No Clicks, 14 Delegates

For weeks pundits had been adjusting their political Geiger counters to pick up every psychological click from South Dakota's Republican primary. Those 14 delegates were important, everyone agreed, but the bigger prize was the effect on voters everywhere of victory in the last state primary.

Last week, after the votes were counted, the pundits could detect little, if any, psychological radiation. The vote was almost a standoff: Taft, 64,619; Ike, 64,004. Ike carried 38 counties, Taft 30. Taft's power in the rural areas, enhanced by his speeches for farm price supports and against universal military training, was largely offset by Ike's strength in the cities.

The Taft forces' leader, former State Supreme Court Justice Charles R. Hayes of Deadwood, commented somewhat sadly: "Certainly we claim victory . . . But it isn't what we had hoped for." Eisenhower's supporters were quick to point out that this was in Taft's Midwest stronghold, where he should win if he could win anywhere. Ike's show of strength, without a personal campaign and without his name on the ballot, was a "moral victory," they said. But Ike, now home to speak for himself, took a different view: "I don't understand moral victories. When you go to war, it's win or lose."

After the national speculation about South Dakota and psychology, the Republican voters had put their primary right back in its place: a contest for delegates. Bob Taft was the winner even if his margin was only 615 votes. There were 14 delegates to be had in South Dakota, and he had them.

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