REPUBLICANS: The New Class

“Poor organization and failure to run stronger candidates” beat his party in many areas in 1958, wrote Vice President Richard Nixon in a post-mortem after the Democrats won the House of Representatives 283 to 158. Since then Nixon & Co. have been beating the bushes to recruit articulate, attractive young Republicans to run for Congress. Last week 167 of 1960’s crop of new Republican candidates paid their way to the capital, where the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee picked up hotel and food tabs and put on a two-day cram course on how to influence voters and win elections.

Behind closed doors the old timers showed some trade secrets. Ohio Congressman Bill Ayres exhibited a sample children’s coloring book with his picture on the cover. California’s Bob Wilson had his popular Bob Wilson’s Cookbook on display. Pennsylvania Candidate James H. Mantis told about his campaign pin —a golden praying mantis. But the stress was less on gadgets than on issues; such topflight Congressmen as Minnesota’s Walter Judd, Michigan’s Gerald Ford and Illinois’ Les Arends joined with Administration experts in seminars on foreign relations, national security, the economy, fiscal policy and space. Then the pledges went over to the White House for some strong campaign advice from another relative newcomer to politics who has won more votes than any other man. “Work, and know what you are working for,” said Dwight Eisenhower. “You have got to do a lot of wearing out of shoe leather and ringing of doorbells.”

By and large, the G.O.P. elders were pleased with the crop. Many of the candidates are lawyers, and several are doctors, though their ranks also include a California geologist, an Ohio newspaper publisher, an Indiana livestock salesman, and a South Dakota Sioux Indian who is a Harvard Ph.D. and was an official of the Bureau of Indian Affairs until he resigned to run for office. By and large they had a surprisingly strong conservative bent. In a representative cross section polled by a TIME correspondent, only a few chose to identify themselves as middle-of-the-roaders. A substantial majority arranged themselves solidly with Arizona’s Barry Goldwater, guiding spirit of far-out G.O.P. conservatives.