The Wilmington morning star., 1940-04-23
WASHINGTON
DAYBOOK
BY JACK STINNETT

WASHINGTON, April Will other Presi-
Dental candidates are setting themselves up
in the state primary alleys and throwing them
selves a strike or a gutter ball, Aspirant Rob-
ert A. Taft is quietly picking off Republican
national convention delegates by a method as
unsensational as a door-to-door brush sales
mans.
At the Ohio senator's headquarters in the
Raleigh hotel here, henchmen claim he al
ready has the promise of 300 state delegates,
will have twice that many before the boys get
together in Philadelphia in June. Some po-
litical commentators agree on the first figure.
Big, quiet, Observation-Disclosures Senator
Taft is using a pre-convention technique as
old as the hills -. direct contact. In the
nine months or SO since he let his name be
banded about for top spot on the 1910 Re
publican signboard, he has made more than
800 speeches, has set up an organization of
Contact force" in every one of the As states.
Although lacking in that remarkable memory
for first names and plain faces by which Presi-
dent Roosevelt and General Farley repeatedly
knocked the hinterland politicos for a row of
votes, Senator Taft has been showing himself
as often as congressional duties would permit.
The object is twofold: ~ To convince hoped
for constituents that he's a good deal more
than the unstarched stuffed-shirt which op-
ponents would make him out; ca to hammer
home In plodding speeches his conservative
theories of government.
His First Assistant
Secondary defense in the Taft campaign is
Mrs. Taft. Martha, as the folks back in Ohio
call her, is daughter of a one-t1me solicitor
general of the United States and what her
husband hasn't in stump-speech pyrotechnics,
Mrs. Taft has.
Already a veteran of Ohio politics in her hus-
bands behalf, Mrs. Taft has mapped out a
pre-convention itinerary that reads like Mrs.
Roosevelt's my three MONTHS Her first four
weeks Of experimenting for Husband Bob cover
the ground from Massachusetts to West Vir-
GINA, with sorties into Pennsylvania and In
diana.
Possessed with a dramatic sense which her
straight-talking studious husband lacks, Mrs.
Taft has a p~enchant for drawing applause
| from her audiences, where, with the same lines,
the Senator would get none. Aiding consider.
ably in whipping up an assembly is her sense
Of humor.
Back in Clevenland on the home-front, direct
ing the flood of literature and playing liaison
OFFICER for the whole Taft drive, is David S.
Ingalls,.
Ingalls, flies his own airplane, covers thous-
ands of miles, keeps headquarters here in a
constant other answering telephone calls be-
tween breakfast and dinner from cities a thous-
and miles apart. ingalls,, Al, is campaign man
ager. A former assistant secretary of the navy
for aeronautics (under President Hoover), he
was known during the World war as 1.-THE
navy's only flying ace; won the D. s.. c..
and other honors before he was 20.
He Rings Doorbells
Tn the personal conduct of his camnaion
Taft has changed his technique not q whit
from his tyro days. In Cincinnati he started
out as a doorbell-ringing precinct worker. in
spite of his family name and silver-spoon hack.
ground. He's been ringing the bel, ever sinca
AS one conif pointed out, the electorate