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California, most crucial of the state primaries, wrecked all Kefauver's chances and brought, less than two months later, his withdrawal in favor of Stevenson.
When Harry Truman's Chicago endorsement of Averell Harriman seemed to throw the nomination open again, some of Kefauver's supporters urged him to jump back into the contest. Kefauver refused; Phredonia's lessons were too strong in him. "I felt," he says, "that I had given my word." He worked hard and faithfully to switch his delegates to Stevenson —and his efforts helped give Stevenson a first-ballot nomination.
When Nominee Stevenson announced that the vice-presidential candidate would be chosen in a wide open convention, such Kefauver managers as Jiggs Donohue urged Estes to stay out. The whole thing was a phony, they argued. Stevenson had really chosen a running mate; the best Estes could get was another slap in the face—and he was running out of cheeks to turn. But Kefauver talked to Stevenson at Adlai's victory party and received personal assurances that the race was indeed open. He left the party, huddled with aides in a post-midnight session, talked it over with Nancy and decided to make the fight that he won on the wild second ballot.
Alka-Seltzer & Vitamins. Last week Estes Kefauver and Adlai Stevenson, men who had fought and made up, were together on the campaign road. Before leaving Washington, Kefauver worked on routine chores in his office and in his six-bedroom English Tudor home in fashionable Spring Valley. (Richard Nixon lives about eight blocks away, the two Nixon girls and the two youngest Kefauver girls go to the same public school, Nancy Kefauver and Pat Nixon shop in the same neighborhood stores, belong to the same P.T.A. chapter.) Kefauver also went to Farnsworth-Reed Ltd., an exclusive 17th Street custom shop, bought a blue suit and a grey suit, discovered that his campaign exertions had reduced his waistline from 41 to 39 in. and his collar size from 17 to 16½.
In Kefauver's hand as he boarded the Chicago-bound Capital Airlines plane was his enormous, ever-present briefcase, stuffed with all the items that long campaign experience has taught him he needs: an extra shirt (he perspires heavily), his slippers, silver-blue eyeshade, mail, vitamins, Alka-Seltzer, cigars (he chews them still unwrapped), cigarettes and a holder (to keep fit for campaigning he tried to quit smoking, failed, settled for filtertipped cigarettes puffed through a filtered holder), three or four pairs of reading and sunglasses, shaving equipment—and a fat, black contact book with all the important political names in the area about to be toured.