Crank's Crank

"Give light," proclaim the mastheads of all 19 Scripps-Howard newspapers, "and the people will find their own way." By generating heat as well, Scripps-Howard's El Paso Herald-Post (circ. 39,794) has long made its way as one of the chain's most profitable and independent-minded dailies. Under Editor Ed Pooley, a Tabasco-tempered maverick who has run the paper for 20 of his 59 years, the Herald has earned Texas-wide renown as an ardent defender of underdogs, whom Pooley, in deference to the border city's heavy Spanish-speaking population, invariably calls Juan Smiths. On their behalf, Pooley, one of U.S. journalism's last curmudgeons, wages daily war on the "s.o.b.'s." his all-embracing designation for city officials, cops, the opposition El Paso Times (circ. 52,538) and any other non-Juan who incurs Pooley's ire.

For the past month, during El Paso's mayoral campaign, few citizens have been able to ignore the heat. Pooley's evening Herald has campaigned splenetically for a Juan Smith slate ("The People's Ticket") headed by the county clerk, a third-generation El Pasoan of Mexican extraction named Raymond Telles. The usually mild-mannered morning Times fought a spirited battle to re-elect Mayor Tom Rogers and his board of aldermen. When the Times boasted that its candidate had trimmed the budget, Ed Pooley, a onetime bank clerk, promptly crowed that "the little bitsy budget cut" entailed a saving of exactly "755/1 ,000ths of one per cent."

The Times 'pooh-poohed Telles' slate as the "P for Pooley ticket". Pooley's Herald-Post attacked Mayor Rogers' record with Page One "photographic editorials" showing potholed pavements and exposed water lines. In their eagerness to clear or smear the city administration, the papers even scrapped over details of a drunk-driving arrest; the Herald-Post declared that police had beaten the driver, one Isidro Fernandez, and used a chain hoist to haul him out of a ditch. Sneered Pooley, whose cop-baiting helped drive one El Paso police chief to a nervous breakdown: "Ah, such big, bold, efficient lawmen!"

Crowning Blow. Last week Pooley and pals celebrated a signal victory. By a margin of 2,754 votes (out of a record 34,883), Telles routed the incumbent mayor, and his People's slate won by a landslide in the Democratic primary, which in Texas is really election. Juan Smiths rejoiced, for Telles' triumph meant that El Paso, for the first time in its history, will have a Mexican-American mayor. One Telles supporter, who had heard the glad tidings south of the border, wrote Pooley last week: "Mexican citizens were giving Americans abrazos [embraces]. It was the damndest thing I ever heard of." Wrote another: "I have always admired your crusade for democratic and just principles. I don't know what in hell would have happened to us Juan Smiths if it hadn't been for you."

To his foes, Pooley's causes celebres seem more like vendettas than crusades. A wiry (5 ft. 8 in., 158 Ibs.) infighter who seldom confines his chronic indignation to the editorial columns. Florida-born Ed Pooley settled a long-simmering feud with County Judge Hugh McGovern in 1954 by crowning the jurist with a fifth of whisky. (Bourbon-Drinker Pooley explained: "It was only a Scotch bottle.") When a wealthy El Paso restaurant owner named Fred Hervey took office as mayor in 1951, Pooley dubbed a proposed city sewage plant Hervey Hall and continued to refer to the mayor as "the hamburger merchant" even after Hervey won a $25,000 libel judgment against the paper (later reversed). "It got so bad," recalls one reporter, "that they'd call each other on the phone and just sit there and cuss for half an hour or so."

Crank's Creed. At the top of Editor Pooley's little list is an El Paso lawyer named William Fryer. While defending a woman on a murder charge in 1951, Attorney Fryer objected to the Herald's coverage of the case and gave the editor a name still used by his foes: "Cesspooley." Under orders from Pooley not to use Fryer's name in his paper. Herald staffers ever since have had to weave around his identity, e.g., "counsel for the plaintiff," "El Paso lawyer defending the case." Chuckles Fryer, who is now 76: "When I die, I guess, all Pooley will say is 'Counsel for the plaintiff died yesterday.' " Pooley's politics are generally tuned to the Scripps-Howard pro-Republican, pro-Eisenhower line; he was, though, the only editor of a major daily in Texas to oppose pro-Eisenhower Governor Allan Shivers' third-term bid in 1954.

While Pooley's espousal of Juan Smith has boosted circulation 61% since 1937, the Times, which publishes a Sunday edition and has pushed hard for suburban middle-class circulation, in recent years has edged ahead of the Herald-Post. Pooley's latest eruptions on behalf of the Mexican-American have provoked emphatic counterattacks: this week a group of business and professional men were backing a campaign to persuade El Pasoans to drop the Herald-Post and write Scripps-Howard Boss Jack Howard urging him to fire Pooley (their target: 5,000 cancellations, 1,000 letters). But Curmudgeon Pooley was unruffled. The protests, he said, are proof of his unswerving loyalty to Founder E. W. ("Damned Old Crank") Scripps's lifelong creed: "The daily press is intended for the great mass of our citizens, not for the highbrows."

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