Nation: HOW THEY’RE RUNNING FOR THE HOUSE

THE Republican Party’s fondest hope has been to take control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the 1962 elections. To turn the trick, the G.O.P. needs to take 44 seats away from incumbent Democrats. This calls for a landslide which almost no observer sees in the offing. Most pre-Cuba guesses gave the G.O.P. a gain of about a dozen seats. What Cuba did to this estimate, few are willing to say.

THE NEW LINES. By far the greatest change will result from the redistricting required in 25 states after the 1960 census. A characteristic case is in Illinois, where seven-term Democrat Peter F. Mack Jr. and Freshman Republican Representative Paul Findley were squeezed into a new downstate district by a G.O.P. legislature that clearly hoped to sack Mack. An unpredictable liberal (he voted against foreign aid this year), Mack was given twelve rural Republican counties. Findley, a weekly newspaper publisher and a Goldwater conservative, seems ahead. But Mack is durable: when another G.O.P. legislature gerrymandered his district a decade ago he won anyway. In West Virginia, eight-term Democrat Cleveland M. Bailey, 76, has a new district that gives him a 50,000 registration advantage. But middle-roading G.O P Congressman Arch A. Moore Jr., 39, has won the endorsement of some labor groups, even a few Democratic leaders. A Democratic legislature in North Carolina threw the state’s 4 only Republican Congressman, Charles R. Jonas, into a new district with Democratic Representative A. Paul Kitchin. The race is as close as the conservatism of the two men. Says Jonas: “There are spenders and savers. I’m a saver.” Says Kitchin: “I’m a conservative, but not a mossback.”

New York’s Democratic Representative Samuel S. Stratton picked up some publicity in a vain try for his party’s gubernatorial nomination. But Republicans outregister Democrats in his new district, and he is up against a pert state senator Mrs. Janet Hill Gordon.

TWO WAYS ON CUBA. The Cuban issue cuts both ways It may help some Democrats, on the theory that the voters will be rallying round the President. But many Republicans especially those who took a strong stand for action, see it as a help to them and their party.

Michigan Democrat Neil Staebler, a longtime backstage strategist, for weeks scoffed at the demands of Republican Alvin Bentley, a millionaire former Congressman, for a Cuba blockade. Cried he: “Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of history should know that a blockade is an instrument of war. Is Bentley proposing that we sink Soviet freighters?” Bentley was indeed, and now he is making the most of his I-told-you-so chances. Florida Republican Edward J. Gurney, a war hero and former mayor of Winter Park claims that Kennedy’s decision to blockade “was forced upon him by the leaders of my party—and the people are saying ‘Thank

God, he’s got off his rocking chair.’ ” His opponent, conservative Democrat John Sutton, seems to have no answer, complains: “If I get beat, it’ll be because he’s the best TV personality I’ve ever seen.” In California, Republican Congressmen John Rousselot and Edgar Hiestand have been demanding action on Cuba, still may lose because of redistricting and their membership in the John Birch Society.

As always, many House races will be decided because of fresh new personalities and faces. In normally Republican North Dakota, Incumbent Hjalmar Nygaard, 56, should win but has to contend with the whirlwind drive of handsome Democrat Scott Anderson, who is only 25—minimum age for a Congressman. A political whiz kid, Anderson was elected to the legislature at 21, managed the successful campaigns of Senator Quentin Burdick and Governor William Guy.

Republicans are bullish about Ogden R. Reid, 37 former editor of the New York Herald Tribune and former Ambassador to Israel. He is running in New York’s suburban 26th District (part of Westchester County) after knocking off Incumbent Edwin Dooley in the primary. His opponent is Liberal-Democrat Stanley W. Church, 62, a 20-year mayor of New Rochelle. But the most becoming face of all belongs to Iowa Republican Sonja Egenes, 32, a former Iowa State science professor, who has a chance to unseat Democrat Neal Smith in the district near Des Moines. She accuses Smith of fiscal “insanity,” claims he is one of the “most extreme left-wingers in Congress.” Smith usually refers to her only as “the young lady.”

AND FINALLY, FATE. Peccadilloes, of course, play a political part. Maryland Democrat Thomas Francis Johnson, 53 has been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of accepting $24,918 to influence a mail-fraud case. He blandly tells his audiences: “A man is presumed innocent until he is found guilty. I’d be glad to answer any questions you might have on foreign affairs.” But he seems likely to lose to Rogers Morton, 48, a strapping (6 ft. 7 in., 245 Ibs.) younger brother ot Kentucky’s Republican Senator Thruston Morton. Texas Democrat J. T. (“Slick”) Rutherford, who accepted a $1 500 “campaign contribution” from Billie Sol Estes shortly after setting up a meeting with Agriculture Department officials now finds himself seriously threatened in his 300-mile-wide district by Republican Ed Foreman, an Odessa businessman who brings up Billie Sol at every stop.

Inevitably, fate itself makes a difference. California’s Democratic Congressman Clem Miller died in an airplane crash and his Democratic colleague, Dalip Singh Saund, is confined to the U.S. Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Md. because of a stroke. Miller’s name will be on the November ballot and a special election will be called if he wins. Saund’s wife Marian, a Hollywood schoolteacher, is campaigning for him.