ALASKA: KEY RACES TO THE STATEHOUSE

Many a political pro, with respect for the power and patronage a Governor can wield, looks first to the results of the nation’s gubernatorial races for a key to the political future. Of the 34 governorship races next month, these—plus New York—are the key seven:

The Union’s strapping unborn infant—which will not officially assume statehood until early 1959—already thinks it knows the name of its first elected Governor: Democrat William A. Egan, 43. Egan is running a one-sided contest against Republican John Butrovich Jr., 48, Fairbanks insurance man, former Territorial Senator and longtime political catechist to Territorial Governor Mike Stepovich (running for the U.S. Senate). President of the 1955 Alaska constitutional convention, Valdez Grocer Egan is his party’s second-ranking vote getter (after indefatigable Delegate to Congress E. L. —”Bob”—Bartlett). Even though penny-pinching Bill Egan lost ten campaign days by driving home from Washington to save plane fare, he will probably win the governorship in a walk—and with it the chance to fill state administrative ranks with some 1,000 Democrat appointees.

CALIFORNIA

Nothing that Republican William Fife Knowland has done yet in his bulldozing effort to take the Governor’s seat seems to plow under the omens: that he is in for a fearsome drubbing from Democratic Candidate Edmund G. (“Pat”) Brown, state attorney general (TIME, Sept. 15). Knowland, who shouldered Governor Goodwin J. Knight aside so that he could run, has suffered a series of campaign reverses, most recently last week when three of the four Hearst papers in California endorsed the Brown candidacy—the first endorsement of a Democratic gubernatorial candidate in more than 30 years. And although “Goodie” Knight, a fortnight ago, dutifully posed for pictures with Knowland, he has not gone so far as to verbally acknowledge Knowland as a running mate or to endorse his stand for a state right-to-work law. Most party candidates feel the same way. As undaunted as ever, Knowland counts on a silent vote from rebellious union members, hopes major California appearances by President Eisenhower and Vice President Nixon this month will give him a big lift.

IOWA

The despair of corn-belt grammarians, Democratic Governor Herschel Cellel Loveless (“the Democrats have did”) is also the despair of Iowa Republicans, still smarting at Loveless’ conquest of the traditionally Republican state capital in 1956. Pitted against Loveless this year is tall, lean, scholarly William G. Murray, 55, professor of economics at Iowa State College, a tireless and dedicated campaigner who shook hands in all 99 counties during the primary campaign, will visit all 99 again before November. A political novice, Bill Murray has previously dipped in politics no farther than the Ames school board, between campaign stops avidly reads such books as Let’s Go Into Politics, by onetime Connecticut Governor Raymond E. Baldwin (“Never admit you are losing; if you think you are, don’t talk about it”). In rural Iowa, Murray’s burnished phrases have less appeal than Loveless’ lacerated syntax, and his urbane presence (Loveless loves to refer to him as “the college professor”) is a liability, whereas the stocky, rumpled figure of ex-Railroader Loveless is a definite campaign asset. Democrat Loveless can pit his veto of a state sales-tax increase against Murray’s campaign cry for a higher sales tax. But in the day of rising resentment against labor racketeering, the Republicans have a brass-knuckled charge that the 1956 Loveless campaign was financed by $17,500 of Teamsters’ Union funds and have a Hoffa-signed check to prove it. Under Iowa law, out-of-state campaign funds are illegal—but the statute has run on 1956.

KANSAS

If Kansas Republicans cannot knock out Democratic Governor George Docking next month, this traditionally Republican prairie bastion may be in for a long Democratic siege. In Parsons Publisher Clyde Martin Reed Jr., 44, the G.O.P. has its best chance to do it. Reed bears an illustrious Republican name: his father was Kansas Governor (1929-31) and longtime (1939-49) U.S. Senator. Well-known and liked, Clyde Reed Jr. has already restored party morale by the rude primary pasting he handed ex-Governor Fred Hall last spring, the same Fred Hall who went down—rejected by major party leaders-in the primary election two years ago. In office, Docking staked his political fortune on a “soak-industry” budget that he knew all along the Republican-controlled legislature would tear to shreds. When the legislature did—and also overrode Docking’s veto of a sales tax increase to make up a predicted $15 million deficit—Docking emerged, in some minds at least, as the little taxpayer’s frustrated friend. But Republicans are making hay with the fact that the ill-smelling Teamsters plopped $3,500 into his 1956 campaign hopper—a fact which Docking first clumsily denied and then admitted. And in crucial Sedgwick County, the local Democrats are in bad repute (Wichita, pop. 260,000) over recent scandals, e.g., the pending disbarment action against a common-pleas judge charged with having advised members of a burglary ring. Docking, 54, once regarded as a sure thing in his bid for an unprecedented Democratic second term, is headed for trouble.

OHIO

Newly slenderized (from 215 to 191 Ibs.) for the fray, Michael Vincent Di Salle, 50, former mayor of Toledo and onetime price stabilization chief, is raring to do what he just missed doing in 1956: beat the Republicans’ low-gear, low-key C. (for nothing) William O’Neill, 42. During an undistinguished first term, Billy O’Neill demonstrated nothing so much as a knack for ruffling the feathers of party roosters, e.g., by trying—vainly—to kick out influential Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) Chairman A. L. De Maioribus, and by failing to mention anyone else on the state party ticket in his primary campaign opener last spring. O’Neill’s last-minute endorsement of the right-to-work amendment on the ballot this fall has put him squarely in the sights of Labor’s powerful COPE (Committee on Political Education), which has pushed a registration drive to swell voter lists to record highs.

PENNSYLVANIA

In a red, white and blue bus, the Republicans’ political neophyte, retired Pretzel Manufacturer Arthur Toy McGonigle, 52, was doing his resolute best last week to retrieve the seat in Harrisburg that his party lost four years ago. The ride is uphill all the way. The Democratic candidate is Pittsburgh’s four-term Mayor David Leo Lawrence, 69, one of the savviest and deftest political bosses in a state loaded with them. With 55 years in professional politics, and with Pittsburgh’s gleaming new skyscrapers and superhighways as personal monuments, Dave Lawrence has a statewide reputation, strong support in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and the coal-mining regions. Roman Catholic Lawrence may have trouble in the rural Bible belt; Pennsylvania has never elected a Catholic Governor. All the while, Republican McGonigle (a Lutheran) is whaling away at the sins of Democratic Governor George Leader (who is running for the Senate), and Pretzel-maker McGonigle’s earnest approach is winning small but sympathetic audiences. But in machine-ridden Pennsylvania, sympathy rarely wins elections.

RHODE ISLAND

Back for another tilt at four-term Democratic Governor Dennis J. Roberts, 55, and his well-greased Democratic machine is Providence Attorney Christopher Del Sesto, 51, who almost turned the trick two years ago. After all votes were counted in 1956, Del Sesto was proclaimed winner by a hair—427 votes—only to have the victory torn from his hands by a ruling from the state Supreme Court invalidating 4,954 absentee and shut-in votes. Having sneaked to a fourth term through this legal loophole, Denny Roberts is now plagued by party dissidence and public weariness with his erratic conduct in office. In the primary, Roberts had to run against his ambitious lieutenant governor, Armand H. Cote, won by only 11,000 votes. And hapless Governor Roberts still has to explain why he fired a telegram (also signed by ten other Governors) to Washington last February demanding a federal tax cut from President Eisenhower, while simultaneously asking his own Rhode Island taxpayers to cough up another $10 million.