(3 of 3)
Since they regarded the money as personal gifts, six of the eight paid no income taxes on the amounts. Those who paid: O'Donne.l and McGowan. Lawyer Mc-Gowan said this week that his payment was not to be regarded "as a legal opinion" that the others owed a tax on their gifts. The point is a ticklish one, since Stevenson first explained the payments as additional compensation for services to the state. If the money is for services, it is taxable; if it is a gift, it is not taxable.
For the talk about other funds, Adlai Stevenson had only general and passing notice. Said he: "There have been assertions that there were other political contributions made during my administration. Of course there were. Nineteen fifty, 1951 and 1952 were all election years in Illinois. Campaign contributions were received in all these years—and they were spent for political purposes." But he said nothing about how much those funds amounted to or what they were spent for, and gave no indication that he intends to do so.
In themselves, Stevenson's gifts to state employees of money collected for political purposes did not constitute a scandal. They were, however, considerably more unconventional than the Nixon fund, about which Stevenson's personally selected national chairman had raised such an outcry. Probably Chairman Mitchell did not know about the Stevenson fund. Stevenson, who did know about it, justly and prudently refused to get into the pack yapping at Nixon; Stevenson's only comment on Nixon was: Let's wait for all the facts. This week Mitchell, who may have committed the political blooper of the year by dashing into the Nixon case, was not available for comment on the Stevenson fund.
* Mulroy resigned a year ago, shortly after he was named as one of several Illinois Democratic politicians who bought io^-a-share stock in the Chicago Downs Association and made a profit of 1,650% in two years. Mulroy's stock transactions occurred after the 1949 Illinois general assembly passed and Governor Stevenson signed a bill to permit Chicago Downs to sponsor harness racing.