Senator Hiram L. Fong called on Republican women yesterday to “go out and recruit a variety of racial groups into the party.”

Close to 100 members of the Oahu League of Republican Women heard the Senator at the Willows Restaurant.

“As we look around us,” Fong said, “we find our party getting smaller and smaller, nationally and locally.

“We in Hawaii need Republicans from various racial groups. There are mostly Caucasian members in many of your clubs and we need to recruit other racial groups.”

‘A Talking Minority’

Fong, exhorting the women to beat the precinct bushes, said, “You have to be a talking minority. We, in Hawaii, have never learned to be a minority party. But now Republicans in Hawaii are outnumbered, according to polls, “by a ration of 2-3/4 Democrats to every Republican.”

He also quoted the results of a private poll of 1,142 local citizens, in which numerical figures gave the Democrats 55 per cent of the tally, the Republicans 13 per cent, and independents the rest.

Fong has some unkind words for the nation’s press.

“Too often Republicans across the nation are up against a hostile press,” he said. “The Washington Post, for example, is one of the most hostile papers to Republicans in the country.

“Too often we are not able to get our story told and, in addition, we are faced with managed news from the government.”

‘Twisting the Arms’

Fong accused the Democratic administration of “twisting the arms of federal employees” to get them to cough up for $100-a-plate fund raising dinners.

The Senator said the United States has lost “prestige everywhere in the world since President Johnson took office six months ago.”

“But let’s learn a lesson from what the Democrats have done,” he said. “The Democrats have brought the Tammany Hall man and the Virginia planter together to form a party.

“Let’s profit from that, and if we are going to disagree, let’s disagree agreeably.”

Every Sunday, “Back in the Day” looks at an article that ran on this date in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. The items are verbatim, so don’t blame us today for yesteryear’s bad grammar.