'Every Little Breeze'

"Oh, she came clear down the pike with no trouble a'tall," observed a beaming Suffolk County file clerk who was standing by the upholstered bar at Louise Day Hicks headquarters. After another sip of his Budweiser, he slipped into a confidential tone: "And she'll be elected. You know it's not so much she's anti-Negro as it is she's for the white people." With a sly wink he added, "and why not? There was no civil rights when our people were coming up."

The five-piece tuxedoed orchestra began to play the old marching song, For Boston, For Boston, We Sing That Proud Refrain, and the clerk, in his old-fashioned salt-and-pepper wool suit and scruffy black shoes, shuffled on down to the dance floor to join the jigging mob. The mood at Hicks headquarters was one of vindication and of cockiness, a feeling not too familiar to the people there.

As poll watchers, women wearing green and white dresses with the words "Louise Day Hicks" embroidered on the bodice, phoned in returns from the city's 275 voting stations, the cockiness at the Boston City Club, a garish stucco Park Square "nitespot," grew stronger and more comfortable. Some 400 people--holders of second-rank civil service offices, boisterous lady lawyers ("when Lawheeze is in, I think I'll ask her if I can be Police Commissioner"), and small-time real estate men--danced jigs, bought drinks, and ate too-sweet brownies. It was their night. Mrs. Hicks came in first, 13,000 ahead of the other nominee, Secretary of State Kevin H. White, and 20,000 ahead of state Rep. John W. Sears. In a phone-cluttered City Club office reached by crawling into a fireplace hearth, lifting a trapdoor, and climbing down some stairs, one of Mrs. Hicks' campaign strategists snorted, "We aren't amateurs here." He predicted firm victory in November.

As a more disengaged political observer, a veteran of many Boston campaigns, summed up the feeling at Hicks headquarters, "The 'Heart' people are convinced they've killed the 'Skyline' candidates." But it is doubtful that Mrs. Hicks' victory means that the "Irish-Catholic populists," as one political scientist has characterized her supporters, have broken the power of Senator Edward M. Kennedy '54, Mayor John F. Collins, Boston Redevelopment Authority chairman Francis X. Lally, and other members of the Catholic Aristocracy that currently rules the city.

A few blocks way from the Boston City Club, on the fifth floor of an office building in the quiet, elegant Back Bay, quiet young women moved smartly about Kevin White's headquarters, where smiling workers crayoned the ward-by-ward returns on a wall-sized chart. Unlike Mrs. Hicks' picnic-like celebration, where there was plenty of liquor and no charts, White's headquarters were marked by an exuberant but businesslike atmosphere. Returns from each precinct were carefully tabulated; charts showing the relative strength of each candidate in each important city district were being set-up and studied. There was no orchestra; there were no bars, no ham sandwiches, no sweet gerkin pickles, no chocolate cake for White's campaign workers--lawyers, teachers, students, high state officials.

White should have no trouble continuing his sophisticated Kennedyesque campaign in the six weeks remaining until the Nov. 7 election. His already strong financial support, which comes from the city's businessmen and professional people, is even stronger now that Sears and Logue are out of the race.

Sears and Logue, who in political and ideological complexion are no different from White, ran third and fourth yesterday, and the votes and money which they attracted are sure to go now to White. And Mrs. Hicks' running first is an added impetus for supporters of Logue and Sears to rally behind White, since it will doubtless provoke an it-can-happen-here reaction. White has a deep reservoir of votes in the 45 per cent of the electorate who stayed away from the polls yesterday.

For all practical purposes, those people who will vote for Mrs. Hicks in November have already voted for her. And that is enough to win. Mrs. Hicks' primitive campaign style, her meager finances, and the attractiveness of Kevin White will probably keep her out of City Hall by a hefty margin.