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Brown Tuesday

Their hero might run behind Pat Brown in the primary, the Knowland forces figured, on account of his absence from the state. But anyone predicting the discrepancy might run to 650,000 votes would probably have been dismissed on loyalty grounds. Make no mistake about it: the returns jolted the Senator’s camp. While the mood is far from defeatist, most would agree that the present odds, by objective standards, are against his election. As the Knowland men look ahead, it is not only Brown’s margin of victory that bodes ill in November, but the size of the vote that produced the margin. A whopping 60 per cent of the California electorate went to the polls on June 3. This means that Knowland’s principal hope lies in changing the minds of people who have already declared against him. More ominous still, Republicans managed to vote 63 per cent of their registrants, compared with a 58 per cent turnout on the Democratic side. This means that among the voters who have yet to be heard from, a sizeable majority (sizeable, since there are three California Democrats to two Republicans, anyway) are affiliated with Pat Brown’s party.

LB

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L. Brent Bozell Jr.

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Brown Tuesday

Their hero might run behind Pat Brown in the primary, the Knowland forces figured, on account of his absence from the state. But anyone predicting the discrepancy might run to 650,000 votes would probably have been dismissed on loyalty grounds. Make no mistake about it: the returns jolted the Senator’s camp. While the mood is far from defeatist, most would agree that the present odds, by objective standards, are against his election. As the Knowland men look ahead, it is not only Brown’s margin of victory that bodes ill in November, but the size of the vote that produced the margin. A whopping 60 per cent of the California electorate went to the polls on June 3. This means that Knowland’s principal hope lies in changing the minds of people who have already declared against him. More ominous still, Republicans managed to vote 63 per cent of their registrants, compared with a 58 per cent turnout on the Democratic side. This means that among the voters who have yet to be heard from, a sizeable majority (sizeable, since there are three California Democrats to two Republicans, anyway) are affiliated with Pat Brown’s party.