NORTH DAKOTA: For Dumping Wild Bill

For years, dour, cigar-raddling William Langer made life miserable for North Dakota’s regular Republican organization, caterwauling his way to victory as a member of a theoretically Republican faction known as the Non-Partisan League, and voting anti-Republican every chance he got. But in 1956 the Non-Partisan League split up, part of it going over to the Democratic Party, the other part joining the regular Republicans. In that breakup, the Republicans got saddled with U.S. Senator Bill Langer. And having got him, last week they tried to get rid of him: the state G.O.P. convention voted 348 to 177 on its fifth ballot to dump Wild Bill Langer, 71, in favor of Lieutenant Governor Clyde Duffy, 68. The convention vote will not prevent Langer from running in the party’s June primary—and no one who knows stubborn Bill Langer thinks he will do anything else. In fact, even as the Republican delegates gathered, his Washington aides were holding a fancy campaign-fund-raising dinner.