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Kefauver especially failed to endear himself to Southern Congressmen. Early in his House career he co-authored a book urging congressional reorganization that would have relaxed the South's hold through seniority on committee chairmanships. He has voted against poll taxes, and has favored an antilynching bill; his present stand on civil rights is at least as straightforward as Stevenson's. Mississippi's old Demagogue John Rankin was only expressing the consensus of Southern Congressmen when, years ago, he arose on the House floor, wagged an accusing finger, and bellowed: "Shame on you, Estes Kee-fow-vuh!"*
"He Perked Right Up." In 1950-51 came the opportunity that Estes Kefauver had been seeking since boyhood: the Truman Administration was rocked by a succession of scandals, some big-city politicians were obviously in cahoots with racketeers—and the U.S. was ready for some simple morality. Estes served up that morality in Phredonian quantities. As chairman of a special Senate committee investigating interstate crime, he became the honest face on the television screen, the painfully sincere voice asking "Greasy Thumb" and "Tough Tony" and "Murray the Camel" why they were such naughty boys. Kefauver's probe had little lasting effect; it resulted in the passage of only one relatively unimportant public law. It made him some powerful enemies, especially among Democratic city bosses —but it made him a leading candidate for the 1952 Presidential nomination.
Kefauver gave it a terrific try, beating Harry Truman in the New Hampshire primary (a political sin that Harry neither forgot nor forgave), collecting about 275 delegates in other primaries, leading on the first two convention ballots at Chicago. And then Estes Kefauver watched, stunned and shocked, as his Democratic enemies turned over the prize he coveted above all others to a man who had said he didn't want it: Adlai Stevenson.
After Stevenson was nominated, some of Kefauver's friends feared for his selfcontrol. He lay awake nights suffering over his defeat, wondering how he had lost, blaming only himself. One night, in an air-conditioned hotel room, he arose three or four times to change the pajamas that had been soaked through with the cold sweat of his torment. But he was saved by his dream of destiny. Chicago Lawyer A. Bradley Eben, a top Kefauver adviser, recalls telling the still-dazed Estes: "Well, now we've got to plan for 1956." Says Eben: "He perked up immediately when he heard that."