What Hit Him?

What had happened to Harold Stassen in the Nebraska primary? He had invaded the state, asked Nebraska Republicans to repudiate old-line, isolationist Senator Hugh Butler, and give the G.O.P. senatorial nomination to liberal Governor Dwight Griswold. The result: a landslide for Butler. Had presidential aspirant Stassen dived under a steamroller or just got his finger caught in a wringer?

Hard-shell Republicans were confident that he had been rolled out flatter than a gingerbread man. With a spuriously funereal air, the Chicago Tribune published his political obituary: "There was nothing left of Harold, his presumptions or his platform. The result is immensely gratifying . . . Stassen is eliminated . . . he is as dead politically as Willkie after the Wisconsin primary in 1944. . . ."

But Stassen's backers and many another G.O.P. liberal insisted that their boy was hardly scratched. Butler, they argued, had a vast, statewide organization, was backed by all top party leaders, had had a great edge on Griswold from the beginning. Also Butler claimed he was not really an isolationist.

Stassen had weighed a calculated loss against the great benefits to be derived from an upset victory, and had gambled. He had failed completely to disassociate his brand of internationalism from that of the New Deal. He had been rebuffed for intruding in a state not his own, but he had not yet been repudiated as a national candidate. That test would come in the July 8 Minnesota primary, when Stassen's protege, Governor Edward Thye, runs for the G.O.P. senatorial nomination against old, isolationist Henrik Shipstead.

One result of the Nebraska primary was certain: it had weakened the chances of the British loan in the House. Wisely or not, Governor Griswold had injected it as an issue in the campaign. His 2-to-1 beating would cause many a Congressman still on the fence to take another long, hard look around.

Nebraska's G.O.P. candidate for governor was a World War II veteran with an impressive Scandinavian name: Frederick Valdemar Erastus Peterson. As a lieutenant colonel of the Army Air Forces, 42-year-old Val Peterson spent 24 months in the CBI Theater, supervised air-freight movements over the Hump into China. But unlike many other veteran candidates, he was no newcomer to state politics, nor did he wave the bloody shirt.

Before the war he had been successively schoolteacher, college instructor, weekly newspaper editor, had acted as campaign manager for Senator Butler, secretary for Governor Griswold. In winning an impressive primary victory last week he all but cinched the governorship of Republican Nebraska.

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