Flagging The Hart Campaign Flag Button

We stepped out of North Central Flight 4601 into an incredibly bright, mid-October Indian Summer Iron Mountain, Michigan day: Senator Philip A. Hart (D-MI), Bob Lewis, a political reporter from the Kalamazoo Gazette, and me, a 26-year-old recent law school graduate and Senator Hart’s crack 1964 re-election campaign driver. Our 6:00 a.m. EST flight out of the cold darkness of Detroit’s Willow Run Airport had hop-scotched across Michigan’s Lower Peninsula and up the Wisconsin side with stops in Lansing, Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, Wausau and Rhinlander before touching down in Iron Mountain at about 12:30 p.m. CST.

Bob and I were queasy from the flight’s up and down trajectory, having shot pool at Detroit’s famous Anchor Bar until the 2:00 a.m. closing time topped off with some Lafayette Street Coney Island hot dogs smothered in chopped raw onions. Campaign Manager, Jim Allen, a Detroit lawyer and long-time friend of the Senator’s, had instructed me to “look after Bob” during his three week stay with the campaign and I had dutifully answered the call.

The Anchor Bar. Located roughly equidistant between the buildings housing the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press in the basement of a seemingly abandoned warehouse, the Anchor Bar was a hotbed of activity during the then ongoing thirteen week newspaper strike against the News and the Free Press. Rank and file strikers quickly abandoned the picket lines and ditched their signs, littering the top of the outside stairwell down to the Anchor’s anonymous blue steel door in favor of a shot, several beers and one of the Anchor’s sumptuous greasy burgers. The Channel 7 “On The Scene” News truck was often seen parked out side, mid-afternoon, covering the scene at the Anchor, but always at the ready to pounce on any breaking news.

Open from 7 AM until 2:30 AM, the Anchor had an L-shaped vinyl topped bar manned by two beefy middle-aged women, who kept the patrons in check with the threat of banishment. Nestled in the L was a non-descript, highly active pool table, with booths on the other side. The Anchor hosted a diverse clientele. Charles “Chickie” Sherman, a local bookmaker, dropped in most mornings. Newspaper editors, reporters, pressmen, printers, typesetters and other craft union members were in and out throughout the day, while politicians, including Detroit’s Mayor, the Honorable Jerome P. Cavanagh, hit the Anchor late at night. After a lengthy collective bargaining session, the chief negotiators for GM and the UAW might drop in to review the days progress, or lack thereof, over a few beers. Periodically, Amos Wilson, an elderly, black street person, would wander in and bang out a few tunes on the upright piano in the corner in return for food and drink. Whenever he felt under appreciated, Mr. Wilson would hurl insults at the proprietor, Leo Derderian, or the patrons and leave. To get to the Anchor, you had to know it was there. There was no sign, nothing to indicate there was a bar or anything else in the area. It was a triumph of word of mouth marketing.

Alone in the big city and far from Kalamazoo, Bob Lewis quickly fell in love with the Anchor. Consequently, I was compelled to spend a good bit of time there. A crack campaign driver’s duties were many and varied. Later, I was to receive the more lofty title of “Field Coordinator.”

Given the lack of major newspaper coverage, the strike increased the name recognition barrier for Senator Hart’s Republican opponent, Eleanor “Elly” Peterson. Elly’s campaign staff didn’t help by opting for a bumper sticker that said simply “Elly”, without Peterson, the name that would appear on the ballot. Campaign Manager Allen and Press Secretary Jerry Kabel tasked me to listen closely while “in the field” to any snatches of conversation about “Hart,” “Elly” and political issues of the day. The Anchor was abuzz with talk of the Detroit Lions, whether former Michigan State University star, Earl Morrall, should replace Milton Plum as quarterback , admiration for the Lions defensive front four, the “Fearsome Foursome” of Alex Karras, Roger Brown, Sam Williams and Darris McCord, and expectations for the Detroit Red Wings hockey season. There was also conversation about the Michigan Wolverines and Michigan State Spartans football teams, but nothing about “Hart” or “Elly.” The 1964 Hart Re-election Campaign used this intelligence to develop a shrewd, winning campaign strategy with the theme : “Leave The Voter Alone, He Knows What He’s Doing.”

While lively, the Anchor was not the ideal place for Bob and me to shape up for an early morning flight to the Western UP.

Visiting the U.P. It had been five years since Senator Hart had visited the Western U.P. and there was a local public clamor for his return. We were met on the tarmac by Democratic State Representative Dominic Jacobetti, the self-styled “Godfather of the U.P.” and former President of Steelworkers Local 2867, a delegation of current Local 2867 officers and local officials from Ontonagon, Houghton, Iron, Gogebic, Keweenaw and Marquette counties. Our schedule called for us to visit all six of these counties – racing through U.P. forests ablaze with color – during the next ten hours or so before spending the night in Houghton, Michigan, adjacent to Michigan Tech University, a perennial collegiate ice hockey power. While the eastern and central U.P. was solidly Republican, the four westernmost counties voted Democratic by slight margins due to their iron and copper mining heritage.

Upon emerging from North Central Flight 4601, the Senator spotted a Hart campaign button on the lapel of Steelworkers Local No. 2867 official Anton Pinarik. The button was boldly emblazoned “Hart” in white on an American flag backdrop. Senator Hart caught my eye, glanced in Mr. Pinarik’s direction and hissed under his breath: “Get that button back!”

The Hart flag button was a source of extreme embarrassment to Senator Hart throughout the 1964 campaign. In an effort to retain some portion of the VFW vote, Sid Woolner, one of Hart’s campaign aides, had ordered 10,000 Hart buttons embossed on a snappy red, white and blue American flag backdrop. Hart had, after all, been wounded on D-Day and was slightly disabled from his war injuries. After the flag buttons arrived and some 3,000 disseminated, Senator Hart was shocked to learn that Section 750.245 of the Michigan Penal Code made the “exhibition and display of any word, figure mark…or advertisement of any nature” upon the American flag a criminal misdemeanor. While pretending to admire the flag buttons, Ray Clevenger, an Ann Arbor Congressman, brought this 1931 statute to Hart’s attention in a somewhat snide note. Section Hart quickly developed powers bordering on the supernatural to spot the illegal flag buttons at 25 yards in any part of the State and order their retrieval. I was equipped for this task with a large supply of gold Hart buttons, which were to be exchanged for the contraband flag button – hopefully in advance of any news story pointing out this political gaffe.

Needless to say, Senator Hart was disheartened and chagrined to find that the dreaded flag button had somehow made its way to the westernmost regions of the U.P. A Senatorial nod in Anton Pinarik’s direction was all I needed to spring into action. Ordinarily, I would coolly saunter over in the wearer’s direction, strike up a conversation, develop some rapport and reward him or her with a gold Hart button in return for undying loyalty to the Hart cause. Ideally, I would pull off the exchange without having to get into messy details about illegality. If necessary and if the wearer seemed a trustworthy, loyal Democrat, I was prepared to confess that the flag button violated some obscure state statute, that the Senator only learned about this statute recently, was terribly embarrassed about it and would you please fork the damn thing over. Until the deal was sealed, I could feel Hart’s eyes boring in my direction, followed by great relief when he saw the wearer triumphantly sporting the glittering, gold Hart button.

Challenging logistics. Logistics alone made retrieval of Mr. Pinarik’s flag button challenging. State Representative Jacobetti, apparently eager to show Senator Hart off to his constituents, quickly whisked him off to a waiting vehicle. The Jacobetti-Hart lead vehicle was followed by several cars of Steelworkers Local 2867 officials and several more cars loaded with local dignitaries. Bob Lewis and I were left to chase this caravan in our rental, as best we could. After leaving Iron Mountain, the caravan zoomed north on M-141, when it suddenly pulled to a halt in Crystal Falls, the county seat for Iron County. Representative Jacobetti then led Senator Hart into the local barbershop, along with the entire retinue of Steelworker and local public officials, and introduced the Senator to the barber and his patrons, after which, everyone jumped back into their cars and sped off. The ensuing hours involved a series of similar stops in a number of U.P. towns and cities, including Baraga, L’Anse, Ishpeming, Marquette and Negaunee. Because Mr. Pinarik was riding in a vehicle close to the caravan’s front, I had no opportunity to chat with him, much less build any rapport. Also, during our stops, he was conjoined with his brother Local 2867 officials, which made a flag button retrieval awkward. In addition, I had to slip away from Bob Lewis lest a jocular, but embarrassing flag button story appear in the Kalamazoo Gazette.

Nonetheless, having been denuded of my Senatorial driving function by Representative Jacobetti and his cohorts, I was determined to recover the illicit flag button. By the time we stopped at Local 2687 in Negaunee, Anton Pinarik’s home local, I felt I had no choice but to approach him directly. He was a seemingly pleasant, fortyish, heavy set man with a dark bushy moustache, who was understandably confused about why a 26 year old from downstate wanted to talk to him, much less about some campaign button. Mr. Pinarik and his brother Steelworkers listened bemusedly to my disclosure concerning the flag button’s illegality, his conceivable criminal misdemeanor exposure for “displaying” the button and my offer of the shiny gold Hart button as a prestigious token of Senatorial gratitude and esteem. When I finished, Mr. Pinarik was unmoved.: ”I like my flag button,” he said, drawing guffaws of admiration from his colleagues. “Besides,” he added with a streak of U.P. independence, “nobody up here cares whether I wear a flag button.” I gently tried to point out that Phil Hart, the Conscience of the Senate, cared and didn’t want to be violating the law in his re-election campaign.

The 51st state. Shifting his ground, Mr. Pinarik said: “We’ll be our own state soon anyway.” While chasing the caravan earlier in the day, I had noted several bumper stickers proudly proclaiming membership in the Upper Peninsula Independence Association (UPIA), a U.P. group advocating secession from Michigan and formation of the nation’s 51st state, the State of Superior. The idea of U.P. secession had been around since the 1890s, but the UPIA , formed in 1962, was in the process of attempting to collect enough signatures for a ballot referendum on separation from Michigan. In the 1970s, Representative Jacobetti, our host, also introduced legislation to achieve the same result. Whatever conceivable relevance U.P. independence had to the flag button, I concluded my retrieval efforts were lost. The caravan was about to push on and Mr. Pinarik was staying at Local 2867.
Our U.P. swing ended that evening in the city of Houghton on Michigan’s beautiful Keweenaw Peninsula. The crack campaign driver had suffered his first and only defeat in retrieving the Hart flag button at the hands of some avowed, overweight U.P. secessionists. I later learned that Houghton was one of three cities under consideration as the capital of the proposed 51st state. We arose early the next morning and flew out of the nascent State of Superior, leaving Mr. Pinarik down there somewhere, proudly wearing his Hart flag button. Presumably, he is still at large.

Howard E. O'Leary
Washington, DC