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J. (for James) Edward Day, 46. The least known of Kennedy's Cabinet choices. Ed Day, 46, is a light-haired, witty insurance lawyer and a side ring operator in the three-ring circus that is California Democratic politics. Born in Jacksonville. Ill., Ed Day was brilliant enough as a law student to become editor of the Harvard Law Review (1936-37). After graduation, he went to work in one of Chicago's biggest, best law firms (Sidley, Austin, Burgess & Harper), married Mary Louise Burgess, the boss's daughter. At work he became fast friends with a partner in the firm named Adlai Stevenson. After wartime service on Navy subchasers, Day went briefly back to his Chicago practice, quit in 1949 to help out Old Friend Stevenson, newly elected as Governor of Illinois, as an administrative assistant in Adlai's "kitchen cabinet." Day entertained the backroom boys with homemade limericks on Springfield politics, eventually became state insurance commissioner. The job was a stepping-stone to a second career: after Stevenson's presidential defeat in 1952, Day joined the Prudential Insurance Co., rose to one of the top spots (behind President Carrol Shanks), as chief of the firm's western division office in Los Angeles.
When he first went to California, Day declared that he was through with politics, but soon changed his mind. He became a backer of Governor-to-be Edmund ("Pat") Brown, earned an appointment to the finance committee of the Democratic State Central Committee, helped form Democratic Associates, a committee of conservative Democrats who sponsor business-minded candidates for office. Day is articulate and abrupt, an effortlessly efficient manager. No mossback, Day manages to preserve the respect (if not the adoration) of both right and left in California's mixed-up politics.