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University Daily Kansan Thursday. April 18, 1963
Political Undercurrents Entangle Editor
Ellsworth is a small town much like many other small Kansas towns—except that the editor of one of its weekly newspapers does not believe in "playing it safe."
PAYTON IS a newcomer in Ellsworth, but not to the smalltown weekly newspaper. For 20 years he was editor of the Overbrook Citizen. From Overbrook Payton went to Oklahoma City, where he was an editorial writer for the Daily Oklahoma during the year before he moved to Ellsworth. Payton took over the Ellsworth Messenger in March, 1960.
Dwight Payton is that editor. And the Ellsworth Messenger is his paper. He is a big man with an easy manner and a calmness about him that provides sharp contrast with the vigor of his editorials.
Most small-town weekly editors are either afraid or too busy to rock the boat. They are in close personal contact with the citizens of their communities every day. They are not protected by the immunity of numbers that shields the the editor of the metropolitan daily. The sanction of social pressure is at its zenith in the small, established community. Those who rock the boat face the full force of this pressure.
Dwight Payton rocked the boat in Ellsworth. He fought for changes in one of the most sacred of all sacred cows in the small town — the Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber of Commerce represents the core of the professional community, and as such it represents the advertising dollar. Advertising dollars are not easy to find in a small town. Two or three big advertisers could make the difference between profit and loss. This is another reason why many small town editors feel they must play it safe.
BUT DWIGHT Payton did not play it safe. He published a few facts and figures that had been brought up in a Chamber of Commerce membership meeting;
"We pay our mayor $100 a year to manage a corporation which handles an annual budget
of $215,000 a year. Then we pay our Chamber manager $4,540 (plus $650 allowance for driving her own car in town) to manage an enterprise with a budget of $2,606 after her own salary is extracted." wrote Payton on the editorial page of the Feb. 6 Messenger.
Payton's enemies, accumulated during three years of vigorous and outspoken editorial comment, were at the March 5 Chamber of Commerce meeting in force, and they were "loaded for bear."
CHAMBER OF Commerce President Robert E. Nichols, a local pharmacist, called the meeting to bring the strong feelings that had thus far been expressed only privately out into the open. He began the business of the meeting by reading a list of 19 criticisms he had heard about the Chamber, and then opened the meeting to discussion.
Mrs. Verna Leuty, manager of the Ellsworth Chamber of Commerce, was the first to be recognized, and she was well prepared with a list of 16 quotations from the Messenger. She maintained these quotations were unfair criticism of the Chamber of Commerce and its manager.
"THE ONLY fair comparison of Chamber salary would have been to compare the $4,540 with the city payroll of $41,094—if we are going to compare salary of Chamber and city."
Here are her rebuttals to Payton's comments on her salary and car allowance:
"Amazing as it may seem, the editor of the Messenger was a board member in 1961 and 1962 when I asked that someone else furnish the Chamber car and get the $55 a month allowance. All board members received individual copies of all board minutes."
Mrs. Leuty also said Payton was present when she asked that someone else furnish the car.
FROM HER comments on the car allowance, it seems that Mrs. Leuty considers Payton's attack on the allowance to be a personal attack. Paytons objection was not that SHE received the car allowance, but that ANY-ONE should receive the allowance.
Most of the other criticism that Mrs. Leuty quoted suggested that there was a lack of interest in the Chamber of Commerce and it was too expensive for the benefits derived.
At this same meeting, Payton distributed leaflets giving the manager salaries. car allowances and Chamber dues in other Kansas towns of comparable size. Of the 10 towns listed, Ellsworth has the highest Chamber manager salary and car allowance.
Mrs. Leuty denied both these contentions.
MRS. LEUTY and her supporters feel Ellsworth has a superior Chamber and therefore gets its money's worth.
After a lengthy discussion centering almost exclusively around Payton's relationship with the Chamber, the members voted to hire another full-time manager to take Mrs. Leuty's place when her resignation, submitted Feb. 9 to become effective July 1, becomes effective. Mrs. Leuty has since decided not to continue until July 1.
In the Messenger on the morning after the meeting appeared Payton's account of what had happened at the meeting:
"Did you ever get the holy stuffins kicked out of you before a whole crowd of people? It's quite an experience. It happened to me last night at the emergency Chamber of Commerce meeting held at the City Hall in Ellsworth."
LATER IN the article he describes the voting:
"A fight developed on how the votes were to be taken. Aylward (Paul Aylward, city attorney, member of the Chamber board of directors, County Democratic chairman and Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate from Kansas in the 1962 election) demanded that voting be by a show of hands, commenting that members ought "to have enough guts to stand up and be counted." Payton protested, saying that all tradition was for secret balloting on important issues where personalities were concerned, but he was voted down by a show of hands and the open votes were unanimous from then on."
DWIGHT PAYTON sits at his desk in the editor's office of the Ellsworth Messenger.
AFTER THE meeting, Payton's opponents had good reason to believe they had put the editor in his place. Payton's supporters, if he had any, did little in the way of defending him at the meeting.
According to the opposition weekly, the Ellsworth Reporter, the ballots were by a show of hands "to conserve time."
In interviews conducted by this writer 10 days after the meeting, some of Ellsworth's citizens appeared to think the town should be ashamed of what had happened.
Quentin J. Eklund, owner of Eklund (photographic) Studio and former Chamber of Commerce president, had this to say about the meeting:
"I THINK there have been some gross injustices done. I
think the town should be thoroughly ashamed of that so-called meeting they had down there.
"This is just too small a community for this sort of thing. It has gotten vicious... In a town this size everybody's interests are so completely interwoven... Things have got to calm down.
"I think a lot of it stems from the last election. There seem to be some hard losers.
"WHEN THEY start trying to censor a man's writing . . . that's going too far.
"They just saw that they were losing control and they got bitter about it.
"I think the thing that hurts most people is when they stop arguing principles and start arguing personalities. I think that the people who do that are running scared. They know they're beat in principle."
IN AN interview the same day, Payton said politics, not the Chamber of Commerce, was the foundation for the attack. The Chamber of Commerce meeting merely offered an opportunity for the attack.
"I'd say without any doubt it (the attack at the meeting) was organized." Payton said. "It was brilliantly organized. It had to be contrived. Bob (Nichols) had a list of criticisms. This was to be the business of the meeting—it wasn't."
"It's my opinion that the thing had political overtones in the very beginning." Nichols said. "It was mostly just a series of personal clashes involving a few individuals."
Robert E. Nichols, local pharmacist and Chamber of Commerce president, agreed with Payton's contention that the attack was basically political.
ASKED IF the attack was pre-arranged, Nichols said. "It appeared that way; however, it wasn't. No one saw my notes before the meeting. I can't speak for anyone that spoke against him (Payton)."
Nichols said the 19 points he read were "things I had heard during the course of this thing." These were points of criticism "involving both sides of the question."
"I have at this time very little hope that the problem is solved yet. I have hope that it's solved but very little confidence.
"As it developed, nothing was brought up other than against Payton," he said.
"I DON'T think this is a Chamber problem particularly. I think it's a community problem."
Mrs. Leuty was interviewed in the Chamber of Commerce office in the basement of the bank. Referring to Payton, she said, "He has a talent. I just wish he would use it for good. I'm the goat of the whole thing — caught right in the middle.
"I'm out of this thing. I just wish you would leave me out of it. You are just making a bad situation worse.
"Other newspapers — they make it sound sensational — things I didn't say.
"DON'T YOU quote me on anything — because I have an attorney. This is just too big a
thing for newspapers to come in here and quote people."
When the reporter asked if she preferred that he speak with her attorney, she called John V. O'Donnel and arranged for a meeting. When the reporter reached O'Donnel's office, he was invited into the book-lined office and offered a chair. That was all he got.
Fortunately, other townspeople were willing to discuss the situation.
"Before you start asking questions, I'll tell you now I'm not going to answer," O'Donnel said.
"DWIGHT (PAYTON) says this town isn't big enough for two newspapers," said Calman. "I think Dwight misconstrued this to be political.
Henry J. Calnan, editor and publisher of Ellsworth's other weekly, the Ellsworth Reporter, said the controversy is not political but is based on competition between the two newspapers.
"It looks like a direct parallel to the Kansas City Star antitrust suit." He said Payton tried to discourage the townspeople from advertising in the Reporter.
"This really led up to this Chamber of Commerce thing. He has developed a misconception that there is a drive out to feed advertising in here. It wasn't any political instigation or anything of the kind.
"Some say Payton got cut unnecessarily—but others say he got what he had coming to him.
"WEVE TRIED to stay out of this battle, frankly. To my notion the purpose of a newspaper is to keep the people informed—not to cut people down through character assassination.
"Dwight is hurting himself, but he keeps right on... It's no good for the town. I've never seen a situation like it in my life and it's not easy to live around."
Asked how he thinks the situation will end, Payton said:
"I can only say what I hope for—a town that is tolerant of open editorial expression—a town where political opposition is recognized as a basic privilege, where Republican can oppose Democrat and vice versa on a friendly, good-neighbor basis. "I hope that the leaders of the community can all get along harmoniously and direct their efforts toward bettering their community and not waste time on negative activities.
"IF IT doesn't work out like that, our community is going to be branded as a community that will not tolerate these things. This would make Ellsworth a name that is more or less anathema among the good communities of the state."
— Dennis Branstiter
UNIVERSITY Daily Hansan
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