NORTH DAKOTA: Nye Squeak

Through their waving wheat fields, North Dakota Republicans went to the polls last week to decide whether they would renominate (and thus virtually reelect) lean, jut-jawed Senator Gerald Prentice Nye, or send to Washington hulking, jut-jawed Governor William Langer instead. Senator Nye, once a “radical,” now a learned apostle of Neutrality, has for twelve years been at the top of North Dakota’s political heap. But Governor Langer (whom the Federal Government tried, and failed, to jail in 1934 for openly levying on Relief clients for his campaign funds), called a demagogue by his opponents, a champion by his friends, is a potent vote getter. Mr. Langer, once Mr. Nye’s good friend, called him a Peace “racketeer,” a Washington nonentity who got nothing for his State. Mr. Nye, who has built up his own Progressive Republican machine after surrendering the old Non-Partisan League to Mr. Langer, retorted that the Langer administration at Bismarck was full of graft. One mistake Mr. Langer made: he quarreled with able Representative William Lemke of Frazier-Lemke Farm Bankruptcy Act fame. For two days the wheat waved to & fro while the ballots were counted. The result: though all the rest of the Langer ticket won, Mr. Lemke won, and Neutrality’s Nye squeaked through 89,224 votes to Langer’s 83,061.