Oregon: Mark’s Other Woman

After Oregon’s Richard Neuberger died in 1960, his vivacious wife Maurine ran for his U.S. Senate seat and easily won herself a full six-year term. Hardly as controversial as her husband, she performed unspectacularlyfor a couple of years as the Senate’s Other Woman, its Democratic opposite number to Maine Republican Margaret Chase Smith.

Then Maurine began to lose interest in Capitol Hill. After marrying Dr. Philip Solomon, a Boston psychiatrist, in July 1964, she set up house in Newton Centre, Mass, (though maintaining a legal residence in Oregon). She spent more and more time in the East, paid less and less attention to her constituents, turned down many speaking engagements, and in the past two years, all but stopped visiting Oregon.

Last spring, when Maurine, now 55, confided to close friends that she did not want to run for re-election in 1966, they dissuaded her from announcing the decision, on the grounds that it would make her a lameduck Senator too soon. Last week, after months of rumor, the word in Washington was that Senator Neuberger still intends to become plain Mrs. Solomon next year.

By stepping aside, she will save herself a rugged and possibly losing campaign. Oregon’s able Republican Governor Mark Hatfield, 43, who cannot run for a third term, is an odds-on bet to try for the Senate. Private polls show him running slightly ahead of Mrs. Solomon. But Oregon Democrats are not a one-woman organization, and their candidate against Hatfield will most likely be six-term Congresswoman Edith Green, 55. A poll by the Portland Oregonian gave her a slight lead over Hatfield.