The Rounds

There are four major political candidates in Massachusetts, and five central campaign headquarters to service them. Last week we visited all of them, on a search for publicity releases.

The Herter HQ was the nearest to the subway, directly opposite the Parker House. On the eleventh floor, squeezed in two miniscule rooms sat a large woman, languidly typing and starting at the large face of Christian A. Herter pinned to the opposite wall. She referred us to the publicity man, who worked out of an equally small office one floor below.

There a red-faced party worker slouched in his chair while the secretary briskly pecked out the latest publicity release. Sitting at another desk, the publicity man continued a telephone conversation, then rose to greet us. After rummaging about in a small file, he came up with an armful of press releases, packed them in an envelop, and, blotting out the Herter frank on the upper left corner, thrust it upon us.

"Dever Victory Headquarters" consists of two spacious floors in the plushly modern Burdett Secretarial School. In the main room, about 100 by 50 feet, around fifteen people wandered about or scribbled postcards telling "All good Democrats" to register. All about, the flexible-bracket fluorescent lamps hummed busily. In the adjoining room, a cluster of men reclined in leather chairs watching baseball on a television set. We consulted with the Publicity man's secretary who promised to swamp us with handouts as soon as the printing presses began grinding them out.

Surfeited with gubernatorial candidates, we moved back to down-town Boston where the Kennedy and the Lodge Headquarters were located. The Kennedy people had commandeered a four story building and had plastered it with sings and oversize pictures. On entering the first floor, we discovered three men and a woman in a large empty room, all talking earnestly into telephones. One man finished his conversation, turned to pump our hands, and led us to the elevator. He explained that Kennedy had taken over all but one floor, and that more Kennedy men were working in another building a few blocks away.

We went to the third floor to be introduced to one of Kennedy's publicity men, who turned out to be former city editor of the Boston Post. With great enthusiasm, he began extolling his candidate's virtues, and the virtues of his candidate's mother, his brothers, and his sisters. Emphasizing that he was no "payroll patriot" the old-time city editor said he had been in political campaigns since Theodore Roosevelt's campaign as a Progressive in 1912. He confided that while the "Colonel" seldom read or wrote what was said in his press releases, Kennedy "scrutinizes everything he releases."

The last stop was the Lodge headquarters, one floor of a medium sized office building. Since the campaign crew was in the process of moving in, the headquarters was a turmoil. As usual, the publicity director was out, but a brisk campaign manager refereed us to a not-so-brisk secretary, who said she could not give us anything without permission.