The Primaries

In primary elections from Tennessee to Kansas, U.S. voters went about the main business of democracy, nominating their leaders to public office--with considerable help from bosses and machines.

Kansas. Small-town Lawyer Andrew Schoeppel, who played end on the 1922 Nebraska University team that beat Notre Dame's Four Horsemen, was nominated by the Republicans for Governor. Third in the race was tempestuous Senator Clyde Reed, who had gone back home, hopping mad over the closed shop and union initiation fees at Kansas war plants, to run on a one-plank platform: "fair" labor legislation. (He incidentally wanted to take State party control from the old Alf Landon machine.) Soothed the Kansas City Star: "Kansas voters [merely] sent him back to Washington, where many believed his issue belonged."

Virginia. Labor was out to purge dour, union-baiting Congressman Howard Worth Smith; so were the New Dealers who live in his district and work across the river in Washington. But the primary showed that Virginia's famed "Courthouse Crowd" (the Harry Byrd political machine) was still in the saddle. Smith won the Democratic renomination 4-to-1.

Tennessee. Aging, dapper Boss Ed Crump, who can swing 57,000 Memphis votes with his little finger, proved that his grip on Tennessee is as tight as ever. Over formidable opposition--supported mightily by New Deal Publisher Silliman Evans' Nashville Tennessean--Crump's men swept the Democratic primary.

Easygoing Senator Tom Stewart, seeking renomination, had only to make his voters forget that: 1) he had voted for Congressional pensions; 2) he had aided a vendetta against TVA's popular Dave Lilienthal; 3) two Stewart sons were on the public payroll. The voters forgot.

Hot-tempered, bachelor Governor Prentice Cooper Jr., who has already served two terms, had only to make his voters forget one thing: Tennessee's anti-third term tradition. The voters forgot.

West Virginia. Tall, thin, Governor Matthew M. Neely likes the New Deal, the C.I.O., loves purple language and purple suits. He also loves politics, in which he is a shrewd and practical man. In 1940, as a U.S. Senator with two years still to go, he saw his career threatened by the machine run by onetime Governors Herman G. Kump and Homer A. Holt. He scurried home, got elected Governor, began repairing local fences.

Last week he completed the cycle. With two years to go as Governor, he ran for the Senate again, won the Democratic nomination easily. He is practically certain to win the November election. Then, confident that his fences are holding back home, he can resume his long (23 years) career in Congress, get his hands again on the reins of Federal patronage.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.