Politics: Lady in the Race

As a stalwart conservative, New Hampshire’s late Republican Senator Styles Bridges bowed to no one. Well, almost no one: it just so happened that his attractive blonde wife Doloris sometimes made Styles seem, by comparison, a blazing liberal. During the 1960 presidential campaign, she declared in a speech to a New Hampshire women’s club that Democrat John Kennedy had “a very, very soft record on Communism.” She attached a qualifier that only added injury to insult: “This man is not a Communist—at least I don’t think he is a Communist.” Al though an accomplished and popular hostess, Doloris had a disconcerting habit of introducing one guest to another by saying: “He’s a good American.”

Last week Doloris Bridges, 45, announced that she will run this year for her husband’s old Senate seat, now being filled by New Hampshire’s former Republican Attorney General Maurice (“Mo”) Murphy Jr., 34. Appointed by Governor Wesley Powell, Murphy will almost certainly contest Mrs. Bridges in the September Republican primary. Another announced candidate is middle-roading Representative Perkins Bass, a quiet fellow who has been nicknamed “Little Mouth” to distinguish him from Tennessee’s noisy Democratic Representative Ross (“Big Mouth”) Bass.

Against her male opposition, Doloris Bridges should be a formidable candidate. The daughter of a Minnesota doctor, she learned lots about the ropes in Washington while working in seven different federal agencies. She met Styles Bridges at a Washington dinner party, when he helped her after the butler had spilled wine on her gown. They were married in 1944 (Bridges had been divorced from his first wife, and his second had died). In announcing her candidacy last week, Doloris Bridges evoked her husband’s memory: “I believe I can best carry out his ideas, his unfinished work and our joint convictions.” Asked how she now felt about her charges against John Kennedy, Mrs. Bridges replied: “Perhaps Styles used better words. He used to say ‘He has a queer way of dealing with Communists.’ “