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Mr. KEATING. Was there also an item for national newspaper advertising?

Mr. WILLIAMS. What advertising we did of a national character was at a minimum. I am not sure that we had any for actual national advertising; I do not believe we did.

The CHAIRMAN. Was your committee organized after the nomination of General Eisenhower or prior to his nomination?

Mr. WILLIAMS. The preconvention organization was Citizens for Eisenhower. That went out of business, and with the convention was born a new organization, and as I have indicated it was actually legally organized on August 20, 1952, known as Citizens for EisenhowerNixon.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you have any figures on the amount of funds that the old organization had, Citizens for Eisenhower?

Mr. WILLIAMS. I think our total budget in Citizens for Eisenhower in the prenomination campaign was about $1,200,000, as I remember it. That, again, is trusting wholly to memory. I think that included about $500,000 or $600,000 that was called State committee funds, that is money for the purpose of assisting in the primary elections. where States were primary States and that left something around $650,000 to $700,000 for our own Citizens for Eisenhower operation. That would be somewhat comparable to the $1,500,000 roughly in this final campaign.

The CHAIRMAN. So, when you abolished the Citizens for Eisenhower and created the Citizens for Eisenhower-Nixon there was no transfer of funds?

Mr. WILLIAMS. No.

The CHAIRMAN. You estimate that you had one million and how many dollars?

Mr. WILLIAMS. That is, the second fund?

The CHAIRMAN. No; in the first fund?

Mr. WILLIAMS. It had in it $1,200,000, of which there was net about $700,000, the other part being for State aid.

The CHAIRMAN. State aid, including primary committees in the various States prior to the national convention in July?

Mr. WILLIAMS. That is right.

The CHAIRMAN. One of the problems before our committee, Mr. Williams, is the fact that there is no Federal legislation at all involving primary contests of any kind, either presidential preference primaries, or the congressional primaries or the senatorial primaries. As a matter of fact, in a good many States the primaries are pretty conclusive. I would certainly say that is true.

Mr. KEATING. In the sovereign State of Louisiana, for instance. The CHAIRMAN. Not necessarily, but it is also true in Maine and Vermont, and many of the Western States, largely the Southern States. So that in all of these primaries no reports whatsoever were to be filed with either branch of the Congress. In the last primaries we had three or four or five candidates seeking the Republican nomination and three or four or five candidates seeking the Democratic nomination. Can you estimate what was the total amount spent in behalf of General Eisenhower prior to the Republican Convention?

Mr. WILLIAMS. No; half was spent through our citizens' organizations, and there was the other half, so to speak, operating out of

Washington. What the budget was and what they spent I do not know. I am not informed on that.

The CHAIRMAN. There were several other organizations. I am just wondering whether there was any difference between Citizens for Eisenhower, for instance, and Americans for Eisenhower.

Mr. WILLIAMS. That is your Louisiana organization?

The CHAIRMAN. Yes.

Mr. WILLIAMS. Of course you had also South Carolinians for Eisenhower, and I think you had Texans for Eisenhower. Every one of these States ran their own organizations.

The CHAIRMAN. They were completely autonomous?

Mr. WILLIAMS. Yes, they were completely autonomous. We simply worked with what we found. There were citizens' organizations, I think, in every State.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Smith, who was here from the Volunteers for Stevenson, gave us substantially the same testimony on Monday, and he also told us that there was no relation between money spent for Volunteers for Stevenson as such and Volunteers for Stevenson in New York, Michigan, or some other State.

Mr. WILLIAMS. That is right.

The CHAIRMAN. That was true, too, of the Citizens for Eisenhower?

Mr. WILLIAMS. Yes, sir; exactly.

The CHAIRMAN. Would you assume, and I know that it would be a guess, that the State organizations had an equivalent amount to spend in all of the 48 States, as compared to the national organization? Mr. WILLIAMS. That is a terrifically difficult question to answer, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes; I know it is.

Mr. WILLIAMS. We have talked that over in our own discussions over the months, and we asked ourselves the question as to whether it would be reasonable to suppose that each club might have spent $500. One of the men stood up and said, "I can name you dozens of clubs where probably they did not spend anything, because it was a small group where it was a question of manpower or womanpower being utilized." I do not know how you would get at it. If we talked in terms of State organizations rather than trying to pin it down to a club-by-club expenditure, I suppose it might reasonably be estimated-it is just a guess, but I suppose that, perhaps, the average amount for each State might be $30,000, $35,000, or $25,000. Of course, as soon as you begin to estimate, you know at once that the State of Nevada did not have anything like that amount. On the other hand, I suppose that the State of New York had more. I do not know what their figures were, but if you take an average of $25,000, and double it if you want to, and multiply it by the 48 States, you may end up with another $1,000,000. I am having to do a lot of wild guessing, because we do not know what it would be, and we have no way of knowing.

I think you asked the question as to whether it might be reasonable to assume that an equivalent amount might have been spent around the States. I think it would be a fairly reasonable estimate to assume that it has.

The CHAIRMAN. One of the problems that we are confronted with, Mr. Williams, is when you get into this realm of legislating on political activities you also get into very definite constitutional rights of our

citizens to organize into groups, committees, and associations, for the expression of their political philosophies and beliefs, whatever they may be. It is a fact that the creation of a great many different groups stimulates an interest in public affairs. I think one of the really significant things about the last national election was the tremendous number of votes cast, much higher than we have had in a good many years, all of which is to the good for our democratic processes, yet we have the problem of creating different groups and different committees, each of which can spend up to $3,000,000, all of which are autonomous. Do you not feel that is a problem that needs consideration by the Congress?

Mr. WILLIAMS. Why, I think it is a problem that needs greater study. I do not think you ever enact a piece of legislation and then walk off and leave it. You should give it intelligent consideration in the changing conditions.

You have had a discussion here of the effect of television, and I suppose, as you said this morning, that 4 years from now you will probably have television with a considerably different impact on the public than it has now, so, surely, I think it is a constructive thing to review legislation on those matters.

The CHAIRMAN. I asked Mr. Summerfield this question yesterday on the problem of some degree of control. Now your committee, for instance, I presume, operated completely free from any control of the Republican National Committee?

Mr. WILLIAMS. Completely so.

The CHAIRMAN. Although there must have been some liaison between them somewhere?

Mr. WILLIAMS. Yes; that is right, but we were completely independent. We settled that matter out in Denver last July.

The CHAIRMAN. But somewhere down the line you had to agree on the scheduling of radio and television broadcasts and newspaper advertisement?

Mr. WILLIAMS. Not as much as you would think because we citizens were only responsible for two national programs, one in Detroit, and the other one Nation-wide, a blanket-wide program on election eve. Of course, we conferred with one another in that connection so that there was no duplication and there was a real understanding of what we were doing, and we only undertook those things that seemed peculiarly fitting for us as a citizens' organization to do the job.

The CHAIRMAN. Would you care to make a guess on the cost of this last campaign? I know it would be a guess. Congressman Brown, of Ohio, made one on Monday. He has had considerable experience. He is Republican committeeman from Ohio, and I believe he was national chairman at one time, was he not? He managed Senator Taft's nomination campaign in 1944. He said he would hate to have to pay all of the bills over $80,000,000 for all of the campaigns in the United States this year. Do you think Congressman Brown was overstating or understating the cost?

Mr. KEATING. He may be fixed differently from Congressman Brown.

Mr. WILLIAMS. In the first place, in answering that question I think I should emphasize that point that although I personally happen to be a Republican, nevertheless, I am in this room as chairman for Citizens for Eisenhower-Nixon. I was not interested in or concerned

with the election of county sheriffs or any local officers, Senators, or even Congressmen. I know that is bad, but it is the fact, nevertheless. My whole interest in life was to direct this organization to support the election of General Eisenhower and Richard Nixon.

Therefore, I had no particular reason to be informed as to how much money was being spent for the offices other than these top offices. I know that Americans tend to put a price tag on everything, and the higher or the bigger the better, and we seem to like to have them big. Mr. Brown may be right. It seems to me high. I think if I were just going to take a shotgun appraisal at it I think the figure might be more nearly half of that, or $50,000,000 as a total or something around that figure.

I think probably you could get at the answer as to whether Representative Brown's estimates of $80,000,000 to $100,000,000, or mine or half of that amount, as to which one happened to be more nearly correct by making a very searching analysis in every State. It would be a whale of a big job, but I suppose you could get at it fairly accurately by just having enough task force to fully run it down State by State, and office by office, but not having that information, and not having that study, then I think any estimate which would be made by Mr. Brown or myself would have to be pretty much of a horseback appraisal.

Mr. KEATING. The New York Times has made an over-all Federal inquiry into this matter and, perhaps, they would like to have their staff look into each of the States and amplify their study.

The CHAIRMAN. The New York Times study actually shows Statewide a cost of approximately $32,000,000 or $33,000,000 with nothing Federal at all.

Mr. KEATING. Yes, that is the expenditures in the States.

Mr. McCULLOCH. And it does not include expenditures in counties. The CHAIRMAN. It includes none of the primaries but all of the other expenditures there. I am not sure that Mr. Brown exaggerated. Mr. WILLIAMS. Well, I am not either; I have no way of knowing. The CHAIRMAN. Well, we would appreciate having your help and assistance, in the light of the experience you have had, in recommending to the Eighty-third Congress constructive amendments to the existing Corrupt Practices Acts. I think it is perfectly obvious that campaign expenditures, like everything else, seem to be going up. Mr. WILLIAMS. Yes; that is right.

The CHAIRMAN. And, as a matter of fact, there is no law on the books that was written after the advent of television.

Mr. WILLIAMs. And also prior to inflation.

Mr. KEATING. Of course, that may be offset somewhat by the hardening of the dollar.

The CHAIRMAN. I hope you are right.

Mr. LONG. Mr. Williams, can you give us any estimate as to the average size of the contribution that Citizens for Eisenhower received, sir?

Mr. WILLIAMS. You may be surprised at this, and it is apropos to some of the discussion of this morning of that section having to do with individual contributions of $5,000. I think we have somewhere between eight and a dozen contributors of over $3,000. You see how limited that is. In other words, out of 20,000 contributors, I think

I would be safe in saying that not over 12 have given more than $3,000. Getting to averages, Mr. Long my answer is somewhat related as I indicated a while ago when I was giving the lump-sum estimates. One section of our activities was a program of direct mailing of letters, which was a special series of 1,500,000 letters, or thereabouts, which went to Illinois. The recipients were invited to make contributions if they felt disposed so to do, and I think that there are some 10,000 or 12,000 out of the 20,000 embodied in the total, who replied to that letter.

Mr. KEATING. You mean to say you sent out 20,000 letters in Illinois?

Mr. WILLIAMS. No; 1,500,000 letters.

The CHAIRMAN. In the State of Illinois?

Mr. WILLIAMS. In the State of Illinois I sent out 1,500,000 letters for Citizens for Eisenhower.

Mr. KEATING. About 12,000 replied with contributions.

Mr. WILLIAMS. Yes; that is about right. And to answer your question, it is difficult to give any intelligent answer, because it is so badly weighted, any figures are so badly weighted by the amount that comes back from that particular segment.

Mr. LONG. Do you know offhand how much the election eve broadcast cost?

Mr. WILLIAMS. Yes, I can tell you-$267,000.

The CHAIRMAN. That in itself poses one of the greatest problems, the cost of time.

Mr. LONG. How long a period was that?

Mr. WILLIAMS. An hour and a half; first a half hour, and then the opposite candidate was on, and after that we had an hour.

Mr. KEATING. Television and radio.

Mr. WILLIAMS. Yes, television.

The CHAIRMAN. The Madison Square speech cost about $150,000, just that one program, I believe.

Thank you very much. Are there any questions?

Mr. McCULLOCH. I would like to ask just one or two questions: And this goes back to the situation before the convention, the Citizens for Eisenhower organization. Was that committee an incorporated committee, or was it just an association?

Mr. WILLIAMS. The attorney advises it was an association.

Mr. THAYER. I was not associated with the previous group. This committee was an unincorporated association. Those associated with the previous organization would have to answer as to it. I think there was no incorporation whatsoever.

Mr. McCULLOCH. The original Citizens for Eisenhower Committee was set up at what geographical locations?

Mr. WILLIAMS. The first clubs were organized-the first club in Hoboken, N. J., and one or two of the gentlemen who helped to organize it are here. It was organized, I believe, in 1951 in Hoboken, with the feeling, perhaps, that nothing good could come out of New York, so they went into New Jersey.

Mr. McCULLOCH. This may be a leading question, but do you think the States in which the Citizens for Eisenhower functioned primarily prior to the convention required a report of contributions as disbursements?

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