As Goes Kentucky

Politics in the Bluegrass State is usually as hot as a searing gulp of straight Kentucky corn, as close-fought as a banner-year Derby. This year's gubernatorial elections are no exception. At the post in the Democratic primary this week:

Favorite: Joseph Lyter Donaldson, 52, candidate of the State machine. Gaunt-framed Donaldson is bank president in his home town of Carrollton, and as State Highway Commissioner has been the chief patronage dispenser in Governor Keen Johnson's Democratic administration.

Outsider: Ben Kilgore, 42, bushy-browed independent, for ten years executive secretary of the State Farm Bureau Federation, conceded some chance.

Long shots: Lieut. Governor Rodes Kirby Myers, 43, who, like his friend Senator A. B. ("Happy") Chandler, owns a swimming pool given him by Ben H. Collings, Louisville contractor. Way behind: John J. Thobe, 67, a bearded perennial, who has been running unsuccessfully but doggedly for office for 43 years.

Homestretch. Lyter Donaldson, the likely primary victor, will have tougher going in November. His competition will be grey-haired Republican Simeon S. Willis, 63, a corporation lawyer and former judge. Republicans are hopeful that Kentucky is going G.O.P., that Willis will become the State's first Republican Governor since 1931. They are planning now to thrash Alben Barkley, the Senate's Majority Leader, next year. Even friends agree that White House Wheelhorse Barkley has jeopardized his narrow hold in Keutucky by blindly supporting unpopular administration proposals: the lid on farm prices, the fight against antistrike legislation.

But Kentucky is a key border State; its gubernatorial contest in November will give politicos their first real look at the way 1944 Presidential winds are blowing. Reason: with one exception, every Kentucky gubernatorial election since 1907 has been won by the party that won the Presidential election the following year.

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