our role when guests were present — it would largely depend on the
guests. I remember some of the guests that I can identify, were
very, very interested in what we were thinking about. My father
had come down here with [Jay] Bruce, who was the state lion hunter
and who was a charming guy. I fished with him at Yosemite, and he
had dogs there. He was naturally talking about subjects that were
fascinating to us.

We had Paul Hunter, who had been on San Juan Hill with Theodore
Roosevelt and who was the postmaster up in Fortuna and a great
fisherman and hunter that used to go with my father. Those subjects
were of great interest to us that he would discuss.

Then, of course, when some of the real politicos like Gifford
Pinchot were there — I think I remember John Muir. I couldn't swear
to it, but I'm quite sure I did.

I remember one time we had some fellow stay with us. I think
it was Alverson. He was a wine expert, and my father — one of his
great contributions was that he was the author of the bill which
provided that anybody could make three hundred gallons of wine for
home consumption and he didn't have to have any license from anybody
to do it, and he didn't have to pay any taxes and he didn't have
to make any reports. If he made three hundred gallons of wine for
home consumption, that was it.

Then there were a lot of complications about it as to what you
were going to be allowed to add to it — would you be allowed to add
sugar to it. He, even though it was perhaps contrary to the interests
of California, because our grapes have more sugar in them than the
Eastern grapes, did put in, over the objections of some of his
California colleagues, this provision.

Another one of the same kind where he stood up for the national
interests against the purely local one was — I remember him telling
me that I think they wanted to charge — northern California congress
men, particularly in the East, particularly the shipping people wanted

407

Kent: to charge different and higher tolls in the Panama Canal to foreign
vessels than American vessels. I remember him talking to somebody
or to us that he was the only congressman from either seaboard that
voted to uphold the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty [of 1901] (I think I'm
correct in the name of the treaty) , which had provided that if the
United States built the Panama Canal, that the tolls would be equal
to the United States vessels and other vessels.

Brower: That was really international versus national interests.

Kent: Yes, but you see it was national against — yes, it was national.

Our people could have then — probably the tolls would have been really
drastically dropped below the international level. They could have
monopolized the trade going through the Panama Canal.

Brower: Those seaboard states could have, yes.

Kent: Of course, subsequently something akin to that was passed when they
said that no American cargoes could be shipped between American
ports in anything except American ships .

Christinas Party for the Help

Kent: Besides these times when we would have these distinguished people
at Kentfield — and there certainly were a good many of them — they
always had at least one party — a Christmas party — where they had
all of the people who did any work on the place. They were a very,
very interesting and nice crew. There was Robert Cunningham, as
I've said, the Scotch foreman. Then there were the Chinese gardeners
and the Chinese fellows that worked in the house and then old
Margaret Stover, who was of German ancestry, and Miss Lawlor, who
was British. Then there were subsequently some very charming — a
very strong German couple who came in and were chauffeur and cook.
But before their time, the chauffeur was first this William McFadden,
who was Scotch- Irish I think, and who had worked at Tahoe on the
boats. Then after [him came] a man named Lageson [spells it], who
was a Swede and who was a chauffeur.

Brower: Did the German couple or Miss Stover have any difficulties during
World War I?

Kent: I think this took place after World War I. Margaret Stover was
there before World War I, but she had no problem.

Brower: No problem at all?
Kent: No problem at all.

408

Brower: She might have had more difficulty if her name had been different.

Kent: Yes, yes. That's right. Then there was a dairyman, Bill. He was
a Welshman. I've forgotten his name. Oh, Williams, Bill Williams.

Anyway, they'd have a Christmas party and it would be
representative of all the various nationalities that were present.
There were very nice presents for everybody. It was quite a cheery
affair.

Brower: When you say representative of the nationalities, what do you mean?

Kent: As I recall, the Chinese fellows would come with their straw hats
and this kind of thing. I'm sure that Miss Lawlor and Margaret
Stover didn't get dressed up in any national costumes. Bob Cunningham
might come with kilts and a bagpipes that he wasn't very good with.

Brower: I thought perhaps they contributed food or gifts or something
characteristic of their —

Kent: I'm sure they did. I'm sure they did contribute food and brought
things. We had on the place about twenty or thirty cows. We had
our own milk and cream and butter and whatnot. Of course, one of
the reasons to have the cows there was to eat the grass for fire
prevention. But I'm sure it was very expensive milk and cream as
well as the vegetables. The Chinese had this great vegetable garden.
My mother used to take such great joy in these lovely fresh
vegetables picked the afternoon that they were cooked. The remark
would be, "They're frightfully right out of the garden," she'd say
as we would eat these corn and beans and other wonderful fresh
vegetables.

Hunting Wild Cats

Brower: You didn't ever accompany Bruce on one of those lion hunts, did you?

Kent: I didn't. As far as I know, there was only one that took place in
Marin County. They used, in those days, to track down these lions
if they could, and then they would go to exterminate. Very strange
things took place after that, because I guess it was particularly
after a great deal of logging was done, and brush grew up instead of
trees, that the deer population became much bigger than it had been.
Back in those days, about the only thing that you would be shooting
lions for would be protecting the deer population, because there
were, as I recall, practically no authenticated cases of lions
killing calves. We didn't have any sheep.

409

B rower: There was a bounty on the lions.

Kent: There was a bounty on them. They probably did kill some calves up
in the mountains. But later on, I shot over at the old Bear Valley
Ranch, which is now part of Point Reyes National Seashore. The
fellow who owned it, Bruce Kellam — I told him I'd taken a shot at
this buck. He was mad at me. Subsequently I killed a coyote over
there, and he was even madder about that, because he said that the
[Department of] Fish and Game people told him that in his fifteen
thousand or more acres, that he was nourishing about five thousand
deer, and about the only thing that was killing the deer were the
coyotes. The one coyote that I shot was as fat and sleek as a show
dog. The owner of the ranch was very distressed that I would shoot
a coyote.

He said also that the wild cats were not eating quail. The
fish and game people had examined the stomachs of fifteen or twenty
wild cats that had been trapped during the nesting season, and it was
nearly all small animals — gophers and rabbits and moles and things
of this kind — and they were living on.

Brower: You had thought that they were quail eaters.

Kent: Yes. It was some of the lore that we got from the old man. He

certainly felt that the tame cats — and I think he was undoubtedly
right — did it. But apparently the wild cats were few enough there
so that it wouldn't amount to anything.

What I'm really surprised about is that my mother made no
objection to our trapping. This was the last two years that I was
at Tamalpais High School. I trapped, and when my brother Sherman
came home from Thacher, we would go out and skin these animals and
send them to the St. Louis Fur Company. We made about twenty- three
dollars, or something of that kind.

The cruelty of the leg-hold trap just apparently never crossed
anybody's mind at that time. It certainly would be very difficult
to have permissive trapping of that kind at this time. We would
catch mostly skunks, a few coons, once in awhile a fox. Occasionally,
we'd catch a very exhausted dog that we'd have to put in a sack and
carry down, because he'd be tired out.

Brower: It's a curious thing, isn't it, the changes in feeling about these
things, or awareness even. [Kent murmurs assent] How many pelts
did it take to make twenty- three dollars? [laughs]

Kent: Strangely enough, right after World War I, there was a fairly good
market. I think we'd get about four or five dollars for a skunk
skin. Of course, skinning a skunk is a very unpleasant thing to do.

410

Kent: Not because — you certainly could avoid the glands, but the skin was
stuck very tight with fat, whereas a coon or a fox, you could
almost peel it like a banana. They would be worth maybe three or
four dollars. If you got a clear-colored cat, say a grey cat or a
black cat, that would usually be worth about fifty cents.

Train Hopping, Music Lessons, and Amusements

Kent: I, of course, would ride a bicycle down the hill to the railroad

train and run it up into a field and run across a little bridge and
grab the electric train at the last moment and go down to
Tamalpais School and then come back in the afternoon by electric
train. It was such a much better way of transporting children,
even though there might be some danger involved. There were very
seldom any injuries. The present horrible business of buses all
over — But I think the Tamalpais School at that time was, as I
said, a pretty low-grade educational institution. The whole Marin
system now — Tamalpais, Redwood, Drake, San 'Rafael — I think are
excellent schools.

My brother Sherman took violin lessons. He'd get along all
right with music. He also learned how to play a saw. I had
absolutely no aptitude for nor interest in any music. They tried to
get me to take piano lessons. They gave that up as a bad job after
a reasonably short time. Then my mother would insist on having one
or two dances at the place every year. These were of no pleasure
to either Sherman or me. [chuckles] I doubt if they were a
pleasure to the people who came to them. This was when we were
kids, going to school.

The older children, who of course were being brought up in
Prohibition time — they would be getting some stimulus for some of
these dances. They had some cheerier times at their dances than we
did.

Brower: Would this be the pocket flask?

Kent: Yes, that era. And then besides that, there was a very interesting
thing. They used to have a Yale-Harvard picnic on the back of the
place. There was quite a bit of that moonshine flowing freely
back there. They used to have a baseball game. There 'd usually
be probably as many as, I should judge, fifty to a hundred people
from around the bay that would come to it.

411

Horseback Trips

Kent: Besides the cows on the place, they had some workhorses that plowed
up the hay fields and plowed up the prune orchards and the vineyards
and this. Then there were always two or three regular riding
horses. Usually they were older, retired almost specimens that
came down from Nevada. On a couple of occasions we would pack
them up and ride them all the way over from Kentfield — we'd go out
to the marsh and then out along the highway to what is now known
as Muir Beach. It's at the foot of Frank Valley down below Muir
Woods. I think at that time it was called — I've forgotten.

We'd camp down there. One time, we were damn near poisoned
by the mussels, a bunch of kids. I went and got water, which was
quite a ways away. By the time I got back, all the rest of the
kids were really pretty sick. But nobody got mortally —

We would also go and take horses and go to down below Alpine
Dam. We would do that in the wintertime and spear steelhead, and
sometimes catch crayfish in the creek there. We might spend a
weekend if it was a nice time. If it rained or was rough, we'd
turn around and come home. That would be usually Sherman and me and
a couple of our friends. So we really had just a wonderful outdoor
life.

I remember my father was so crazy about the outdoors. He didn't
want anybody to make noises. I remember him telling me when he was
really quite on in years. He said, "I never did think that a gun
disturbed the outdoors until a few years ago, but I never could
stand to have somebody yell or screech or scream." He was the most
remarkable shot, as well as a very remarkable hunter. He taught us
an awful lot about being quiet and walking slowly and seeing and
enjoying what there was in the wilds.

Brower: Did he know Aldo Leopold, do you know? He was also a great hunter
about that time. He really was from Wisconsin.

Kent: I didn't know him.

William Kent: Public Lands for Public Use##

Kent: On this question about electricity at Kentfield, I would bet that

from a very, very early time we had electricity at Kentfield. I base
that on the fact that there's such a clear recollection of kerosene
lamps and candles at Tahoe, and none such as far as Kentfield was
concerned. Of course, as far as heating was concerned at Kentfield,

412

Kent: there were wood fires in substantially every room until quite a bit
later. Then there was a great big center-draft oil furnace that
came up through the front hall. Eventually that was diverted with
big fans and warmed up other parts of the house.

You have some question here about the Hetch Hetchy controversy.
I don't remember anything about the Hetch Hetchy controversy at that
time. I didn't learn about it until many, many years later.

Brower: Actually, I suppose you were in Washington during the worst of it.

Kent: Yes. Of course, my father there was torn between the straight

environmental issue that John Muir was fighting for and his very
strong feeling that the resources that would be of economic benefit
to people should be used for the people and not be exploited. I
think he probably had a pretty good idea that if Hetch Hetchy was
not exploited for the City and County of San Francisco that the time
would not be too far along before somebody else would grab it. That
I know I wasn't sure of.

It wasn't until many years later that I found out that he was
the author of the National Park Service bill. This was at a time
when — I had many friends in the Department of Interior, and I asked
them to check it up. They checked it up and they said that a couple
of years before, several bills had been introduced, but that the
authors were unacceptable to certain segments of the House. My
father was far and away the most acceptable author, and therefore,
the powers that be got behind his bill. It was his bill that became
the National Parks Bill.

That was some time after he had given Muir Woods to the
government. I had a lot of fun because I was on the citizens'
[stamp] advisory committee under — I think that was probably during
the Kennedy administration. It might have been Johnson. When the
fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the National Park Service
came up and we went to Montana — I've forgotten the name of the park
that we went to there. It was a small one, not one of the larger
ones. The members of the committee were up there, as well as a lot
of the local dignitaries. We had a very, very pleasant occasion
for the dedication of the stamp commemorating the dedication of the
fiftieth anniversay of the National Park Service.

Brower: The National Park concept is a real contribution to the world. It is
the one thing we seem to have done better than other countries .

Kent: I told you I think one time about this Enrique Tijera-Paris , this
Venezuelan?

Brower: I don't think so.

413

Kent: Well, he was a wonderful man, and his father was just the epitome
of the South American liberal scholar. This fellow had been
ambassador from Venezuela to the United States. I think Pierre
Salinger sent him out to see me. He said he wanted to meet some
Democrats and he wanted to meet some people who were doing things
in government .

So I had a dinner party for him at which I had a good many of
the young people working for Governor Pat Brown and three or four
of the best of the state senators. The gentleman came down to
Kentfield and we had a very, very pleasant dinner party. He had a
charming wife who was a Venezuelan but had been educated in UCLA.
We went over to Muir Woods. We took him over there. We went through
the woods. He was just flabbergasted by it. Then he — I showed him
the exchange of correspondence between Roosevelt and the old man
where the old man said that he preferred that the — that he didn't
want to buy immortality, he wanted to name it after John Muir and
not after himself. Roosevelt said, "By golly, you're right," and so
forth and so on. That will appear a dozen places, I'm sure, in
biographies. [Kent spells Venezuelan's name]

He was just a perfectly great guy. I sent him — first I sent
him copies (he asked for them) of this correspondence. He said he
wanted to start something like it in Venezuela, in answer to your
question. Then he wrote me back and he said that that wouldn't do,
he would like to have xerox copies of the actual hand-written notes,
which were in the hand of my father and Roosevelt. I think that
Roosevelt probably just signed his. I'm not sure. That's Theodore,
of course.

So I just sent them down, and he said that his whole feeling
was that he wanted the wealthy Venezuelan people to seize their
opportunity and their obligation and do something towards saving
the natural beauties and so forth of Venezuela. This all came in
answer to your thought that this may have started something
internationally. I suppose the British had been doing that for some
time, although they may be doing it very largely for themselves.

Brower: I don't think that any large tracts of land were set aside, except
maybe as lords' hunting grounds. Army land, perhaps.

Kent: Now you don't have more on here. Do you have any more?

Family Trips Abroad

Brower: Well, I wondered whether we were going to talk a little bit about
the trips.

414

Kent:
B rower:

Kent:

Brower:
Kent:

The trip?

There were a series of family trips. You went to Panama in 1913
and to Tahiti in 1920 and to St. Jean de Luz in 1923. There was
that British Columbia boat trip in '25. I thought perhaps you
could give some highlights of those trips.

Sure, very quickly. Sherman went to Panama. I did not go. I think
they had a splendid time. I think Mother and Dad went to Tahiti
alone. I think his health was not at its best at that time, and they
went down. I know they had a lovely time. They rented a house and
they had some very pleasant help that took care of them and they
had a fine time. We went to St. Jean de Luz. At that time, we had
our family — Sherman, Adaline and myself and Mother and Dad — and we
also had the Burke family. Edward Burke and Mary Burke and I think
Ned and I'm not sure whether his sister [Emily] was there.

We did the regular thing of a beach place and we could swim
every morning. Dad took us out on a hired boat, and we went fishing
a couple of times and had some very interesting — We had some
good fishing. We went outside and caught some tuna and we fished
right alongside the breakwater and we caught some fish there. We
did then go down to San Sebastian and went to a bullfight. It was
in the bloody days when they killed the horses. It just so
absolutely revolted me that I wanted to get a gun and shoot all the
Spaniards in the place. I think that most of the family felt the
same way.

Did your mother attend that bullfight?

I think she went. I'm not sure. I don't recall. Then what we did
was Dad said to Sherman and to me, "Let's go see the battlefields."
This was not long after World War I. So we started out — we had a
car — and we went to Verdun and we went to various places. I was
fairly — I would have been then seventeen or eighteen. When we'd
stop at these various places — we'd stop usually at modest inns of
one kind or another, he would ask for vins de pays . He'd have a
bottle and we'd have a glass or so of what the vins de pays were.
I remember particularly our excitement when we got to Rheims and
sure enough, the vin de pays was naturally champagne.

We saw some of the horrible battlefields. We saw I think at
one place, at Verdun, they still had these Frenchmen who had been
buried alive by artillery fire, and just the bayonets were sticking
out of the ground. It was pretty heady. It seemed to me that I
get worse trauma and nightmares out of World War I than out of
World War II or really almost anything else. The slaughter that
went on there.

415

Kent: We came back, and we were in Paris for a short time. I went over —
the family came over earlier, and I came over with Uncle John
Rogers, the doctor. We came separately. I was going to the Thacher
School at the time, and I lacked one and a half credits. That was at
the time when you had to have fifteen credits to get into college.
I had about, I think, thirteen and a half and decided that, rather
than go back for another whole year or two years, that maybe I'd
try and study some French and take an examination when I got back
to Yale and see if I couldn't pass that, which I did. I took some
French in France and then did quite a bit of talking. I passed
that examination, so I went back to Thacher needing only a half
credit and entered the following year, in — I graduated in '28, so
that would make me enter in '23, wouldn't it?

Brower: I had thought it was '24.

Kent: I think '24. I think it was '24.

Roger Kent's Record at Thacher School

Brower: Going to Thacher wasn't such a break with the outdoor life that you
had lived, was it? But New Haven must have been a great change.

Kent: Well, yes. Of course, at Thacher I was always avidly interested
in sports of all kinds. I had learned something about riding and
saddling a horse, although the stuff I gave you earlier about the
Sierras came after I'd been at Thacher, when I learned to shoe
horses and things of this kind. The family was very pleased and
happy with me because I won their general excellence cup at Thacher,
which was a whole series of points that they set up for scholarship,
for committees, for athletic teams and other things, horse riding
and whatnot. I think they ended that about three or four years
later.

The old man was very pleased with me because I had been the
captain of the baseball team, and we were at a "goner comeback" game,
where those who were leaving were called the "goners," and they
played the people who were going to come back. I happened to have
my eye on that day, and I think I hit three doubles against the
upper school, and that pleased the old man no end because he had
been a good glove man, [chuckles] but he never had been a very good
stick man. He had no airs about it.

Of course, what we did have at Thacher, where the older boys
had built Kent Cabin — They had allowed shacks to be built up
Thacher Canyon, which was just above the Thacher School. There was

416

Kent: a water course there where you could get water. You could go up
and fix those places up as you wished and then you could have a
dinner. You'd cook your own dinner. I'm quite sure you had to have
a teacher. I don't think that S.D. Thacher, even as loose and
relaxed as he was, would expose the place to being burned down by
a whole series of parties up there.

We had that shack, my brother Sherman and I. After he left,
I had it with a guy who became my closest friend, Bob Hunter, and
then with another guy named Horace Learned, who we had known in
Washington.

Of course, at that time you had to go to church. I think you
had to go to church every Sunday. We'd always ride down. I had a
very nice, very good buckskin from Nevada, who had been a wild one.
The first year I had a black and white one that my brother Albert
had sent down. That had been used by one of Sherman's friends, and
Sherman used the buckskin. The next year when Sherman left, I used
the buckskin.

He just absolutely couldn't be used for gymkhana, because he
wouldn't hold still for the things that the boys were asking the
gymkhana horses to do. I took solace at that because I used to
more or less run the gymkhanas and make the drawings and lay out
the races and announce the results and tabulate them and so forth
and so on. But I never could get into the event. If I took a
spear and tried to spear a ring, the horse would — I would be in the
next county before I went out. [laughs]

Brower: You couldn't switch horses for the occasion?
Kent: Oh, no, no.

Religious Background

Brower:

Kent:

The compulsory church brings up something we didn't cover, though
I hate to go back in time, the role of religion. The Unitarian
Church seemed to mean so much in Chicago.

That's right. Now my father was very, very close to Jenkin Lloyd
Jones of the Unitarian Church there, and a great Christian along
with Jenkin Lloyd Jones. They had a real religious church, with
real religious feeling. I have no recollection of that at all,
naturally. I left Chicago at the age of six weeks. [laughs]

417

Kent: I don't remember any church at Kentfield. Then at Thacher we had

this ride down to what we all regarded as a very uninspired church.
Then at Yale you had to go — I've forgotten whether it was one in
two times or one in three times to chapel. That was required, and
that was never any inspiration to me. That, of course, subsequently
became knocked off.

Then neither Alice nor I have ever been regular churchgoers of
any kind.

Brower: It just seemed to fill a role for your parents at that particular
time in their lives that somehow wasn't replaced.

Kent: Well, it appears to be, from what I've read of that time, that

Jenkin Lloyd Jones and that group were, besides worshipping God,
they were real reformers of what was going on right there in
Chicago. The same people that were trying to replace crooked
councilmen were the same people that were going to that church.
A great deal of just intuition and a great deal of what was being
talked about at the church, which was the mundane principle of
running Chicago in a decent and honorable way.

Brower: You speak from time to time of your father's ill health. Do you
know the nature of his illness?

Kent: I'm quite sure that he had a stroke six months or three or four

months before his death. Certainly his mind got muddier, to the
best of my recollection, although I was away at college for most
of that time. But my sister Addie was there and told me about the
painfulness of it. Then I think he was given that blessed way out
of it with pneumonia, in 1928. He was an extraordinary, extra
ordinarily strong physically, in terms of walking, carrying a deer,
carrying baggage, and this kind of thing. He could just about walk
forever when he was younger.

His eyes were perfectly extraordinary. It was obvious that a
man who could throw a .22 shell up in the air and hit it with a
.22 had to have both eyes with extraordinary ability. He used to
complain to me in later years that his eyes were going bad. But I
never saw anybody whose eyes were as good. [laughs]

Brower: But it was not the pervasive kind of illness that your grandfather
suffered from.

Kent: No, no, it wasn't.

418

British Columbia Trip

Brower: When we talked about trips, we left out the British Columbia boat
trip.

Kent: Oh yes! That was a delightful trip. That was the three younger
kids — Adaline, Sherman and myself — Mother and Dad, Dr. and Mrs.
Rogers, and their daughter Betty, who was just about my age, and
the Burkes. I think it was Ned and Emily Burke and Ed Burke and
Mary Burke, my uncle and aunt. We went up to British Columbia —
that made four Rents, four Burkes — that made eleven people, and I
think we had a crew of three. I think we had fourteen people on
this boat, which was known as the Westward, and which was for
charter .

We took off from Seattle and went up the Inland Passage and
went out almost as far as Alaska. We would pull in the fjords
and anchor and fish a great deal. We fished for salmon and fished
for trout and carried boats up to lakes that were reasonably near
the place where we were camped. We stopped at a couple of foul-
smelling salmon canneries, and then [went] up to one of the great
pulp and paper mills, and also watched these fellows fishing,
seining for salmon.

We went ashore and fished for trout. One of the ones my dear
brother Sherman remembers with the greatest of tact — I was climbing
over this log and stepped on a soft place on the log and fell flat
on my face. It turned out the log was full of wasps that were
about an inch and a half long and were black and yellow and had a
prodder on the end of them about half an inch long. About five
dozen got in my hair and pretty near murdered me. [laughs]

We also saw some moose up there in their native state and
quite a bit of deer. Uncle Ed very unlawfully, but most welcomely,
shot a young buck. We'd been living on salmon and were getting
a little tired of it. We could buy meat from time to time at some
of these places along the shore.

Brower: Would these be deer or would these be caribou?

Kent: These would be deer. This wasn't up in the caribou country at all.
We caught some perfectly enormous fish. We had a small steel rod
with a short tip on it and a reel about as big as a man's fist.
The captain, when he saw us going out fishing, he said, "You can't
go out with that kind of outfit. There's big fish here."

We kind of laughed at him. We were pretty wise. So it was
staying light very late. About nine o'clock at night, Sherman
tangled with this fish and we burned up that reel, and then we had

419

Kent: to take another reel — it completely just sort of came apart. The
parts were burned up. We put another reel on it and retied the
lines and started fishing again with that one.

About a quarter of twelve at night, the captain came alongside
and said [growls], "Waddya guys doin'?" We said, "We still got that
fish on." You could have heard him laugh in Seattle, I think,
because it was exactly what he'd said. [laughter] We finally
landed the fish. Sherman had the fish on, and I gaffed him and
threw the fish into the boat. It was a little heavier than I had
figured, because it was running right around sixty pounds. It was
getting a little tired by that time. But we didn't throw that fish
out. I don't know what we were able to do with him.

Sherman is very imaginative and he's very, very good with tools.
He had pictures of Indians and Eskimos with a spear, which was a
long piece of wood and then a stake at the end of it. On the stake
would be a barb that was attached to a string, so that you could
hold the string tight and you could stab the barb through the fish —

Brower: And retrieve it?

Kent: — and pull out the stake, and then you'd have the fish on the barb.
We went out fishing in the canoe with that as our only gaff or net.
We were in the middle of just a whole school of medium-sized
salmon, these king salmon —

[Roger Kent finished telling the fishing story to Amelia Fry, in
Interview 21, the relevant portion of which follows here.]//#

Fry: To finish your story, you were saying, "There we were in the middle
of a whole school of medium-sized salmon, king salmon," and the tape
runs out at that moment. [laughter]

Kent: Well, of course, the Indians had used this spear to catch free-
running salmon. We never were skillful enough to do that, or ever
gotten ourselves in a place where you could. I mean, the Indians
would be — you've seen pictures of them standing on the edge of a
bank with a spear lifted up like this waiting for the fish to swim
by. We were never on that kind of business, we were in a boat and
we were fishing with very small spinners and fly rod equipment,
and out of a canoe, so it was quite exciting. And then we'd hook
a fish, and then we would use this spear as the gaff to bring fish
into the boat. That made quite an exciting event. We stood up in
a canoe, while the other guy was fighting the fish, and the spear
had been stuck through the gaff — the spear through the fish for a
gaff. And it was a lot of fun, and most ingenious on Sherman's part.

Fry: I don't see how you stayed in the boat.

420

Kent: Well, we both had pretty good balance; we'd been doing a lot of
riding and bicycle riding and that kind of thing, I guess.

More on Brothers and Sisters////
[Interview 20: May 11, 1977]

B rower:

Kent:

Today we're going to talk about Mr. Kent's siblings.
your oldest brother?

Albert was

My oldest brother. He became a rancher in Nevada and had a rough
time, and eventually retired from there and came back down and lived
with Mother at Kentfield. My brother Tommy worked for the Mount
Tamalpais and Muir Woods Railway. He was a very mechanical fellow.
Then he went into the army air force and was an instructor and
survived the war by very good luck and then became a real estate
man in Marin County.

My sister Elizabeth married in Washington George Stanleigh
Arnold, who was a lawyer and a friend of my father's and later in
San Francisco was a partner of William Denman, later a circuit court
judge. The Arnold children started at ages only eight or nine years
younger than I, and they were good friends of not only mine but of
my brother Sherman and Addie, in terms of younger sisters and brothers,

My brother Bill was in the army. When he came out, he went
into business in San Francisco and was active in business in San
Francisco for the rest of his life.

My sister Addie was a sculptor of extraordinary ability and
talent. She was also a great outdoorsperson and physically fit at
all times. She played a great deal of tennis. She backpacked in
the mountains. When she was at Vassar — she was only just five feet,
I think, but she could high jump five feet. She was very close with
Sherman and with me.

Sherman and I were very close. He was two and a half years
older than I was and preceded me at a number of schools — the Friends
School in Washington, then at Thacher, and then at Yale. At Yale,
he went on to graduate school, and when I graduated I went to law
school. But we maintained a very close personal friendship and
relationship all our lives. We are, at the moment, the only two
survivors of the seven children.

After being at Yale, Sherman went to Washington to help collect
material for the Yale Library, where he was principally in charge of
the Yale collection of current material. He got in with "Wild Bill"

421

Kent: Donovan and went to work for Donovan as coordinator of information.
He went from there to the OSS, ending up in charge of research and
analysis for that intelligence branch. He then had a Guggenheim
and wrote a book on strategic intelligence. He had a Guggenheim
fellowship and taught at the War College and then went back to Yale.

After the Korean intelligence fiasco, he was asked back to be
the director of Central Intelligence, which had been created —
Not the director of Central Intelligence. Chief strategic
intelligence officer for Central Intelligence. With much trepidation,
he decided that he owed Yale a great debt, but General Bedell Smith
persuaded him that if General Marshall and President Truman were to
call, President Griswold would release him. He had only one answer
to that, of course, and went back to Central Intelligence, where he
was an assistant director and the chairman of the Board of National
Estimates, which job he held for some eleven years or more, where
he was in effect the principal intelligence man in the world, because
the United States has more resources for that project than any other
nation. Of course, he was on the best of terms with the chiefs of
strategic intelligence of all the Western nations and many others.

He has two children. One of them was a daughter [Serafina
Kent Bathrick] who was very close to my two daughters. The other
boy [Sherman Tecumseh Kent] was a bit younger, but has been very
close and friendly with our family.

Brower: Did Addie marry?

Kent: Yes. Adaline married Robert Boardman Howard, who's the son of

John Galen Howard. This was a very amusing incident. Earl Warren
was here. He was Chief Justice, and he was at a cocktail party at
the bar association, and my niece Galen Howard was there — a
perfectly charming girl, and a marine biologist. She's married now
[Mrs. Henry Hilgard], and living in Santa Cruz. She's a doctor, got
her degree there and in Scotland.

But anyway, we were down at this cocktail party for the Chief
Justice, and I said to him, "Governor" — which was the way I always
addressed him — "I'd like you to meet my niece Galen Howard." He
gave one of those typical great, big Warren smiles and said, "That
name is not unknown to me." [laughter]

Brower: She was Adaline 's daughter?

Kent: She was Adaline 's daughter, yes. She was the second daughter. There
was another daughter, Ellen Howard, who is teaching at a school
down here in the Peninsula at the moment.

Brower: Was their father also an architect?

422

Kent:

B rower :
Kent:

B rower;

Kent:

B rower:

Kent:
B rower:
Kent:

No. Bob Howard was not an architect. He was a sculptor and an

artist, and very good. He did a great many things. The quails,

for the San Francisco 1937 or '38 Exposition, were his. He had
many other things that he had around San Francisco.

Didn't Adaline Kent also have things in the 1938 Exposition?

Yes, she did. I've forgotten what she did. Adaline was killed in
an automobile accident. A terrible tragedy. Bob is in his eighties,
and he is still surviving, still very physically vigorous, still
doing some art work.

But to all intents and purposes, as you grew up it was the three of
you, wasn't it, who were the ones at home?

I would say that we were the closest, Sherman and Addie and myself.
We were a very, very close family altogether. We were very fond of
each other, and we had gatherings at home and whatnot. Of course,
the older boys were away at school and college and war, obviously,
when I was going to school, when I was living at home most of the
time. They would be there only occasionally. Then they divided up.
Albert went out to Nevada, and my brother Sherman and a friend of
his and I went out and spent parts of several summers at this Rock
Creek Ranch in Nevada with Albert.

He occasionally came to Tahoe and went fishing with us and
whatnot. I was quite involved with my brother Bill in the early
days of the development of the Kentfield place. It had been — eight
hundred odd acres that my grandfather had bought. As we grew up,
it was one piece of property. There were cows and horses and whatnot
on it. We didn't start to subdivide it until 1936. My father had
been dead for about eight years, I guess. I was finished with law
[school] at that time, and was working for Chickering and Gregory
for a while, up until the end of 1936. Then at the end of '36, I
went to work for the SEC in the San Francisco office. At that time,
I had very many lunches and meetings with my brother Bill about the
Kentfield place.

Then of course, the war came along. I went to the navy and he
was of enormous assistance to Alice, my wife, and to my kids.

I wanted to ask you — is Jack Kent, who was the city planner of San
Francisco, a nephew of yours?

Jack Kent?

Yes.

No. He was no relation,
liked him very much .

I knew him, and of course admired him and

423

Brower: It was because of his interest in planning that I thought he might
have inherited it from —

Kent: No.

Brower: Who among your nephews and nieces are you particularly close to?

Kent: Oh, I suppose I'm closest to Stan Arnold [George Stanleigh Arnold, Jr.],
who is the Sunday and syndicated editor of the [San Francisco]
Chronicle and just a wonderful man and very good. I'm very close
to him. Then next there were the boys — Kent Arnold, who was the
extraordinary outdoorsman and hunter who was a Marine paratrooper
and platoon leader who was killed on Iwo [Jima]. I was very close to
him and had him out on trips and shooting and whatnot. Pete Arnold
was younger than they. I had some trips with him but not anywhere
near as many as with the older boys . Pete was young enough so that
he didn't get into the war until after the shooting was over, but
he did become a corpsman. When he came back, he went to forestry
school at Yale and became an international forester and has command
of Portuguese and Spanish and of all the trees that grow in South
and Central America, plus the Far East, and has been all over the
world in that business. He's now living in Grass Valley with a
couple of kids [Emily and Pete] .

The two [Arnold] girls are very interesting. The oldest was
Elizabeth, known as Bibba. She went to Vassar, and she took her
examinations to get a scholarship in mathematics out in California
and got it [the scholarship], and got her degree in mathematics at
the University of California. Shortly after that, the war came
along, and the navy put out — I guess probably very cautiously, and
to the right people — applications for those who wished to become
cryptographers, the code-breakers.

Bibba got their examination and wrote the answer back in her
own crypt [laughter] and was immediately hired and stayed with it
throughout the war, and for some time thereafter.

Evie [Evelyn], the younger daughter, was very much interested
in animals when she was a kid, and all this. She was a very
outgoing person. She married a very brilliant guy of French
extraction. His name was Ned Bossange. He was one of the first
of the flight engineers for Pan American, flying the Pacific in
the flying boats, and stayed with Pan Am for many years and became
very important to them in their operations, both on the Pacific
coast and on the Atlantic.

Finally, when Braniff decided on a vast expansion, they picked
Ned Bossange as their vice-president in charge of operations and they
moved him down to Dallas, which was not entirely where Evie wished it,

424

Kent: but she went along of course. Ned Bossange had a remarkable mind

and a remarkable reputation with all the people that he worked with,
The poor devil got cancer and died a few years ago. He was a very,
very brilliant, successful aviation operator.

Brower: These are the Arnold daughters?

Kent: These are the Arnold daughters, yes. Tony Arnold is the youngest
boy. I think he has Russian and Polish and he's been in the State
Department for many years.

Brower: It must have really blown their minds when Bibba wrote back in a
code of her own. [laughter]

Marriage to Alice Cooke

Kent: We have in here how I met Alice Kent. I mean Alice Cooke. A good
many of the Hawaiian kids went to the Thacher School. I knew a
number of them there. I guess it was my first year of law school
that Alice's brother Harry was either a freshman or a sophomore (I
guess a sophomore) at Yale. He went down to Bermuda on an Easter
trip, and I went down on this same trip. (I met him through some
of the others of the Thacher boys. He had not gone to Thacher.)
We became very good friends and played a lot of tennis and backgammon
together.

When they came back through California, I invited him and his
cousin over to Kentfield for a weekend, and we played golf. I think
I had the pleasure of showing him the first snake he'd ever seen in
his life.

Brower: Did he also meet Mrs. Stover?

Kent: No. Margaret Stover had died by that time. When Harry and his

father came to San Francisco, I was invited over to see the old man
[Clarence Hyde Cooke], who was the president of the Bank of Hawaii,
a charming fellow. I was being gay and foolish, and they were at
the Clift Hotel, and they were in the same suite. I didn't happen
to realize that, so I called up the suite and I said, "Mr. Cooke?"
and he said, "Yes?" I said, "The five-piece orchestra you ordered
is downstairs, and they're just on their way up," and hung up. Just
about that time, the old man just absolutely blew his cork about it.
[laughter] That became quite a joke.

What happened was, I had planned to go to British Columbia.
Anson Thacher and then my brother Albert and my mother and I were
going to take horses to Lake Louise and then ride to Banff. That

425

Kent: was in 1928, and that was pretty wild country at that-time. We were
all set for it, and then one guy broke a leg, and another guy got
sick and the party got turned off. The Anson Thacher family was
going to the Islands, and so he said, "Come on down to the Islands
with me."

So I went down to the Islands. Just before we both arrived,
I sent a wire to Harry Cooke that said, "Five-piece orchestra arrives
tomorrow." That was fine, because the old man thought I was all
right. They just couldn't have been nicer to me. They invited me
over to Molokai. They had a big place over there, which was just —
it was swimming and diving and spearing and whatnot.

Practically before I got through a month out there, or three
weeks, I was engaged. When we came back here, Alice went to Vassar
and I went back to law school. We persuaded them to let us get
married the next summer. We were married that next summer, the
summer of 1930, and lived in my last year of law school in New Haven.

Brower: That's such a common pattern now, but it was much less so in those
days, wasn't it?

Kent: Yes, yes. I think there were about a hundred and ten people in my
class, of whom about four or five were women. That pattern is very
different nowadays too. There were about four or five guys who were
married.

Brower: Was Alice herself in school at that time?

Kent: No, she wasn't. She took some courses at Yale. She was very much
of a botanist and she was able to do some studying there and use
the library and whatnot.

I had very close friends in Farmington at the time — Philip
Barney and Arthur Shipman in Hartford, and Horace Learned, who was
a Cheney, in South Manchester, Connecticut. Of these, two had gone
to Thacher, Barney and Learned, and Shipman was one of their close
friends. So we became very familiar with some of the nicest parts
of the Connecticut countryside, and some of the nicest people. We
were away a good many weekends when I didn't have to work, in most
pleasant surroundings with most pleasant people.

Brower: Are you speaking now of after your marriage?

Kent: After we were married, yes.

Brower: So this was something that Mrs. Kent did with you?

Kent: Well, I was visiting them all the time the first two years [of
law school], too.

426

B rower: As well?

Kent: As well.

B rower: So this was a continued —

Kent: Yes, yes.

Brower: Continued after your marriage.

Kent: Yes.

Brower: Then you returned to the San Francisco area in 1931?

Starting Law Practice in the Depression

Kent: In '31, right. What I did was, 1 — things were awful tough — to

get a job. The only way I could get a job would be to go to work
for nothing. So I went and talked with the Chickering and Gregory
people, and said, "Well, even if I'm going to work for nothing,
maybe I'd better take another summer vacation. Would that be all
right with you?" And they said sure, so we went out to the Islands
and spent the summer of 1931 out there. Then I came back and went
to work for Chickering and Gregory and took my bar exams in the off
time, which was February. (They usually gave bar exams in August
and in February.)

Brower: Perhaps you've already told Chita how you happened to pick Chickering
and Gregory?

Kent: Well, it was probably 90 percent because Allen Chickering, Jr., was
at one time in the same class that I was at Thacher, and was a
close friend. We used to go on camping trips together. Then I
picked up one year by taking an extra French course and then taking
some other things, and so I went to college a year before he did.
But he went to Berkeley.

I hadknownhis father (they had a place up in Soda Springs)
and his mother. He'd come spend a lot of time at our house, and I
spent time at their place. I had a good record, so that they were
not taking on a deadhead. I met all the other partners and they
all agreed that [chuckles] I would be allowed to go and work for
them for nothing, which I did for about six months, and then worked
maybe six months at about fifty dollars a month.

427

Kent: Of course, we were very, very fortunate in being able to do that.

Brower: I wonder what other young lawyers did at that time. Something else,
I guess.

Kent: Well, I knew some that got by on fifty dollars a month and maybe
ten dollars that they got from their parents once in a while. Of
course, naturally they had no automobile and lived in a one-room
walkup .

Brower: Fifty dollars did buy a lot more in those days.

Kent: Oh, sure, sure. Then, as I said, I went on over to the SEC. I had
had five years' experience at Chickering and Gregory, and it had
been a pretty well-rounded experience. When I went to the SEC, the
government was paying better money than private employers. I went
east to New York for a couple of weeks. I went to their New York
office and saw that operation and went down to Washington, where I
was — I spent the best part of a month there.

Arguing before the Supreme Court

Kent: I had known Bill Douglas at Yale, and he had then, for some reason,

taken a fancy to me. I was in his class in corporate finance, and
I think there never was a class went by that he didn't ask me a
question. I could have gotten by quite nicely without that
attention.

Brower: Kind of a mixed blessing.

Kent: Yes, but he became a lifelong friend and one that I'm certainly

very happy and proud of. I used to see him when I was spending a
lot of time in Washington, and I'd go to the Supreme Court and —
I'd usually call him before I went.

Then one of the nicest, nicest things was that I would ask
his girl to call Chief [Justice Warren] to tell the Chief that I was
in the building, and if he wanted to see me, I'd be delighted to
come down and see him. There never was a time when Warren didn't
come on down and see me and talk about things that were germane to
the California political scene.

Of course, I knew all the other guys, all the Kennedy guys.
I had spent a couple of hours one day with Arthur Goldberg, who was
a magnificent man. I had never known him in the political game
because he wasn't in the political game. He was in the labor game.

428

Kent: then of course he became secretary of labor, and that's when I saw
him, and then I saw him again when he was in Washington. I saw a
good bit of [Justice Byron] "Whizzer" White. I was very fond of
"Whizzer" White, and I was quite disappointed in the way his
philosophy broke.

Brower: Did you feel a little disappointment with Arthur Goldberg when he
was the UN ambassador during the Vietnam war?

Kent: No, I didn't, I didn't. I don't really have a clear enough thing
of what he had done. But I was so, of course, horribly distressed
about what they did to Stevenson that anything that Arthur Goldberg
did when he was in the UN — I could figure that he was doing it
under orders and that that was the way the ball bounced, and if
you did a bad job, that's what you had to do.

I thought when Johnson picked Goldberg that there couldn't
be a better choice to replace Stevenson than Arthur Goldberg. I
think I've told before that Felix Frankfurter was a good friend of
my father's and a great friend of my brother-in-law Stanleigh Arnold's,
As I've said, I'm quite sure one of the few things that Frankfurter
and Douglas agreed on was the appointment of me to represent a man
out on San Quentin, on Alcatraz, in argument before the United
States Supreme Court, which is an honor which doesn't come along
even every year. A lot of lawyers will break their hearts to get
it. It certainly was quite an experience.

I later found out from Douglas — that that was true, when they
said they had a guy on Alcatraz that needed a lawyer, who had
gotten to the Supreme Court on his own and he needed a lawyer to
argue it. I'd just only a couple of years [before] gotten out of
the service. Then Douglas suggested me and he said, "Yes, I remember
well." Felix said, "Yes, indeed. I had him up at Yale in a graduate
course and, of course, know the family. By all means, let's see if
he'll take the job."

So I did take the job, and I think I was more scared standing
up in front of that court than I was in the foxholes in Guadalcanal.
[laughs] It was quite an experience.

Brower: Is there some sort of qualifying — may any lawyer who is fortunate
enough to be asked be here — ?

Kent: The thing is, you have to be admitted to the Supreme Court. That
is nothing. There is a piece of paper that your sponsor is given.
Your sponsor is not to deviate one bit from what is said on that
piece of paper. He stands up in front of the Supreme Court and
says, "I move the admission of Roger Kent from San Francisco,

429

Kent: California, who is a member of the highest court of the state as
a member of this court." The Chief Justice says, "He will be
admitted," and that's it.

Brower: So it's a mere formality.

Kent.: Well, if you had been indicted or [chuckles] disbarred or something
like that you wouldn't make it, but otherwise you don't have any
problem.

Brower: What happened to the man you represented?

Kent: I got him three votes and, had it been later, I would have won the
case, because the whole philosophy changed. He was a guy who —
[tape turned off and restarted]

Brower: You said that the legal philosophy changed later?

Kent: Oh, yes. This guy was about thirty-six years old, and he'd spent

eighteen of his thirty-six years in jail. When they caught up with
him for counterfeiting, he was serving sixty years in the Wisconsin
penitentiary for forgery. I said, "You must have forged the
government bonds if you got that many years." He said, "I wrote a
lot of checks." Then he had a most unsavory reputation, which we
were very lucky to get hold of, because I had a very, very clever
guy working for me. He went out to see the post office to see
whether there was any difference in these bills, because the guy was
charged with having counterfeited a ten-dollar bill.

It looked as if it might possibly be two different kinds of
bills. Well, it turned out that there was only one kind of bill.
But the way in which he had counterfeited it was to go in with a
pistol and hold it to the head of an engraver and tell the engraver
to make him some ten-dollar bills. So you had this very interesting
concept of double jeopardy. And that is, that this fellow was
charged with manufacture of a plate in the facsimile to make a ten-
dollar bill, and possession — count two was the possession of the
plate with intent to issue bills.

The law seemed to be to be fairly well settled, and it certainly
seemed to me to make a great deal of sense, that if you couldn't
split up those offenses — and later on, the court clearly said you
can't split the same offense and call it two offenses and give the
guy two sentences.

Brower: But I should certainly think they could have brought in that
revolver at the head of the printer!

430

Kent: Well, they weren't going to even bother about that. They weren't
even going to bother about that. They just took him on these two
counts , and they said one count was manufacture of a plate and the
other was possession of a plate with intent to issue bills. I made
the irrefutable argument that you couldn't manufacture a plate
without, at the time that you had manufactured it, having possession.
So there would be your count one. You'd manufacture it, and then on
possession with intent to issue bills, there was — Many times a
jury is permitted to make my implication, to say that a guy didn't
make a plate for the purpose of using it for a paper weight. You
can infer that he did it for that purpose [of making bills] .

Brower: What else could he use it for?

Kent: You could infer that he did it for that purpose. But anyway, Douglas
unfortunately was sick, which was too damn bad, and so he wasn't
there. It got Murphy's vote and Rutledge's vote. Stanley Reed was
the man that — they don't give you a chance to really make your
argument there in the Supreme Court. Very seldom do they do it. As
soon as you start, one of the justices has read it and decided on
what point he wants to explore and he'll just say, "Just a minute,
Counselor, how about this?" From there on, you're just answering
questions, and that's what I was doing with Reed. Well, fortunately —

Brower: So you really had no chance to develop your case along the lines
that you'd like to —

Kent: Well, you'd have a very grave difficulty doing that. But I was
able to make the points I made, that I wanted to make.

Brower: They allot certain cases to certain justices, who make a particular
study of the —

Kent: Well, I think yes. They have their own system of system of meetings
and conferences, and decide how they're going to go and then assign
the case to a certain person. There's one thing there, they're very
strict about, which is awfully tough, particularly on a young and
inexperienced lawyer like myself. That is, when they say, "The time
allotted to this case is from half-past eleven 'til twelve o'clock."
At twelve o'clock, it doesn't matter whether you're in the middle
of a sentence or not. The chief just gets up and they leave, and
you don't have a chance to hardly finish your sentence, which is
really rough on you. Now, they did ask me if I wanted to go back,
but I was so relieved at being able to get out of there [laughs] ,
that I said no, I didn't want to go back.

Brower: So he served his sixty years, presumably?

431

Kent: No. The strange thing was that this guy fell in the hands of an
angel. This was a guy who made calendars, and his name could
easily be found out, and made a mint of money, a fortune at making
calendars. He had served time in federal penitentiary himself, 'way
back. He made it a principle to pull guys out of federal penitentiary
and take them under his wing on parole and probation, if he could
get them. I don't know how he selected the people that he took out.
What he would do with them was that he would give them substantially
every luxury that they might have dreamed of while they were in
jail, so that they weren't tempted to get into robbery, burglary,
murder, and so forth.

He'd have them around as kind of a house servant, and that
might last a year almost, but pretty soon these guys would get
tired of that, and they'd ask to go into the plant. That's what
he told me. This fellow then asked to go into the manufacturing
plant. One of the things that both my wife and myself were a little
concerned was that this guy was so smart. He was interesting, and
he struck up a pen pal friendship with our youngest daughter, Alice,
[laughs] We weren't quite sure that we were too happy about that
type of thing. There never was any problem about it.

Brower: This man must have been in California, the man who got him out,
presumably?

Kent: No, he was in Arizona. I asked the guy. I said, "Were you out

there in San Quentin or in Alcatraz at the time when they had the
riots?" He looked at me, and he said, "Mr. Kent, I felt I hadn't
missed the war. I was lying on the floor, and the slugs were going
over my head."

Brower: I didn't realize that those riots were so serious as all that.

Kent: Yes, the convicts got guns, and I think — I don't know whether

anyone was killed or not; several people were wounded, I'm sure.

Brower: I wonder what year this would have been?

Kent: Right in the middle of the war. Dammit, I may have given Chita a
good part of that. I'm sure I didn't give her the whole thing.

Brower: I saw all of Chita's outlines of what you covered, and I don't recall
that. I was just looking for specific things, and I might have
missed it.

432

The War Years Revisited

Kent: Well, after I left Chickering and Gregory; — I'm pretty sure I haven't
gone into the fact that I was very largely into enforcement and very
largely into fraud enforcement for the SEC, and usually was working
with the postal inspectors on cases which involved both violation
of the securities act and of the mail fraud statute. That was what
I was working on right up to the time of Pearl Harbor. Then I got
into the navy as soon as I could, which was about early February of
'42.

Brower: Why did you choose the navy?

Kent: Well, it was the first program that came along that looked as if

it was one where I was qualified to do a good job. It was a program —
they called it AVM. The "AV" meant naval aviation. I've forgotten
what that "M" meant. But anyway, what it meant was that you were
to go into naval aviation, and you were to do the administrative
work that the flyers customarily did, to free them for their real
mission in life. By the grace of God, that fit me fairly well, as
this was supposed to be in the age group of twenty-eight to forty,
and I was then about thirty-six. They had this class and had five
hundred from all over the United States, first class, and they
announced that the first 10 percent would go into air combat
intelligence. I made that [percentage], and went into air combat
intelligence. And it was really, in some ways, quite ludicrous,
because we were taught by a bunch of Britishers air combat
intelligence as it applied to the ruins of European cities and not
the jungle, which was what we were on our way to.

But anyway, we got all kinds of books, and we got systems, and
we got — And then of course we very soon began to work with the
flyers, and find out what they wanted. We had also learned in the
school that naturally what the navy wanted was for us to gather
any kind of armatures or guns or ammunition or shields or motors or
parts or anything like that that we could get, and ship it back. Which
we did. We were able to lift a whole Zero off the reef at Guadalcanal
and get it down.

Brower: Enemy armaments, of course?

Kent: Yes, yes.
fl

Kent: I, of course, being a lawyer for the SEC, had spent an enormous

amount of time interrogating witnesses, and I suppose this showed
up on my charts somewhere or another. So twice when I was at
Espiritu Santo and they brought in Japanese prisoners who were flyers.
They gave me — and I was supposed to be an airplane expert, which I was

433

Kent: far from at that time — but they gave me a Marine (he was a captain
or a colonel) who was a language officer. I put in hours and hours
and hours interrogating these Japanese flyers. It was a very, very
interesting experience, because we had been taught name- rank- and-
number was what you were to say. But for a Japanese flyer who had
been taken prisoner, the world had come to an end for him. He
couldn't be shamed any further. He'd never been told how to act if
he was taken prisoner.

B rower: So, he was free to say —

Kent: He just said what he wanted. He didn't even know — he'd never been
told that there was such a thing as being taken prisoner, so sure,
if a guy was polite to him, he'd answer the questions that he
asked. He answered an enormous number of very relevant questions.
But for you to go back to this —

Brower: — earlier episode.

Kent: Earlier episode when I was working for the SEC. I was out in Hawaii
on one matter, and came back here and found out that the Japanese
were selling Japanese government bonds in Hawaii in violation of the
securities act. That's when they said for me to go back to Hawaii
and do the appropriate [thing] , as far as stopping any sales and
prosecution of these guys, if that seemed to be the thing to do.

Brower: That gave rise, I guess, to the part in your brother's wonderfully
imaginative literary celebration of your birthday "Egbert at 60."
He describes you as having [pauses] "pursued wild birds, fish,
bulls of various sorts, felons, the Japanese, cats, and almost any
kind of alcoholic beverage." [laughter]

Where did the end of the war find you?

Kent: I was in Washington, still working for the air plans officer on

Ernie King's staff. I got orders to go to Guam and work probably
for Nimitz in the final wrapup in the [inaudible].

I had been not only assistant to the air plans officer on
King's staff, but I had also been assistant to a Marine colonel.
He was a very good friend of mine, who was the navy's representative
on an outfit called the joint target group. The joint target group
was a staff that was put together — I think it was the president of
some insurance company who was the chief of the staff — and it was
sent to Europe to try and determine what had been successful in
bringing the Germans to their knees and what had been a waste of
time, money, and effort.

434

Kent: This was a fascinating business. This Marine colonel wanted to be
off doing the business of the Marine Corps and not reading about
what happened in Europe in the target group. He assigned this
totally, as far as the navy was concerned, to me. It was very well
done.

It wasn't too long. The gist of the findings was that what
had destroyed the Germans was the attack on transportation. The
attack on petroleum was of some importance. The attack, of course,
stopped the submarines from interdicting the Atlantic was critical.
Going after the submarine pens had not been successful. The
attacks on components of airplanes — the big disastrous and murderous
assault on the ball bearing factory — they figured that had turned
out to be a complete fraud, that the Germans were able to redesign
their engines in a matter of weeks, and eliminate many, many of
these ball bearings that they'd had before.

If they attacked airplanes on the fields, or factories, they
would shift factories around and be able to have planes in the air.
They were exceedingly resourceful in repair and that kind of thing.
But the thing that just absolutely murdered 'em was when they couldn't
move a wheel from here to there. So they started in. They finally
decided that that's they would do, when they went in and they took
after the bridges and the roads and the canals.

Pretty soon, throughout the entire western industrial Germany,
there just wasn' t anything being turned out. The very poor quality
soldiers that they had were hungry and poor-quality stuff. This
fitted in — we talked this over in Washington — completely with what
would be the successful attack on the Japanese. For three or four
years, we had been attacking transportation in terms of their shipping
and we had very nearly brought their shipping to a standstill.

Their internal transportation was exceedingly vulnerable
because it went along the coastal plains. You could destroy it with
battleships. You could shell it. Then if you got up into the
mountains, the roads were narrow, the railroads were narrow, there
were all kinds of tunnels. By this time, the Japanese air force
was almost completely destroyed. They were defenseless. You could
have, in a matter of several months, you could have seen that your
men couldn't go anywhere in Japan except with a wheelbarrow.

I was studying what I was getting ready to do, and to serve
on a committee which was going to implement this attack on trans
portation, and which was going to pinpoint what would be the most
productive of these targets. Well, about this time, the big bomb
was dropped, and all the talk of peace was in the air. Then they
began to work on how they would discharge people out of the service.

435

Brower: This is the same group, this joint target group?

Kent: No, just generally out of the navy. I guess the army had something
of the same kind. What they did was, they gave you credit for so
many months that you'd been in the navy, and then they'd give you
double [credit] for what you'd been if you'd been out of the country,
and then if you had a Silver Star as I did, you were out right then.

I remember [laughs] I went around and I saw this admiral. I
had my orders to go down to Guam, and I said, "I want to know what
to do. I've got orders here to go to Guam and the war is over."
He said, "You've got orders to go to Guam? Why don't you go?" He
looked at me, and he saw the Silver Star, and he said, "Did you win
that in this war or last war?" [laughter] I said, "I didn't know
I looked that old. In this one." He said, "Well, we can't hold you.
You can get out."

So I then proceeded with all deliberate speed, the best I
could, to find out how to get out, and I got out very soon and came
back to California.

Brower: It's interesting to me that the study of the situation in Europe

would have had any relevance at all to Japan, but of course it did
in this instance, didn't it?

Kent: Yes. This business of transportation — I don't know what other things
it would do now. I think probably when they destroyed the German
cities, the Germans and the workers were able to put things together
a hell of a lot better than the Japanese were when they went through
Tokyo and Yokohama and just burned everything. There was just
nothing left, so that there was no place for a worker to lay his
head, let alone go to a factory and go to work, so that those things
would have had some relevancy to each other.

Brower: Does the position it put you in have some effect on your view of
the morality of the bomb? I find that it does for me.

Kent: Well, the thing that had happened to me was that I was well aware
of what the plans were for the invasion of Japan, and I was well
aware of the frightful number of guys that were going to get killed,
on shore and in the invasion itself. We knew to a squadron how
many kamikaze airplanes the Japanese had left that they could launch
at the landing craft, and how many people would be killed on the
landing craft. Then we knew what they had left, and what they would
be able to [use, to] defend themselves.

We had seen this absolutely unbelievably courageous and tough
stand that they had made on these various islands and in the caves
and so forth. It looked as if it might be well over into the
hundreds of thousands of Americans who would be killed and many more
than that, probably, wounded.

436

Kent: So I had the feeling, when the big bomb went off, I had a feeling

of revulsion, of [long pause] what a tough business this was. But
I came to the conclusion that if I'd probably been in Truman's
place, I'd have said — faced with the same situation — I'd have said to
do the same thing .

I always , from the day it was done, felt that the dropping
the second bomb on Nagasaki was a cruel and tragic mistake, that
all they had to do was sit back and let that horror of Hiroshima
just kind of jell, and then say, "We're ready with more," because
by this time, the Japanese embassies around the world, in
Switzerland and Holland — I don't know whether it was Holland, because
Europe was occupied by Germany, but probably [it] would have been —
were urging Japan to get out, to get out under any terms that they
could get out on, because they had had it. The Americans were not
going to quit, and the homeland would be destroyed forever if they
persisted in what was the useless defense.

Brower: I've never seen why in war, it was worse to kill old ladies and
women than to kill young men who were the leaders of the future.
The immorality is so complete that it doesn't matter.

Kent: Sure.

Brower: You then were entirely out of it during MacArthur's occupation of
Japan?

Kent: Yes, yes.

Brower: This is one of the long ones. If you prefer to knock off now, we can,
or we can go on, as you like.

Kent: Well, we haven't gotten into some of — there was so damn much of this
war business. I don't know whether that is of real interest to you.

Life as a Congressman ' s Son

Kent: I've been trying to think of more of my father and mother. As I

explained, I was away at school and college and he was away a good
deal. He was a very, very hard-working congressman. I'm sure
that that's somewhere in Mother's book or something. Some Southern
belle said to my mother — Mother said to her that she was certainly
going to be glad when the recess came, that Dad was going to get
some rest because he was so tired from the hard work, and this
Southern belle said, [mimics accent] "Well, I just don't understand
that at all. My husband just got by with this — didn't bother him
in the slightest!" [laughter] He didn't do anything!

437

Brower: So this meant that in your boyhood, you didn't have a lot of your
father's companionship?

Kent: I had very little. Very, very little. The older three, the three
older boys went — I think they went out on trips with him quite
often. I don't know how much he took them into his confidence, as
far as his philosophy was concerned. There was very little of
that talk around the house when I was there. I think he took
Sherman and — I think it was that time he was getting on, so we
brought a guy along with us to help with the camping. Old Ben
Dibblee. Dad took Sherman and me and this other fellow into the
back country back of Tahoe. We had a camping trip and caught a
lot of fish and had a lot of fun.

Then I had that trip down to Florida as I said. But one outside
of Washington — Really not a great a deal. I'm sure that times
have changed in terms of kids being interested in politics, because
there I was — it was in 1920, I guess, when Dad was running for the
Senate — going to Tamalpais High School, and not really being terribly
wound up in it at all. The kids these days wouldn't even have to have
their father or whatnot in it [politics]. They'd be much more, it
seems to me, much more interested. I think they have more inspiring
teachers, in some cases, than we did.

Brower: This really wasn't expected of you? This wasn't a disappointment
to your father, was it?

Kent: No, I don't think so at all.

Brower: It was not expected of you that you would take an interest?

Kent: No , no . I think what was expected was that I would pose for a
picture in a picture of the family.

Brower: Would you mind spelling Ben Dibblee for me? [Kent spells it]

Kent: He was quite a famous guy. He lived over in Ross, had a big place
over there, and they had quite a family. He had come out from the
East. He had been a Harvard All- American.

Brower: He was sort of a guide?

Kent: Oh, no, no. He was a friend. He was a friend, and then they did
bring along a guide who had — I'm pretty sure that they did on that
trip, although it could easily be that they didn't. Dad seldom took
anybody with him. He was a very good outdoorsman himself. A very
good cook and, of course, a very good shot and fisherman.

Brower: That was the campaign in which your mother was so active?

438

Kent: I'm pretty sure she was. I think she was also active by the word of
Mr. Zumwalt back there in 1914.

B rower: Yes. [laughs]

Kent: Okay, I think we might as well knock it off there.

Father's Political Philosophy and Land Donations ##
[Interview 21*: September 22, 1977]

Fry: Now, the next thing that I want to go into is more on your father's

political viewpoints. Can you talk just about what you can remember
of how his viewpoints affected you. It's awfully hard to look back
and analyze how you absorbed these things from a father just by
osmosis .

Kent: Yes, I can never really remember him giving us what you might call
a lecture. Where we would absorb it would be with these very, very
interesting and forward-looking people around here, and the
conversation would go on at dinner time, or at other time. [tape
turned off to permit reading of La Follette paper on William Kent]

Fry: One way to handle this would be for you to give a rundown of his

economic interests, and a picture of that, and then how his attitudes
developed with the public interest a priority.

Kent: Well, this was a rather simple thing. It was that he had this

valuable mining property in Mexico, and that the expropriation was
threatened of American property in Mexico, and the question was up
before Congress whether they would take steps and put those
Mexicans in their places, and send an expeditionary force down
there. And Dad's speech in Congress was to the effect he had three
sons of approximately military age, and would he want them to go
down there and risk their lives to save some dollars that he had
down there? And he sure as hell would not, and if he wouldn't do
it for his own boys he sure as hell wouldn't do it for anybody
else's boy. And so he avidly opposed any intervention in Mexico.

Fry: Were you —

Kent: Oh, I was young. No, I was much younger than they.

Fry: Were you made aware of that as you grew older?

*With Amelia Fry. Roger Kent's daughter Alice sits in.

439

Kent: I read it somewhere — I don't remember where.
Fry: But later in life?
Kent: Yes.

Fry: I'm trying to find out what trickled in on you as "influences."

[laughs] But there were also other economic interests, such as his
land in Marin county, and elsewhere — I suppose in California. Did
he have other land?

Kent: Now take this —

Fry: And he had sheep ranches and yet the stands he took were not the
typical stand of somebody who had interests like that to protect.

The 1915 Water District Controversy: A Lesson for 1948' s Hospital Fight

Kent: This is an interesting one which I'll turn over to you, and that is
that in May — in 1949 the doctors and other folk in Marin County were
trying to pass a bond issue to finance the construction of the
county's share of the hospital. And the conservative folk who had
been bagging it had been singularly unsuccessful. And in 1948, even
though I had lost the district in running for Congress, I carried the
county very heavily, and so had this woman running for the assembly.
So the doctors got us and asked us to head up the hospital bond
committee, which we did. At that point the San Rafael Independent
Journal said we would have a public debate and we would allow the
proponents of the bond issue to have so many words, and the opponents
so many words, so I took the proponent's view, and started it off by
going back to compare [what] the prophets of doom [said] about the
hospital and the fact that it wasn't going to be necessary, and it
was going to be vacant, and was going to be a drain on the taxpayers
of the county and so forth, with two historic debates that I knew
had gone on in Marin county, one of which my father had been the
most instrumental in, and that was the Marin Municipal Water District,
which is of considerable interest now. I quoted this letter [of
August 10, 1915, to the Independent] from this fellow who was
violently opposed to the Marin Municipal Water District — he said, "We
have but one lamp by which our feet may be guided for the future,
and that's the lamp of experience."* And, we of course adopt that

*San Rafael Independent Journal, May 19, 1949, p. 16.

440

Kent: because the experience is going to show nothing except that he was
wrong and we were right. The gentleman in his article proved that
the water district would operate in the red.

The gross income of both present companies for five years has
been $724,000 less expenses, leaving $352,000, and then we would lose
taxes and so forth. In an earlier article he estimated that Marin
would not need more than six hundred million gallons of water a day
for twenty years,* and of course it went trillions over that. But
anyway, the water district never levied a tax on the county
property; it was always paid for by water rates. And what Dad did
at that point is, that every bit of land he owned in the county which
lay within the water district — watershed, he gave to the water district
(presumably if the water district — if the bond issue passed) . And
it did pass. And they're still on the books, these crazy little
things. Eighty acres up on top of the hill there that was donated
to the water district, and some more in some other place.

Fry: Little patches of land wherever there was watershed.

Kent: Wherever it was within the watershed of the Marin Municipal Water
District. Wherever the water fell, if it went into the Alpine Dam
or into any other portion of the dammed up waters. He gave that
land to the water district.

Fighting Fire with Sack and Shovel

Fry: Can I ask you a question on that? In view of the fire danger and so
forth here, do you know if any provisions were made to have some kind
of cooperative fire prevention administration where —

Kent: I think it was all done on a county basis. That there was a county
fire department, and the county fire department was at that point
very much of a rural fire department.

Fry: And it handled both?

Kent: And it handled both. I can remember standing here and the [inaudible]
devil fire was something that everybody was just scared to death of.
And right out the window we're looking out, looking up to the mountain,
and seeing this little spiral of smoke going up, and then a couple of

*Idem.

441

Kent: little Chinese guys who were gardeners grabbed their shovels and

sacks. They could get up there a little ways in the vehicles they
had then, but the rest of the way it was on foot. And they'd
get up there and try to put out a fire with a sack and a shovel.
And that's the way the fires were fought. And then they were fought
with backfire. Later on I fought them in the fire of '29, we were
backfiring on the top of the mountain [Tarn] . And another one I was
involved in when I was in high school. And then a couple of them
back in —

Fry: You said when you were little you were with Albert, and the fire
went over you.

Kent: Well, that was the '29 one. Yes.

Fry: Tell us about that. I'll bring you back to this other topic we were
on.

Kent: Well, that was a hell of a fire, and you people in Berkeley, I think
you had a simultaneous fire going on in '29. But, anyway, I was at
school — no, I guess I had just gotten back from Europe, or the
Islands. I guess I just got back from the Islands. And met up with
brother Bill and brother Albert, and old Ben Dibblee and two or three
Italian workers, and one of them had the bright idea and said, "We
can't save the other side of the hill very possibly, and so
let's get to the top of the mountain and start a backfire going
back down towards Mill Valley." So that as the fire was coming up
that steep ridge maybe we could hold it with the backfire. All the
same things you've been reading about in the big fires here and Big
Sur and up north. But of course this was nothing of the volume of
them, because the brush was relatively low, but it was burning.

Fry: And it was on the west side of Mt. Tarn?

Kent: It was on the west side of Mt. Tarn, and it was burning to the west,
more from the east to the west. And we had this fire — About ten or
twelve of us, and then there was a vacant space, and we had our
backfire going for about an hour, an hour and a half, and then the
fire came up the ridge. And I'll never forget the fire just coming
roaring up the ridge and we had our backfire here, and particularly
my brother Albert and old Ben Dibblee dropped right down, and the
fire went right over them. I don't think I had to drop on the
ground to get out of it — we had it back far enough so that we were
not burned. But anyway, we stopped it right there, bang, just like
that. The whole line just stopped, and no more fire. It didn't go
beyond that point. And that was after we'd been fighting fire,
which was not unusual for the rural folk in those days, I mean,
we'd been on the line for mostly twenty-four hours, probably.

Fry: Was there any professional fire control people up there?

442

Kent: Yes, there were, there were some. And they had control, and they

would be down — My best recollection of where those guys were, was
that they were over in Mill Valley, and they had control of a whole
bunch of school kids and of soldiers, and people from Angel Island
and whatnot, and they were trying to work on that. And then this
word came that we would have this new expeditionary force that would
go around and encircle the fire if we could, and get to where we
could [do that].

Fry: Well, in your own home, did your cooks and your handyman and your
gardeners and everybody turn out when there was fire on your land?

Kent: They would, yes, they did, if it got close. And sometimes, a couple
of times later it got close enough so that it was only a quarter of
a mile away, or a few hundred yards away, but these were small fires.
And then at that point everybody would get out and start fighting
them. But on this fire, as I said the gardeners were looking at,
way up on top of the mountain, and the local Chinese fellows would
not be going up there, it would be the gardeners, the foreman of the
place and so on.

Fry: Yes. So, when he donated land to the watershed, the fire control
was under the same administration as the land that — as your own
private land. It was all under the county.

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Full text of "Building the Democratic Party in California,1954-1966 : oral history transcript / and related material, 1976-1981"

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