U.S. At War: Return of Litchfield County

Rural Connecticut has been Republican since Lincoln’s day, especially in hilly Litchfield County. The Fifth Connecticut District, of which Litchfield County is the biggest part, sent a Republican to Washington even in the Roosevelt landslide of 1932. But he won by only 78 votes. Factory workers who poured into Waterbury (pop. 99,314) might show an unmistakable preference for the Democrats; city folk from Manhattan—advertising men, editors, surrealist painters, proletarian novelists, foreign correspondents, returned expatriates—might turn the old Republican farms into weekend places. The farmers and their small-town allies—the lawyers, hardware dealers, bankers—scrutinized the newcomers carefully and tried to keep right on running things. But the Democrats beat them in 1934, 1936, 1938, 1940—until the big political question was: How big will the Democratic majority be?

Last week, in a special election, young Joseph E. Talbot, compensation commissioner of Naugatuck, liberal, pro-Willkie Republican, carried the district, 23,278-to-19,663. Republican editors called it a straw in the wind, pointed out that Republican Congressional candidates have won two out of three special elections (in Connecticut, Colorado and Massachusetts), since Dec. 7. But Connecticut people, Democrats and Republicans alike, did not get overly excited. Said the Democratic chairman: “Talbot is a popular fellow.” Said the Republican: “This election shows that the representative system of government still functions.”