POLITICAL NOTE: So Goes Maine

Before every national election Maine gives a pre-season showing of political styles. Last week both parties strained every resource to win the State election. Republicans expected, with the aid of Maine’s normally Republican, normally conservative votes, to re-elect Senator Frederick Hale. They hoped to re-elect bald, dapper Representative Carroll Beedy of Portland, and to elect former Governor Ralph O. Brewster to a second seat in the House now occupied by Democrat John G. Utterback. But for two other jobs lost to the Democrats in 1932, their hopes were far from high: Maine’s third seat in the House, held by Edward Carleton Moran Jr.; Maine’s Governorship, held by Louis J. Brann.

The difficulty of defeating Governor Brann lay in his big personal popularity. Knowing Maine’s inborn conservatism, he did not pose as an ardent supporter of the New Deal. But he made use of New Deal support. Army engineers had rejected a proposed PWA project to spend $48,000,000 to harness the huge tides of Passamaquoddy Bay. President Roosevelt, however, wrote Mr. Brann expressing his interest in the project. During the campaign Secretary Ickes went to make a personal inspection—to see whether the Army engineers might not have been wrong. Thus Democrats dangled hope of a New Deal plum before the voters.

Against Governor Brann the Republican candidate, Alfred K. Ames, an elderly retired lumber merchant, was no match in political give & take. But Republicans swarmed to his aid. To Maine they sent Col. Theodore Roosevelt, Representative Hamilton Fish, Col. Frank Knox of the Chicago Daily News, Representative Allen T. Treadway, and many another. Senator Hale declared flatly that to re-elect Governor Brann would be to endorse the New Deal.

Then Maine went to the polls. With 604 out of 631 precincts reported, Governor Brann had 164,087 votes, his opponent 32,956 less. Senator Hale had 137,149, a lead of 1,155. With complete returns from the first district, Carroll Beedy was defeated by Simon M. Hamlin, Democrat and self-styled “dirt farmer.”