The Daily Alaska Empire

POLITICS AT RANDOM
By BYRON PRICE
(Chief of Bureau, The Associated Press, Washington)

Maine Democrats are so stirred up over 1932 prospects that there may be real competition, for the first time in years, for the party nomination for Governor. .. With local taxation an issue in many states, Mr. and Mrs. Ordinary Voter may be expected to take greater pains than usual this time in sorting over the candidates for the legislature. ...

The western silver country is preparing to petition both parties insistently for silver relief planks in the national platforms. .. One Democratic Senator who recently talked with Al Smith came away fully convinced the brown derby again is in the ring. ..

Kentucky politicians seem to have had no success thus far in puzzling out why there was such an extraordinary scarcity of negroes (nearly all Republicans) at the polling places on November election day.

That 'Alabama 24'

So that all Democratic factions may be represented, that famous "Alabama 24" -so persistently given to Oscar Underwood during the Madison Square Garden melee -will become this year 48-half-votes for somebody. .. Gov. William H. Adams, patriarch of the Colorado Democracy, is expected to announce late this month whether he will run again or open the way for a grand scramble by stepping aside. ..

Perry Howard's black-and-white Republicans are arguing again with their all-white rivals in Mississippi probably forecasting contesting delegations at the National Convention. .. The Democratic friends of Melvin A. Traylor are actively organizing to make him a sort of triple-threat favorite son candidate for President backed by Kentucky, where he was born; Texas, where he was a banker and lawyer; and Illinois, where he now lives as president of the First National Bank of Chicago. ..

The Young Republican club in the national capital has blossomed out with its own magazine and a private training school for young spell-binders.

Johnson To Speak

It is reported, and widely believed in Washington, that Hiram Johnson will say "yes" or "no" to the Presidential bee before 1932 is much older. ..

Dry Democrats still are trying to get together behind a single out-and-out Prohibitionist for President, but they report little progress.

With Democratic presidential possibilities so plentiful in Ohio, there is talk of adopting James M. Cox, of Dayton and Miami as the favorite son of Florida. ..

Feels As Lincoln Did

After defeat of his legislative program in an Oklahoma referendum, Gov. W. H. Murray was quoted by the newspaper, Labor, as having said: "I presume I feel very much as Lincoln did when the whole strength of the slave power defeated him for United States Senator just two years before he was elected President." ...

Maybe it's accident and maybe it's something in the soil of Maryland, My Maryland, but Albert C. Ritchie and Dr. Joseph I. France, both Marylanders, are the only Presidential candidates thus far who are frankly and openly candidating.