MIDWEST: Congressional Fights Tax the G.O.P.

BADGERED and beset in the industrial states of both U.S. seaboards, Republicans these days look longingly toward their longtime Midwestern heartland to help them recoup expected losses in the 1958 congressional elections. It was in the Midwest, then a land of drought and depressed prices, that Republicans suffered their most painful 1956 House losses. It is in the Midwest, now a land of grains and gains, that the G.O.P. must recover if it is, at best, to close up the House gap on Democrats or, at worst, to forestall a Democratic landslide. Last week TIME correspondents traveled through the Midwest, reported on issues and outlook. Their major conclusion: far from booming back in their traditional bastion, Republicans are fighting desperately to hold their own on a bloody political battleground. The facts behind the findings:

¶ The Midwest is plainly prosperous, but farmers have not yet come to thank the policies of Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson; in the Dakotas, Minnesota and Iowa especially, Benson remains a political cussword.

¶Republicans have long depended on the small farming town as the center of their Midwestern strength. But recent years have seen a population trend away from the farm town to the cities. Indeed, with U.S. industry growing rapidly in the farm states, the importance of the farm vote itself has diminished. As a dramatic example, in Kansas, for years an absolute citadel of Republican-voting farmers, agriculture now ranks as seventh among the state’s sources of personal income. ¶Farmers are especially sensitive to the inflationary effects of big-labor wage boosts and to Senate revelations of union corruption, and this may well be a sleeper issue working in the Republicans’ favor. Yet in Kansas, Ohio and Colorado, the labor issue has been somewhat offset because right-to-work proposals appear on the ballot—to the distress of Republican candidates and the delight of Democrats, because right-to-work prompts organized labor to spend vast amounts of money in registration drives that usually work to Democratic advantage.

Such overall issues, when boiled down to specific congressional district campaigns, are often less important than personalities or local problems. But the issues have shaped a general Midwestern pattern that finds a score of Republican incumbents and only a few Democratic officeholders being seriously challenged. Some key races in key Midwestern states:

Indiana

Indiana has nine Republican incumbents, only two Democrats. The two Democrats, Gary’s eight-term Ray Madden, 66, and Evansville’s four-term Winfield

Denton, 61, appear safe. Four Republicans are in perilously close races. In the Eleventh (Indianapolis) District, polls show four-term Eisenhower Republican Charles Brownson, 44, slightly behind Democratic Theater Owner Joseph Barr, 40, who is helped by an unusually strong Marion County Democratic ticket. In the Ninth (Aurora) District, lone-wolf Republican Earl Wilson, 52, running as usual without help from the state G.O.P. organization, needs a good rural turnout to hold his seat against Bartholomew County Sheriff Earl Hogan, 38-In the Fifth (Kokomo) District, archconservative, teetotaling Republican John Beamer, 61, is fighting for his life against vigorous, teetotaling Huntington County Lawyer J. Edward Roush, 38.

In Indiana’s Third (South Bend) District, Republican problems come to critical focus. There Democrat John Brademas, 31, a political-science teacher at St. Mary’s College and a special protege of Democratic National Chairman Paul Butler, is trying for the third time to win the seat now held by Freshman Republican F. Jay Nimtz, 42. With South Bend and its Studebaker-Packard plant a chronic unemployment troublespot, Brademas was touted a winner in 1954 and 1956—and lost both years. This time, with Brademas harping on the still-evident recession and labor going all out against Indiana’s right-to-work law, Brademas is given his best chance ever.

Missouri

An island of Corn Belt Democratic strength (it was the only non-Southern state to go against Dwight Eisenhower in 1956), Missouri has ten Democratic Representatives, only one Republican. Second District (St. Louis) Republican Incumbent Thomas Curtis is in real trouble against Lawyer James L. Sullivan, former chief counsel for Thomas Hennings’ Senate subcommittee investigating juvenile delinquency. Curtis has been badly hurt by a migration to his heavily suburban district of workers from heavily Democratic South St. Louis.

Iowa

In Iowa there are seven Republican congressional incumbents, one Democratic. Iowa had a bumper corn crop this year, but farmers complain bitterly about being caught in a price-cost squeeze, and Democratic candidates work hard at blaming it on Benson. Republicans, in turn, have made labor corruption a major issue; e.g., in 1956 Democratic Governor Her’schel Loveless got $17,5°° in Teamsters’ campaign contributions in violation of state law. Republicans have high hopes that Robert Waggoner, former administrative assistant to Iowa’s popular G.O.P.

Senator Thomas Martin, will win back the seat held by Democrat Merwin Coad, winner in 1956 by precisely 198 votes out of 129,052 cast. But Republicans are having rough sledding in at least three other districts. In the Second (Cedar Rapids-Dubuque) district, veteran Henry O. Talle, ranking Republican on the House Banking and Currency Committee, carried only 51.3% of the district in 1956 against Democrat Leonard Wolf, who has been campaigning ever since. In the Fifth (Des Moines) district, Republican Paul Cunningham won by only 51.1% in 1956, is slightly favored over Democrat Neal Smith, who is hurt by a split in the Polk County party organization.

In Iowa’s Fourth District, an area of small (less than 300 acres) farms running southeast from Des Moines, the state’s politics can be seen in microcosm. There, in 1956, Republican Incumbent Karl Le-Compte, 71, won his tenth term by running strong in small towns and carrying 50.7% of the vote against Farmer-Lawyer Steven Carter, 43. This year LeCompte has retired, but Democrat Carter, still trying, is making headway among farmers caught in the cost-price squeeze and in the squeezed small towns that depend on farmers. To replace LeCompte, the Republicans nominated personable John H. Kyi, 39, hard-driving farmer, newscaster and co-owner of a men’s clothing store in the Davis County seat of Bloomfield (pop. 2,600). Kyi has worked hard on the labor issue, advocating a program to free rank-and-file workers from boss control (Iowa already has a right-to-work law). The big switch in the district is that Kyi may cut into the Democrats’ traditional city vote, Democrat Carter into the Republicans’ rural vote, with the result a tossup.

Minnesota

Prices for Minnesota’s dairy products have not kept pace with farm prices in the rest of the U.S.—and the Democrat-Farmer-Labor Party has no peer at making Benson the villain. Even popular Republican Senator Ed Thye is in critical trouble, although running hard on an anti-Benson program. In the Ninth Congressional District, Democrat Coya Knutson is beset with family and factional problems, but is expected to win narrowly over Odin Langen, a big, friendly Scandinavian state representative who should be right down the Ninth’s alley. In the Third (near Minneapolis) District, crotchety Democrat Roy Wier always has trouble, always wins, and should again. At least two Republican incumbents are in much worse shape: Albert Quie, whose loss in Minnesota’s solid Republican south could be a mortal blow to the G.O.P., and Veteran H. Carl Andersen, a leading Benson critic, who has long won against inferior Democratic candidates but this year faces Minnesota’s House Speaker A. I. Johnson, who has complete D.F.L. support.

Kansas

Bursting with beautiful, visible farm prosperity, Kansas has five Republican Representatives and one Democratic. In 1956, the six winners each got 55% or less of the vote—and on that basis it is conceivable that all six could switch this time. Against the lone Democratic incumbent, Floyd Breeding, Republicans have put up Cliff Hope Jr., son of vastly popular, Benson-needling Cliff Hope Sr., who retired from the House before the 1956 elections. But young Cliff has not yet shown his father’s vote-getting abilities and is at best 50-50 to win.

In the Second District, Republican Errett Scrivner, best remembered for his demand for the return of the suit with two pairs of pants during World War II, has held forth for 15 years. Scrivner should win against Lawyer Newell George—but Kansas is holding a right-to-work referendum and labor is working furiously in industrial Kansas City, which lies in Scrivner’s district. Similarly, in the First District, Republican Incumbent William Avery should win against Topeka Lawyer Robert Domme but is plagued by a migration away from the farm towns to Topeka, where labor’s C.O.P.E. is battling right-to-work. And in the Third District (in southeast Kansas, where lead and zinc mines are on their uppers), the Fourth District (including industrial Wichita) and the Sixth District (where Isolationist Wint Smith holds highly tenuous reign), Republican incumbents have no time for coasting.

Nebraska

A land of beef-price plenty, Nebraska is a state where organized labor has little real influence, and the brightest spot in the Midwestern picture for Republicans.

Of Nebraska’s all-Republican, four-man House delegation, only the Third District’s Robert D. Harrison is in any difficulty. In 1956 Harrison beat Democrat Lawrence Brock by less than 300 votes, and Brock is running again. But this time Harrison himself is campaigning harder and has increased backing from a powerful state organization alerted by his close shave in 1956.

South Dakota

One of the two congressional seats safely belongs to Republican E. Y. Berry, 56. In the other, Republican Governor Joe Foss is running against Incumbent Democratic Representative George McGovern, first Democrat to hold a South Dakota congressional seat in 18 years. The South Dakota vote is strictly agricultural: McGovern started ahead because Foss had lost friends by raising taxes; then rains brought a farm boom and Foss moved up; then an August drought came to McGovern’s help. Result: McGovern appears to have a handy lead, rapping Ezra Benson while Republican Foss tries to avoid taking a stand one way or another on Benson. But Foss, World War II Marine Corps ace, has yet to warm up his Piper Super Cub and take off on the kind of whirlwind campaign that won him the governorship.

With so many races being contested so closely, the bloody Midwestern battleground offers chances for a congressional sweep by either party. But in the old Republican heartland the Democrats are now clearly running horse races instead of turkey trots in district after district—and the Republicans can no longer count on these historic precincts to make up for deficiencies elsewhere.