Like a Lone Tree

Once upon a time there were four nationally known Republican politicians in California. One of them, Governor Earl Warren, was appointed Chief Justice of the U.S. in 1953, and then there were three. William F. Knowland, Republican leader in the U.S. Senate, resigned to run for Governor in 1958; he lost, and then there were two. In that same election, Goodwin Knight, who had succeeded Warren as Governor, was defeated for the Senate, leaving just one. That was Richard Nixon, who, after coming within a hairbreadth of the presidency, ran for Governor last year, lost, and recently moved to New York. That left none.

All those years, in the shadow of the giants stood U.S. Senator Thomas H. Kuchel (pronounced Kee-kul), whom Governor Warren had appointed in 1952 to fill out Nixon's unexpired Senate term. An index of Kuchel's power was the makeup of the California delegation to the 1956 Republican Convention: Nixon, Knowland and Knight divided up the delegation, each taking 23 seats. The one remaining seat went to Kuchel.

But now the big boys have been retired. And Tommy Kuchel, 52, a lawyer by training, looms on California's Republican landscape like a lone tree on an arid plain. His talent for winning elections has made him the No. 1 Republican of the nation's most populous state. Nine times he has run for public office--assemblyman, state senator, state controller, U.S. Senator--and he has yet to lose a race. Last year, when Pat Brown trounced Nixon and Democrats won nearly every statewide contest in California, Kuchel retained his Senate seat by a landslide margin of 728,000 votes.

"Baloney!" In the Senate, Kuchel early aligned himself with middle-reading Republicans led by Vermont's George Aiken. Now, as his party's whip, he sits in the councils of the G.O.P.

Senate leaders. When it comes to getting his own bills enacted, he may well be the Senate's most influential Republican. Kuchel is just about the favorite Republican Senator of the Democrats who run the Senate. As a result, he has seen about 100 of his own bills approved (most of them provided public works or other federal aid for Cali fornia), although his party has been in control of the Senate during only two of his ten years there.

The Democrats like Kuchel because he is open and honest with them, utterly devoid of partisan ferocity. "There's nothing mean about him," says a high-ranking Democratic Senator. "If he can help you, he will." Says Kuchel of himself: "I try to deal with my colleagues fairly. I try to live up to my word. I don't try parliamentary tricks." One exception, a Democrat with little affection for Kuchel, is Ohio's conservative Frank Lausche, who was once a victim of Kuchel's occasionally earthy humor. Kuchel came onto the Senate floor one day while Lausche was earnestly orating, slipped up behind him, and hissed into his ear: "Baloney!" Lausche froze, choked, completely lost his train of thought.

"Pooh-Pooh to You." In the current session Kuchel has emerged as the Senate's most outspoken Republican foe of the radical right. In a floor speech a few weeks ago, he denounced the John Birch Society and other "fright peddlers," as he called them, for spreading tales about United Nations plots to take control of the U.S. with the connivance of the U.S. Government. Right-wing extremists claim to be conservatives, said Kuchel, but they "defile the honorable philosophy of conservatism with that claim." They also claim to be patriots, but they are "unpatriotic and downright un-American." Last week, in a Senate speech, Kuchel reported on the response: 10,000 letters, postcards and telegrams, about 8,000 approving his speech and 2,000 denouncing it. Sample denunciations: > "Who translated your recent speech from Russian into English?" -- "You seem to condemn those that point out that the Jews control every country in the world." > "And pooh-pooh to you, too--you Socialist, you."

So far Kuchel reveals no indication of wanting to reach beyond the Senate. He is often mentioned as a prospect for the Republican vice-presidential nomination in 1964, but he disclaims any serious interest in it. "I don't want to run for Vice President," he says. "I don't want to be Vice President." He is also uninterested, as of now at least, in taking control of the leaderless, disunited California Republican Party. Says Kuchel: "I'm not cut out for smoke-filled rooms."

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