Music All the Day

The sun shone bright on old Kentucky homes, the meadows were in bloom, and the birds were making music all the day. But most Kentuckians could hardly no tice or hear last week above the political din that filled the state. Albert Benjamin Chandler, 57, Kentucky's governor in 1935-39 and U.S. Senator in 1939-45, was noisily on the comeback trail (TIME, April 11). "Happy" Chandler was wowing the voters everywhere with his own special brand of political minstrelsy. His opponent for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, Judge Bertram T. Combs, 43, of Prestonsburg, was still campaigning in a sober, solemn fashion that failed to win many laughs but was clearly winning some sober, solemn votes.

"Wetherbine" & "Clementine." Happy's technique varied only slightly as he stumped from town to fish fry to camp meeting. Generally, he was preceded by a sound truck, blaring songs and the repeated injunction: "Be like your pappy and vote for Happy." By the time 'the audience's feet were tapping out the rhythms, the candidate himself rolled up in a big black car, grinning and waving, pumping outthrust hands. After his speech --always approximately the same ("It's won for me--why should I change?")--Happy rang down the curtain with a song, usually There's a Gold Mine in the Sky.

With the occasional aid of stage props (including a horse and pet monkey), Chandler lampooned his opponents without mercy and with considerable corn. His chief targets: Governor Lawrence Wetherby ("Wetherbine") and Senator Earle Clements ("Clementine"), the acting majority leader of the U.S. Senate and absentee Democratic boss of Kentucky. Happy has made much of a rug in Wetherby's office, which he says cost $20,000, and of an $863,200 bill for air-conditioning the state Capitol.

Wetherby produced an invoice to prove that the rug cost only $2,720, and pointed out that the $863,200 paid for a new heating plant for the Capitol, plus wiring, plumbing, and other renovations, as well as air conditioning. But Happy paid no attention. "Did you ever see a $20,000 rug?" he asked his audiences. "When I get elected, you all come to Frankfort, and we'll take our shoes off and walk on it."

Chandler treats Combs with contempt, never refers to him by name ("Of course, Clementine picked this unsuspecting little fellow to run for governor"). Chandler described Wetherby as a spendthrift tosspot, dangling on Clements' string: "Clementine just picks up his telephone in Washington and tells that little Hitler down in Frankfort what to do."

"Cold & Embalmed." In retaliation, the Clements-Wetherby forces have hit hard at Chandler, bringing up the free swimming pool a contractor once installed (1942) in U.S. Senator Chandler's back yard, and producing some damning canceled checks, totaling $32,841,40, which Happy received from a liquor wholesaler at a time when he was Senator and baseball's high commissioner. For a while Lawyer Chandler pooh-poohed the "silly questions" about the liquor firm's checks, finally got the company's former president to declare that they were legitimate fees for legal services. The nature of the services has never been explained.

In his quiet way, meanwhile, Mountaineer Combs has impressed the voters. Two weeks ago he received the supreme accolade in Kentucky--the endorsement of Senator Alben Barkley. Last week in Chitlin City, a young man told a Combs audience what the endorsement meant. "As the best colored undertaker in Frankfort," he said, "I want to tell you that when Mr. Barkley endorsed Judge Combs, Mr. Chandler was dead, cold and embalmed in the grave."

Despite the Barkley endorsement, Happy Chandler was far from politically dead in Kentucky, and if he wins in this week's primary, it will not be surprising. But the gambling men around Louisville and Frankfort thought young Judge Combs looked like the winner. In the cherished Kentucky tradition, it was a horse race.

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