Illinois to the Sea

Illinois was a Taft victory six ways from the middle--the Middle West, that is. Candidate Taft roused out more Republicans for last week's presidential primary than had voted in an Illinois election since 1932. In traditionally Democratic Cook County--Chicago and suburbs--Republicans cast more ballots than Democrats. Taft rolled up 862,000 votes, rolled over Harold Stassen (145,600) and an ill-conceived Eisenhower write-in movement (135,300) sponsored by the Chicago Sun-Times. He lost only one delegate to Eisenhower, and came out of Illinois with the other 59 in the bag--the largest single bundle thus far in the campaign.

It was a "smashing" victory, said a triumphant Robert Taft in Washington next day. Illinois' Congressman Les Arends joyfully clapped back on Taft's head an old Taft campaign hat which Arends had bought at a G.O.P. fund-raising auction the week before. Taft added up the Illinois results for reporters with the enthusiasm of an electric calculator ticking off a problem in square root. "It is no easy task to defeat a popular wartime general in successive elections [i.e., Nebraska and Illinois]. In the fourth largest state of the Union I have carried the state by a smashing margin of six to one against him . . . The Illinois results finally eradicate the Minnesota write-in results [Ike 107,000, Taft 24,000] ballyhooed so vigorously by the internationalist press."

Then Taft turned his attention to the windup of the primary campaign in "internationalist" New Jersey. Both the Taft and Ike forces were jumpy over Jersey. Both tried hard to discount this week's results in advance.

Taft had angrily tried to withdraw his name from New Jersey last month after Ike's big victory in Minnesota, charging that New Jersey's pro-Eisenhower Governor Alfred Driscoll had betrayed him by coming out for Eisenhower. But Taft's name stayed on the ballot, and although Taft himself kept out of the state, and Taft men assiduously cultivated the underdog role, his lieutenants worked harder than ever to push his campaign. "As a matter of fact, they never stopped working," complained Driscoll last week. "The Senator's campaign is on a very practical basis."

If so, the basis was understandable. Illinois left Taft facing a very practical problem. With Taft's victory in Illinois and Eisenhower's decision to return to the U.S., the Taft-Eisenhower battle has become a tense, tight fight right down to the last delegate. Most states with the big--and still wavering--blocs of delegates lie close to the U.S. seaboard. Taft's political future may well depend on his ability to fight his way out of the Midwest toward the sea.

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