POLITICAL NOTES: Primaries

Last week some 2,000,000 typical U. S. citizens marched to the polls in ten State primary elections to strike an X for their favorite Congressmen, Governors, lesser State officials. Result was an average vote, some hot local contests, a few new faces here and there, a disinclination to change horses. Highlights:

Louisiana. On the fifth anniversary of the death of Huey Long the remnants of his dictatorial machine were all but erased. Of eight Longster Congressmen, four were beaten, two were forced into runoffs, one failed to run, only one was renominated. Victory went to the reform regime of Governor Sam Houston Jones, whose favorite candidate, robust, balding Felix Edward Hebert (pronounced E’-bare), won the Democratic nomination (tantamount to election) to Congress in the First District in a walk. Son of full-blooded Cajun parents, Nominee Hebert was city editor of the New Orleans States last summer when the paper broke the building scandal which doomed the crumbling Long machine.

Washington. Despite Franklin Roosevelt’s professed disinterest in State races this year, Administration forces worked like nailers to put up a New Deal slate in the primary. They succeeded. Their two top men, rugged Monrad C. Wallgren (for Senator) and Gubernatorial Nominee Clarence C. Dill, drew two rugged Republican opponents: Gubernatorial Draftee Arthur B. Langlie, aggressive Seattle Mayor, and ex-Democrat Stephen F. Chadwick, American Legionnaire, who is riding the Willkie coattails hard.

Michigan. Drawing like a sump pump, good-godly Governor Luren Dickinson, 81, dredged up more than twice the combined vote of his six Republican opponents. As a warning to his Democratic opponent, State Highway Commissioner Murray D. Van Wagoner, Oldster Dickinson cackled: “Probably tens of thousands of my friends didn’t vote for me, because I’m 81 years of age. . . . You can’t blame them.” Isolationist Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg won by 8-to-1 over a Detroit razor blade salesman named Bowen R. Grover.

Georgia. With a rolling barrage of righteous Cracker votes, red-gallused, spellbinding Eugene (“I’m for peace”) Talmadge (who was beaten for the U. S. Senate two years ago) mowed down Dairyman Columbus Roberts, Attorney Abit Nix on his sure-fire advance to a third term as Governor. With his forelock and victory both in his eye, New Deal Baiter Talmadge roared: “I am glad Georgia is out of the war.”

Minnesota. In the Republican fold after twelve years as a Farmer-Labor member of the U. S. Senate, poker-playing old Henrik Shipstead had no trouble walking off with the Republican Senatorial nomination. For GOPoliticos, it was like the good old days before Floyd Olson. They land-slid tough, able young Governor Harold Stassen in on his way to a second term.

New Mexico’s scrappy, white-haired Representative John J. Dempsey, who wrangled the Hatch Act through a balky House last July, found out that there are more ways than one of killing a cat. Behind the well-oiled State machine of District Judge David Chavez Jr. (who sent Dempsey to Congress), Brother Dennis Chavez won the Democratic nomination for U. S. Senator by a whisker. Roared Dempsey : “[There will be] 30 to 40 FBI agents in Santa Fe by nightfall. . . . The people have been intimidated.”