Ins Outshunted

Kansas politics is divided into three parts: the "ins," the "outs," and the Democrats. In last week's primary election, Kansas voters handed Republican "outs" a surprise victory over the Republican faction which has held power in the Statehouse at Topeka for 16 years.

The "ins" are led by Governor Edward F. Arn and two captains of Dwight Eisenhower's 1952 campaign, Senator Frank Carlson and National Committeeman Harry Darby. Arn openly and Carlson and Darby quietly backed Party Stalwart George Templar, 49, as Arn's successor. But by a margin of 15,000 votes, Templar, onetime U.S. attorney and state senator, was overpowered by the winner: scrappy, jaunty Lieutenant Governor Frederick Lee Hall, 38.

Nominee Hall bounced into the political limelight four years ago by nosing out eight opponents in the race for lieutenant governor. In 1952 Governor Arn set out to purge Hall, ran a hand-picked candidate against him. Hall overrode the governor and won handily.

To prepare for this year's big fight, Fred Hall stirred up moribund elements of the Republican Old Guard, combined them with insurgent Young Republicans, and made himself the leader of a faction described by the Wichita Beacon as a "collection of defeated candidates, disgruntled public employees and power-hungry persons who have been shunted aside in past weeks, months or years." Most prominent of Hall's backers: Alfred M. Landon, who was shunted off onto a siding in the 1936 presidential election.

In his campaign. Hall loudly proclaimed his admiration for President Eisenhower, but he hammered hard at the deal which forced Eisenhower's Republican National Chairman Wesley Roberts, a protege of Senator Carlson, to resign under fire (TIME, March 30, 1953 et seq.) in a scandal involving the sale of a tuberculosis hospital.

In the acrid smoke of the Republican factional feud, Kansas Democrats sniffed a heady perfume. As bait for roiled Republicans, they nominated Banker George Docking, 50, a middle-of-the-road Democrat, hoped they might elect a governor for the first time since 1936, when Walter A. Huxman rode in on Franklin Roosevelt's coattails.

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