Kentucky: Blue Moon

Kentucky citizens jammed the county courthouses where Kentucky counts its votes. At midnight, when the tally clerks went home (State law), the figures showed a substantial lead for Democrat J. Lyter Donaldson, former Highway Commissioner and patronage dispenser who wanted to be Governor. But next day, while courthouse crowds still watched the ballots unfold and every barbershop radio played to a capacity audience, the lead shifted. By Friday an historic upset had become official: Kentuckians had elected Republican Simeon Willis, 278,723-to-270,420. Republican Governors now ruled two of the strategic border states.*

The Bluegrass State goes Republican only once in a blue moon. Each of the four times it has elected a Republican Governor in the past, the U.S. has elected a Republican President the following year. But even more comforting to GOPsters was a key fact: the State's Negro vote had gone Republican. Negro leaders, sensing the first surges of a new bandwagon, had urged their followers to hop on. In Louisville, where Negroes voted 75% Republican, their switch produced an all-Republican board of aldermen for the first time since the New Deal.

Eleven O'clock Scholar. Simeon S. (for nothing) Willis, 63, is silver-haired, calm, avuncular. One of nine children of a Union soldier who turned from farming to running a charcoal smelter, he earned his living until he was 22 by teaching school and writing editorials for the Greenup County Gazette. Then he studied law at home, became a prosperous lawyer, a persistent but indifferently successful politician. His friends, well aware of his tastes for late reading and late sleeping, explained why he gave up his law practice for a $5,000-a-year judgeship in 1927: the Court did not convene until 11 a.m.

Judge Willis, who likes poetry, crossword puzzles and playing the violin better than physical exertion, breezed through this year's campaign without violating his principles. He did not get started until September. Said levelheaded Mrs. Willis last week: "I had steeled myself for defeat--I don't know how I can stand victory."

*The other: Missouri. Border states with Democratic Governors: Maryland, West Virginia.

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