Pickings & Choosings

Within the two great parties more picking and choosing for the November elections is done the second week in September than at any other time during the year. Last week partisans in ten States held their primaries to select candidates.

Demagog into Dictator. When New Orleans Democrats went to the polls to select two Congressmen, a State Supreme Court judge and a Public Service commissioner, Senator Huey Pierce Long had mobilized Louisiana's entire national guard to insure a "clean election." He had also made his Legislature pass enough laws month before to turn over to his henchmen complete control of the electoral machinery (TIME, Aug. 27). No match for the "Kingfish" in legislative wiles, Mayor T. Semmes Walmsley had an augmented police force of 2,000 which nearly equalled Senator Long's militant manpower.

Ever since last spring, when the Long machine and the New Orleans "Old Regular" Democratic organization swore a battle to the death, alarmists had predicted that Canal Street would run red with blood on primary day. A frightened citizens' committee at the last moment persuaded Senator Long to confine his troops to Jackson Barracks if Mayor Walmsley would keep his police in their station houses. Result: most peaceful election in years.

In the matter of morals, manners and political methods voters were given little choice between the Long machine and the Walmsley machine. They took the former by slim but effective majorities. By crushing the "Old Regulars," which had not lost a New Orleans election in 50 years, Senator Long revenged the organization's break with him last year, its defeat of his candidate for mayor in January. Ordered to bed by his physician after the strain of the primary, Senator Long planned to proceed by having the Legislature oust Mayor Walmsley, who he said will be taking "an early trip to China."

Again, Ritchie. Many a backer of handsome, aristocratic Albert Cabell Ritchie had feared for his candidate's future when the Governor was caught in a political cross-fire between Baltimore, where the city machine opposed him, and the Eastern Shore, where his anti-lynching stand last winter was widely resented (TIME, Oct. 30, 1933). Nevertheless, Maryland's perennial chief executive won by nearly 50,000 votes his fourth successive Democratic renomination to succeed himself. Harry Whinna Nice of Baltimore gave mute, inglorious Senator Phillips Lee Goldsborough a two-to-one trouncing for the Republican right to oppose Governor Ritchie.

Onetime Representative John Philip Hill, who in the dim past of Prohibition delighted to make a spectacle of himself by public home-brewing, won a three-cornered race for the Republican Senatorial nomination. In the November elections he will oppose George L. Radcliffe, Baltimore lawyer, senior vice president of Fidelity & Deposit Co. A great and good friend of Nominee Radcliffe is President Roosevelt, who was a Fidelity & Deposit employe from 1920 to 1928.

New Dealers All. Each of Georgia's three candidates for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination swore that he and he alone was the one true friend of President Roosevelt and the New Deal. In spite of his parole profligacy and the fact that his State is one of the five in which the Federal Government administers its own work relief, Governor Eugene Talmadge apparently swore the most convincingly. He might wear outlandish cowboy clothes in public and his wife might hang the family wash in the front yard of the executive mansion, but the back-country farmers trooped to the polls to renominate him in a primary that was tantamount to election.

South Carolina Run-Off. Another Democratic primary which was as good as an election was South Carolina's run-off between Olin D. Johnston and Coleman Livingston Blease for the governorship. Candidate Blease, an oldtime, free-style rabble-rouser who has managed to keep himself on the public payroll pretty consistently since 1890, concludes his Who's Who biography: "The only South Carolinian who has been mayor of his city, senator from his county, speaker of the House, president of the State Senate, governor of the State 1911-15 and U. S. senator 1925-31. . . ."

South Carolina was evidently in no mood to extend the Blease record. Candidate Johnston, a 38-year-old Spartanburg lawyer who had worked his way through college in a cotton mill, won with a 33,000 majority. Each contestant dodged the Prohibition issue by declaring he would stand by the results of an advisory referendum which, held a fortnight before, turned out to be Wet by 23,000 votes in spite of the State's failure to ratify the 21st Amendment.

Lefter Than Left. In Washington, Lewis Baxter ("Lewie") Schwellenbach's strongest opponent for the Democratic Senatorial nomination ran on a "Left Wing" platform, advocating state owner ship of utilities. Lefter than left, Candidate Schwellenbach, Seattle attorney, borrowed Upton Sinclair's EPIC plan and campaigned for End Poverty In Washington. He and his EPIW won. A 40-year-old bachelor who lives with his mother, Nominee Schwellenbach has come by his Leftism lately. Two years ago he was inconspicuously defeated in the Democratic gubernatorial primary by Governor Clarence D. Martin. As soon as he was elected, Governor Martin made Mr. Schwellenbach a member of the board of regents of the University of Washington.

Banker Reno Odlin of Olympia, sleek and 37, was the Republican choice for Senator. Like his opponent, he is a U. of W. alumnus, a onetime State Commander of the American Legion. He drinks milk because a Wartime dose of mustard gas makes liquor unpalatable. A director of Puget Sound Power & Light Co., Nominee Odlin during the campaign called public attention to the fact that Mrs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt owns private utility stock. Since he is as conservative as Herbert Hoover, Washington voters will have no complaint against obscurity of issues in the Senatorial race this autumn. And since Washington's registration is now 60%, Democratic, it is likely that there will be an EPIW Senator at Washington, if not an EPIC Governor in California.

Arizona Democrats renominated eloquent Senator Henry Fountain Ashurst because of his long and loyal services, Governor Benjamin Baker Moeur in spite of his State tax program, Congresswoman-at-large Isabella Greenway because of her personal popularity and close connection with the White House.

Roche Defeat. "This looks like a good healthy battle," James Aloysius Farley had told the man and woman who wanted to be Colorado's Democratic Governor. "Go to it!"

Arrayed behind Josephine Aspinwall Roche of Denver was the liberal following of Senior Senator Edward Prentiss Costigan and union labor. Miss Roche, 47, divorced wife of Edward Hale Bierstadt, Manhattan author and criminologist, left Vassar in 1908, took her M. A. at Columbia along with Frances Perkins. Like Miss Perkins, she went in for social service work. After her father died in 1927, Miss Roche was left with a large share of Rocky Mountain Fuel Co., second biggest coal mine in Colorado. She bought complete control, was the first operator in the State to unionize. When non-union owners tried to break her by underselling, Colorado unionists put on a voluntary promotion campaign, took a temporary wage cut. Miss Roche's company now sells Denver most of its lignite.

Back of Governor Edwin Carl Johnson, country politician and son of a Swedish immigrant, was the Adams family organization. An Adams has held elective office in Colorado ever since Statehood (1876). Present political chief of the clan is Junior Senator Alva Blanchard Adams. A conservative small town banker, Senator Adams split with Senator Costigan over the New Deal, would like to oust onetime Republican Costigan from the Democratic Party.

As primary day approached, Governor Johnson's adherents cried that Senator Costigan was having people dropped from relief rolls for failing to solicit votes for Candidate Roche. Senator Costigan denounced the Johnsonite Denver Post for its "nauseating campaign of unwarranted invective and deception." But Colorado Democrats gave Governor Johnson a 7-to-6 majority over the first female aspirant for his office. Nate C. Warren of Fort Collins was the Republican chosen to oppose him.

Reclaimed Michigan. Best news of the day to the G. O. P. was the Michigan primary. Recovering from the 1932 Democratic landslide, Republican leaders marshalled nearly three times as many of their partisans to the polls as Democrats did. Defeated for renomination was Governor Comstock, sent to Ann Arbor two years ago largely because as a political "angel" he had financed his party through long lean years of defeat. Instead, Democrats chose for Governor a Detroit attorney named Arthur J. Lacy. For Senator the Democrats picked Frank A. Picard, militant New Dealer and head of the State liquor commission, to oppose Arthur H. Vandenberg, Republican incumbent.

Meager Job. The Governor of New Hampshire gets a salary of only $5,000, has to supply his own executive mansion. For the past ten years he has also been a Republican. After last week's primary the man who seemed slated for one of the most meager U. S. gubernatorial jobs was Public Service Commissioner H. Styles Bridges of Concord. His Democratic opponent: John L. Sullivan (no kin) of Manchester.

Vermonters were assured of a genuine New Deal "test" in their November Senatorial election. Republicans again put up Senator Warren Robinson Austin, than whom the White House has no severer critic. No one contested the nomination of Fred C. Martin of Bennington, who could count as an asset his New Deal standing as Democratic Internal Revenue Collector.

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