Happy Time in Kentucky

Before election day in Kentucky last week Democratic Candidate Albert Benjamin ("Happy") Chandler* predicted that he would be elected governor by a margin of 113,000 votes. Kentucky's best guessers scoffed that Happy's estimate was characteristically too high, guessed that he would win by no more than 70,000. When the votes were counted, it turned out that even Happy's happy estimate had been too cautious. He ran up a total of 457,185 votes to beat Republican Candidate Edwin R. Denney by 131,353; the biggest majority a candidate for governor ever piled up in Kentucky.

Chandler's indestructible popularity in Kentucky and his ballad-singing, back-thumping campaign (TIME, Aug. 8) were key factors in the size of his victory. But there was a national issue involved: falling prices on the farm. Chandler hit hard at U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson's farm program, crying: "Why, if you elect this fellow [Denney] this fall next year he'll be helping Benson and those fellows up there." In rural Kentucky, there was a marked shift to the Democratic side from the 1954 congressional election, e.g., in west Kentucky's Hopkins County (tobacco), the Democrats gained 1,174 votes and the Republicans lost 317.

While the victory was sweet for Kentucky Democrats, it was sprinkled with some bitterness. The party had come through a shattering primary campaign in which Chandler took on and whipped Judge Bert Combs, who had the support of the Democratic state machine and of Governor Lawrence Wetherby. U.S. Senator Earle Clements and Patriarch Alben Barkley. Although after the primary, Wetherby. Clements and Barkley faithfully swung in behind Nominee Chandler, the unkind cuts are not healed. Now that he has won. Chandler is expected to get right to work on his primary-announced aim to select a candidate who will beat Clements in next year's primary.

Another fruit of victory that disturbs some Democrats is the fact that Happy will control Kentucky's delegation to the 1956 National Convention. He has not said which candidate he favors, but his utterances have brought no comfort to Adlai Stevenson. He was for Georgia s U.S. Senator Richard Russell in 1952; he is expected to favor a candidate of conservative stripe in 1956. After setting himself up as a favorite-son candidate, Happy is expected to take to Chicago a delegation instructed to vote for him under the unit rule. From that position, he will be able to trade the Kentucky delegation for whatever he can get. Said one veteran Kentucky politician: "Happy will be for Happy and nobody else."

In last week's election, Kentucky voters approved (177,000 to 112,000) an amendment to the state constitution lowering the minimum age for voting from 21 to 18. Only one other state, Georgia, now permits voting at 18. An estimated 150,000 Kentuckians between 18 and 21 could qualify to vote in 1956 under the new rule.

*Who served a term as Kentucky's governor in 1935-39, was U.S. Senator in 1939-45 and high commissioner of baseball in 1945-51.

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