The Palm Beach Post from West Palm Beach, Florida • Page 12

Ala-Palm Beach Post, Friday, August 28, 1970 Daves: He 9s in the Race Because We 're in the War MMpiBlBIISPBIlBwA iiil mmmmmgMmmmmMMA 'y- i a-, Continued from Page Al "Years ago I wanted to go over there and do the patriotic thing," he once said to an interviewer. "But. pragmatically, I was always against the war. I never could see what realistic interest we had in that little corner of Southeast Asia." I And, of course, there are his own sons Joel IV, J19, and Christian, 16. i "I don't want Joel or anyone else his age dying anymore.

I cannot be certain anymore about promises. I can't be certain he will not be in Vietnam even Christian." So the Marine major entered the race as a candidate for peace. A stranger looking at his background would have Ifound this an unusual role for Daves. Born in Atlanta, he moved to West Palm Beach he was 10. He received his undergraduate degree rat the University of the South in Sewanee, and law degree at the University of Florida in 1953.

Then he joined the Marines. He was on active duty four years and in a reserve status until earlier this jyear. Just a day or so after he announced his candidacy, he was relieved of his command of the 160-man Marine Reserve tractor company in West Palm Beach. This was the same Marine who, in 1964, was hoping unit would get called to go to Vietnam. "I was anxious to go," he says.

"I wanted to get lover and help get it done." But they didn't call him and his men and minds, as jwell as times, change. After four years with the law firm headed by his jfather-in-law, Daves was appointed by Gov. LeRoy JCollins to fill a vacancy as Palm Beach County solicitor. He won election the next year and served as (solicitor until 1964. Then he ran for and won by a 2-1 margin a seat in the State House.

Two years later, he won renomination in the Democratic primary, but lost in the general election. Now he finds himself in a campaign he dutifully says he can win, but he is hardly ecstatic. "We hope to somehow gather enough momentum between now and election day to be second in the first primary. If we accomplish that, we could focus the campaign on, say, the difference between me and (former) Gov. Farris Bryant, if he is the leading vote-getter." Daves thinks Bryant is the front-runner now in the Democratic battle which also includes Rep.

Fred Schultz of Jacksonville, Alcee Hastings of Fort Lauderdale and Sen. Lawton Chiles of Lakeland. It was time for the TV show, only the second occasion the five candidates had been together. The difference in philosophy on the war was evident is'soon as the questions started. Daves was the only candidate to call for "immediate withdrawal" from Vietnam.

Others spoke in terms 'pi getting out soon. Daves and Hastings were the only candidates to Jdefend a district court ruling on school desegregation. yet, Daves was the only candidate to say the Senate should have confirmed the nomination of Judge J. Harrold Carswell to the U.S. Supreme Court.

(Cars-'well is in the Republican side of the Senate race. After the taping was over, Daves explained his defense of Carswell. "I think the President ought to be able to appoint a person that leans the way he does. The only trouble with Carswell was that his political attitudes were I different from the Senate's." I He quickly added that he wasn't defending Carswell I were president, I never would have nominated but that he felt a constitutional injustice had been done. ji Earlier in the day, all five candidates had appeared (at the Tiger Bay Club in Miami.

Daves at that time i urged them to appear together more often. We've got four weeks left in this campaign. Let's the 10 major population areas and let's go there. Let's be judged on the issues and not on who has a million dollars or who can make a slick TV commercial." By late August, Daves had collected about $10,000. had no billboards, no media advertising, one campaign headquarters and little prospect for enough mon-jey to buy much needed exposure, i The majority of his workers are young people, "He is the most honest candidate I have ever jseen," one said.

"He doesn't say what he thinks you jwant to hear; he tells you what he believes." I But support from the peace groups hasn't come as-anticipated. "I imagine I will be labeled a 'peace candidate' and A rally on the University of Florida campus in Gainesville on Aug. 13 attracted only 300 students and faculty. A "Mothers for Peace" group meeting in a Hollywood home declined to allow him to speak because all of the members were not committed to him. Flustered, he handed out brochures and left.

"Are peace groups supporting you?" asked a Miami radio interviewer. "As far as I know they are not," replied the soft-spoken candidate, toying with his filter-tip cigarette. Where did he get the "What money we raised has been in small donations and from Palm Beach friends." Daves described his campaign as "underfinanced and not as well organized as we should be. By and large, in a lot of parts of Florida they don't know anything about me." Much of his exposure is through the news media. "I haven't made a lot of talks to places like Kiwanis clubs and Rotary.

There are a number of reasons for that," he said. Sometimes after his civic club talks, he said, skeptics approach him and warn: "You gonna give it all to the Yet, he received the biggest ovation at a West Palm Beach Chamber of Commerce rally. His campaign managers worry that Daves is becoming a "one-issue" candidate. Replies Daves: "I think the peace issue is of such importance that it (the one-issue charge) doesn't disturb me as much as the others." Four "position papers" have come from his campaign platforms on the war, senior citizens, the environment and his opposition to the Cross-Florida Barge Canal but, unless asked, he usually talks about the war. "They say let's get out a year from now," he told a Dade County audience.

No one has ever said there is any problem, military problem, of getting out now. If we can get out now, why not get out now?" When is now? "Within a few weeks or a month at the most," Daves told a University of Florida rally. On other issues, the candidate is less confident: The draft: "We should abolish it or make it absolutely universal." Cuban airlift: "I don't have any strong view on it one way or the other. I think we have to learn to live with Castro." Foreign policy: "We need to draw back completely and redefine our foreign policy. We still have this hangup about international (as) one central thing, a conspiracy.

This is simply not true, not true. Desegregation: "I don't have any plan. I don't think it is a political question. Basically what the courts are doing is implementing the original school desegregation cases." But always the conversation returns to the war and the division it is causing in this country and the need to restore faith in America. And especially about the young people and what the war is doing to them.

He says we must judge young people by more than their long hair and unusual clothing. "What about their courage and honesty and decency?" he once asked a group of police chiefs. "If I read young people correctly, the things they think are important are things like peace and love and understanding." When he gets the chance, Joel Daves returns home to rest and recharge his batteries, tucking himself away for some lonely thinking in a homey room in his rambling suburban home. He finds comfort in a good book, in his guitar or in listening to his records, mostly country and western or folk or the sound of today's youth. On the wall in that room is a painting of Joel Daves and Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs.

The painting was done by a friend and, although he has never played with Flatt and Scruggs or posed with them, the painting represents an unfilled dream. But that dream can wait. Right now there is' another one to be satisfied. "We have the resources to solve our problems in our own times," Joel Daves says. "We can do it; I know we can." But it all has to start, he says, by getting out of Vietnam.

That's "THE" issue and that's his campaign. It was time to start out again. More interviews and more speeches and more hard miles were ahad. "Regret it? No I don't regret getting in the race," Daves says. He just hopes people listen to what he has to say.

Next: Alcee Hastings Staff photos The Joel Daves Line No Derisive Comments, Just Concern Joel T. Daves BORN July 14, 1928, Atlanta) now lives in West Palm Beach. FAMILY Wife, Katherine; sons, Joel IV, Christian; daughter, Paty. EDUCATION degree, University of the South (Sewanee); J.D. degree, Uni-ve rsity of Florida College of Law PROFESSION- Attorney.

MILITARY U.S. Marine Corps, Marine Corps Reserve, 1955-70. PUBLIC SERVICE Palm Beach prosecutor, 1959-64; Florida House of Representatives, 1964-66. will be called a 'hippie' by a lot of people," Daves said in an earlier interview. "But I don't really know what a hippie is.

If it is a man who has been married to the same woman for 20 years and lived in the same house for 11 years and belongs to such groups as the Sons of the American Revolution, then I guess I'm one of them." He has been given both labels by some people. And some friends have asked if he "fell out of a tree." Still others tell him that they do not share his beliefs on the war, but they admire him for his convictions. But they will vote for him or support him? That's the unanswered question, the one that run his emotions up and down the roller coaster. It's time for a speech. "In such times," he says, "we should realistically and honestly confront our problems.

But new leadership is needed for the critical '70s, free from obligation to the decision of the '60s." As he campaigns, he runs into the apathy being evidenced by many candidates. wmwmmmtMmiwMmMBMmmmmmimwimimmmmamwmmtmmmifM irnimtm i iiiiiiiijiiiiiiiiiMuiiminiiMiiiiiiiiwn ijiuj 1 f. a ivor Id away Americans lives are being lost, and American men are sujjering casualties in great numbers. Here at home, our national economy is deteriorating, and we are choking in our own I ik.