THE CONGRESS: Makings of the 73rd

After noisy campaigns three more important primaries, makings of the 73rd Congress, were held last week:

Kansas. To get Vice President Curtis from Los Angeles to his Topeka home in time to vote, a fast Santa Fe train was rerouted through Kansas. Even so the Vice President had to get off at Dodge City and use an absentee ballot.

Kansas Republicans picked Banker Ben Sandford Paulen, onetime Governor, to make the Senate race. Renominated by the Democrats was Senator George McGill who handily defeated a lone Wet opponent. The only Wet to make any snowing in dust-dry Kansas was Edward White Patterson, a Democratic lawyer pledged to Repeal who squeaked through to a House nomination in the heavily Republican 3rd Congressional district. Because Reapportionment cost Kansas one House seat, Republican Representatives Strong and Lambertson had to fight it out for the ist District’s nomination. Mr. Strong, ardent Hooverite, was defeated.

Missouri. To succeed Harry Bartow Hawes, retiring voluntarily from the Senate to work for wild life, Democrats nominated Bennett Champ Clark, 42-year-old son of the late great Speaker of the House. Nominee Clark, militant Wet, was a genuine A. E. F. colonel. He helped found the American Legion in Paris. He practices law in St. Louis. In the primary he beat Charles M. Howell, passive Wet, who lay in a Kansas City hospital with double pneumonia as the result of too strenuous campaigning. His victory was a thumping defeat for Tom Pendergast, Democratic boss of Kansas City, whose machine, a miniature of Tammany Hall, had backed the Howell candidacy. “Boss” Pendergast used to be a wholesale liquor dealer; now he runs a ready-mixed concrete company. Once his $100,000 home was robbed, burglars taking, among $150,000 worth of other things, 480 pairs of silk stockings just bought for his daughter Marceline’s trousseau. Pendergast was reported to have quickly won back his loss at the race track. A hard-boiled politician, he is extremely vulnerable to caricature in the hostile St. Louis Press— bloated face and body, long arms, short spindle legs. To keep his machine greased, he always carries a pocket full of quarters, passes them out to Kansas City bums. Though his man lost the Senatorial nomination, he succeeded in naming the Democratic candidate for Governor, Francis Wilson.

The Republican Senatorial nomination went easily to Henry W. Kiel, onetime bricklayer, who served twelve years as Mayor of St. Louis. As both Nominees Kiel and Clark are wringing Wet, Missouri’s new Senator is sure to be for repeal of the 18th Amendment.

Missouri, with its House seats cut from 16 to 13 by 1930 Reapportionment, failed to redistrict itself. Hence all its Representatives last week had to be nominated at large, the highest 13 on each party ticket qualifying for the November election. An enormous State-wide ballot resulted when 56 Democrats, 30 Republicans presented themselves for House nominations. In the confusion five sitting Democrats were jostled back to private life.

Kentucky. At Pineville a deputy sheriff was killed, a miner stabbed during the voting. Impounded by law for 24 hours, the ballots indicated that Democratic Senator Alben W. Barkley, a Wet convert had won renomination over George B. Martin, oldtime Wet, thus breaking a 30-year jinx against Kentucky Senators succeeding themselves. The State’s failure to reduce its House seats from eleven to nine required the nomination of all Congressional candidates as Representatives-at-large.

Dates. Hot primaries involving Senatorial nominations: South Carolina, Aug. 30; California, Aug. 30; Louisiana and Wisconsin, Sept. 13; Georgia, Sept. 14.