(3 of 5)
But the good eyesight of basically healthy California appeared already to be discovering that the overfull moon which hung above the State was made of green cheese. Dopesters give the "Ham & Eggs" one chance in three of winning. Pathetic appeared the lot of those who have spent their pennies supporting it, but tragic will be the political fate of Sheridan Downey and his managers if, having won nomination through "Ham & Eggs," they are swamped by reaction against it.
Sheridan Downey knows all this and since getting nominated has backed away from "Ham & Eggs" as gracefully as possible. The scheme, he says, is a local effort to solve the "senior citizen" problem to which, if he gets to the Senate, he will bend his best talents on a national scale. He will vote for it, he says, "as a Californian," but he has made his peace with Franklin Roosevelt who has condemned "Ham & Eggs" in no uncertain terms.
Mandolins & Pistols. The ebb tide against which Mr. Downey now fights is led by another lawyer and reader of economics, a man whose father sold the University of California its history library and who was known in his younger days as a Progressive: Philip Bancroft, a harmless-looking but sharp-spoken gentleman-farmer from in back of Mount Diablo near Oakland.
If Philip Bancroft is elected a California Senator this year, a main reason will be because Sheridan Downey is oversold as a Ham & Egger. Candidate Bancroft's father left him and his brother enough money and land in and around San Francisco for Philip, returning unwell from the War, to give up lawyering in the city and go to raising walnuts and pears (at which he is a champion), and practicing leadership at farmers' association meetings. A quiet, pipe-smoking type who (like Downey) really wants the results more than the office, Philip Bancroft talks sharply about the "racketeering" of city labor organizers who "stir up hate" among his Mexican pickers and Japanese packers. He has made overtures to the A.F. of L. but hedged by asking why farm labor must be regimented anyway.
At Harvard, where he took a law degree, he was pistol champion as well as a mandolin player. Mandolins and pistols would be a good accompaniment for the speeches in which he seeks to be a reasonable Progressive at the same time he is being a firm landholder. His title to "Progressive" dates from Bull Moose days (1912) which makes him, in the eyes of today's Liberal, a rank Tory.
Today Philip Bancroft is well hated in his own Contra Costa County, but well backed by the forces who feel Candidate Downey must be beaten. He has Herbert Hoover actively behind him, and also Senator Hiram Johnson who regards Sheridan Downey as too "shifty."
In the backwash of its major pension battle Californians are waging not only a fight for a Senate seat but for their Governorship. Centre of the Governorship battle is: