POLITICAL NOTES: Biggest Show in Wisconsin

POLITICAL NOTES

Two days before they were due to cast primary ballots in a special election to pick Joe McCarthy’s Senate successor, Wisconsin voters got some eleventh-hour advice from the influential (circ. 354,879) Milwaukee Journal. The Journal front-paged a cartoon of a circus tent and six sideshows, dubbed them former Governor Walter J. (for Jodok) Kohler Jr. and his six G.O.P. opponents. Warned the caption: “Don’t be taken in by the sideshows.” The voters weren’t. In an election where total returns were slimmed to 460,000 (out of 2,200,000 eligibles) by summer doldrums, Walter Kohler, 53, was a three-ring winner.

Front-Runner Kohler, the only campaigner who had declared himself squarely behind Dwight Eisenhower and Modern Republicanism, faced some vociferous barking from the sideshows during the three-week campaign. Among the barkers: eight-term Congressman Alvin O’Konski, 53, whose campaign manager decided to sell O’Konski’s blend of domestic New Dealism and mossbacked foreign policy by television and newspaper spreads “just like you sell a new potato salad” (and brought him in third). Another was Gerald D. Lorge, 35, a “fighting marine” who fought a campaign in Joe McCarthy’s image, came in sixth to discover what nearly everyone else realized: even in Wisconsin, McCarthyism is dead. But the stiffest battle came from young ex-Congressman Glenn Davis, 42, who was supported by most conservative Republicans. Davis, who had promised to look Ike in the eye and say No if he got to Washington, carried 31 of Wisconsin’s 71 counties, led by 12,000 votes until late returns rolled in from populous Milwaukee County. There many Democrats drew Republican ballots (legal in Wisconsin primaries) to vote for Kohler, helped him to a final edge of 8,600 votes.

Even so, methodical Walter Kohler was taking no chances, began campaigning last week for the general election Aug. 27. His first decision: to campaign on the same theme, “the record of the Republican Administration in Washington.” He was quickly established the favorite over Democratic Primary Winner William Proxmire, 41, who has also run three times for governor and has thrice been beaten (twice by Kohler). Reason: Yaleman Proxmire, who preserves the common touch by staying in $2.50 hotel rooms and writing speeches on a typewriter in the back of his Chevrolet campaign car, is also classed in Wisconsin among the political sideshows.