THE CAMPAIGN: The Fight for the House

Shortly after the sun got up to mile-high Denver one morning last week, the President of the U.S. sat down to have a big helping of politics for breakfast. In the presidential suite of the Brown Palace Hotel, Dwight Eisenhower ate and advised with Republican state chairmen from 19 Midwestern and Rocky Mountain states. The subject under discussion: how to increase the Republican majority in Congress. The breakfast-eaters started from the proposition that the key man in the Republican campaign of 1954 is Dwight Eisenhower. Said Ohio’s able Chairman Ray Bliss: “The big problem in our areas is to make certain the people realize how important it is to have a working majority in Congress to support him.” Said President Eisenhower: “They are here to assure me they are working for a Congress to support me … That means a Republican Congress.”

That night, out of Fort Worth, came a blast from the opposing camp. In a nationally televised speech, old (72) Sam Rayburn, Democratic leader of the House, said the way to save the U.S. is to elect a Democratic Congress on Nov. 2. The Republican Administration is “inept” and its Congress “as forward-looking as yesterday,” he charged. He flatly predicted that the Democrats would win both the Senate and the House.

Fifty Battlegrounds. The crucial phase of the 1954 congressional campaign was at hand. And while the 37 Senate races will tend to steal most of the headlines, politicos of both parties were working desperately to win control of the House, where —with all 435 seats up for election—a victory would be hailed as the true indication of the mood of the U.S. in 1954. How does the fight for the House shape up?

Despite all the uproar that will spread across the land probably no more than 20% of the 435 seats will shift from one party to the other. At the outset, 100 Southern seats are conceded to the Democrats. Elsewhere, e.g., in the Republican strongholds of the Midwest, there are many other seats that can be shifted only by a political miracle. The real battleground narrows down to few more than 50 seats, two-thirds of them held by Republicans, one-third by Democrats.

Localized Pain. Although both Rayburn and the Republicans stressed national aspects of the campaign last week, no great national issues—beyond support of Eisenhower—have yet developed to influence the battle for all the 50 crucial seats. The political pain is largely localized. Items:

¶ Though the “depression” of 1954 has been a favorite topic for some Democrats, the generally improved U.S. economy is no longer a national issue. But unemployment is a local factor in some scattered districts. Example: Indiana’s Third (South Bend), where the biggest employer, Studebaker, laid off more than half its force in the past year. Republican Representative Shepard Crumpacker, seeking a third term, is in trouble.

¶ While the farm price-support issue is still a pregnant national topic for debate, there is little chance of a big shift away from the Republican Party in the farm districts. But the farm situation will have some local effects. Example: Missouri’s Fourth District, which lies half in suburban Kansas City and half in adjoining farm country. There, Republican Incumbent Jeffrey P. Hillelson’s troubles are caused more by the elements than by the Eisenhower farm program. The district has been hard hit by drought, and in the Fourth District of Missouri, the incumbent Congressman has a hard time explaining away bad weather.

¶ Subversion is not, as of now, a national issue. But the issue will affect some dis tricts. Example: California’s Sixth, where Democrat Robert L. Condon is seeking reelection. Last year, Condon was refused security clearance by the Atomic Energy Commission because of past associations. Although his district is traditionally Democratic, he may lose to the Republican candidate, Attorney John F. Baldwin.

Situations & Personalities. Where national issues have no meaningful local application, most of the races in the 50 battleground districts are turning on local personalities or intraparty feuds or on both. Example: in Pennsylvania’s Eleventh District (Wilkes-Barre), Republican strife is undercutting Representative Edward J. Bonin. The trouble began last spring when Republican Governor John Fine moved into his old bailiwick, Luzerne County, in an effort to unseat State Senator T. Newell Wood. Fine managed to beat Wood in the G.O.P. primary, but Republicans lost so much blood in the battle that Benin’s campaign developed a serious case of political anemia.

Further south in Philadelphia, the bitter factional fight between Philadelphia’s Democratic Mayor Joseph Clark Jr. and Democratic City Chairman William J. Green has ripped the party apart. As a result, the Third and Fifth Districts, normally Democratic, may shift.

Both parties also have problems hanging on to seats captured by upsets in 1952. Examples:

¶ Virginia’s Sixth (Roanoke), Ninth (Bristol) and Tenth (Alexandria) Districts. In 1952, with Eisenhower’s popularity running high in the South and U.S. Senator Harry Byrd on the fence in the presidential contest, three Republicans slipped into these Democratic seats. This year, Byrd’s Democratic machine is running on all cylinders behind the Democratic candidates. The Republicans are in trouble. (In contrast, Representative Charles Raper Jonas, the first Republican to be elected in North Carolina’s Tenth District [Charlotte] in 24 years, has a good chance to be re-elected.)

¶ Nevada at Large. In 1952, taking advantage of a Democratic feud (powerful old U.S. Senator Pat McCarran was knif ing the Democratic candidate for the other Senate seat), Republican Clifton Young slid in by 771 votes. This year McCarran is supporting the party’s ticket, and Young is in trouble.

¶ Kansas’ First District (Topeka). Democrat Howard Miller slipped into the seat in 1952 because of local opposition to a Republican-favored dam (his 1952 campaign slogan: “Let’s stop dam foolishness”). With the dam issue quieted down, G.O.P. Nominee William H. Avery, a Wakefield farmer, is expected to recapture the traditionally Republican district.

The battle for most disputed House seats is thus focused locally, and most Democratic strategists hope to keep it that way—confident that an electorate unperturbed by national issues will show its usual tendency to vote against the party in power between presidential elections. G.O.P. leaders, from Ike Eisenhower on down, clearly hope to stir the electorate nationally and thereby bring out a substantial percentage of the great Eisenhower vote of 1952. As of mid-September, there is no indication that the voters of the U.S. are stirred.