POLITICAL NOTES: Paul Revere’s Ride

In the last days before Minnesota’s Republican primary, Harold Stassen uncorked his Sunday punch. Across the state streamed a 300-car caravan of bustling, energetic, amateur electioneers. At small towns in 60 of Minnesota’s 87 counties they stopped, posted placards, distributed campaign throwaways, talked politics with main street loungers.

By last week Harold Stassen knew that his “Paul Revere’s Ride,” a tested tactic from his 1938 campaign for governor, had routed an already beaten opponent. Instead of the expected close finish, popular Stassenman Ed Thye breezed in ahead of longtime (24 years) isolationist Senator Henrik Shipstead with a 3-to-2 lead. With a near-record Republican turnout, winner Thye looked like a sure bet for the Senate in the fall. His running-mate, Luther Youngdahl, was nominated for the Minnesota governor’s chair by an even larger majority.

For presidential aspirant Stassen, the nugget of victory had many facets. He had come back from defeat in the Nebraska primary (TIME, June 24). He had increased his prestige enormously within the Republican party. He had proved that the voters of traditionally isolationist Minnesota were willing to listen to his pro-U.N., pro-British Loan brand of internationalism. Said he: “A decisive victory for a progressive Republican policy.”

Jubilantly, progressive Republicans prepared to bury Midwestern isolationism. But most political prophets were cautious about building local results into a national, or even a sectional pattern. Last month, North Dakota voters had returned diehard isolationist Bill Langer to the Senate. And in Minnesota isolationist Congressmen had been renominated, in contests where Stassenism was not a factor. The defeat of Henrik Shipstead caused scarcely a ripple in congressional cloakrooms, changed no votes in the battle in the House over the British Loan (see The Congress).

More than anything else, the Minnesota primary showed the complete political mastery of Harold Stassen in his own home state. The big test will come next fall, when he plans to throw his active support to some 30 borderline congressional elections in an attempt to win Republican control of Congress.

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Results in other primary elections last week:

¶In Washington, Communist-line Representative Hugh De Lacy, backed by James Roosevelt and the Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions, reached the tape a stride ahead of political chameleon Howard Costigan, backed by Anna Roosevelt Boettiger. Hardworking, New-Dealing Senator Hugh B. Mitchell, appointed by Governor Mon C. Wallgren to fill his own unexpired term in the Senate, had little trouble winning renomination. Biggest worry of both Democratic incumbents: an unusually heavy Republican primary vote.

¶In Utah, plodding silver-bloc Senator Abe Murdock was unopposed in the Democratic senatorial primary. With Representatives Walter Granger and J. Will Robinson, he will base next fall’s campaign on Democratic success in keeping the $191 million, warbuilt Geneva Steel plant going by selling it to U.S. Steel.