Colorado's High Pitch

"Charlie Brannan is a synthetic farmer and was a miserable failure as Secretary of Agriculture. I will challenge the ex-Secretary to a cotton-pickin', wheat-shockin', cow-milkin', calf-ropin' contest. If Brannan loses, he has to drop out. If I lose, I'll drop out."

Thus last week in Colorado these words, spoken by ex-Governor Dan Thornton, wealthy rancher and onetime farmboy, shoved Colorado's senatorial race right off its mile-high mountaintop and down into the barnyard. As sole Republican candidate for the vacated Senate seat of ailing Eugene D. Millikin, who is retiring, the popular Thornton will have to go to the polls against one of two Democratic primary candidates: former Congressman John Carroll or Harry Truman's Agriculture Secretary Charles Brannan. Thornton had decided by last week that Brannan was the man to beat.

"I have news for my cotton-pickin' opponent," replied Charlie Brannan. "There is no cotton grown in Colorado." Furthermore, said the author of the Brannan Plan, "Republicans should have nominated Man Mountain Dean instead of Dan Thornton if they think Colorado voters are more interested in physical prowess than intellect. I have milked more cows than Thornton has ever seen. I have shocked more hay. I gladly accept the opportunity to debate."

"If he wants to debate,"' Thornton roared back, "I'll debate him--when and if he wins his primary fight. I'm going to ask him some technical questions about farming and I want real farmers to hear his answers. You have said that if the people of Colorado wanted a person who could do farm chores, they would have nominated Man Mountain Dean. You meant this as ridicule against every dirt farmer and his family in Colorado."

By this time both Thornton and Brannan began to suspect that things had got out of hand. Said Brannan: "I would rather debate issues on an intellectual plane." Replied Thornton in a letter to Brannan: "I will have no more to say to a preliminary fighter until he has proved himself." That same day the Denver Post took editorial notice of the uproar. To the cow-milkin', wheat-shockin', cotton-pickin' and calf-ropin' contests, noted the Post, one more competition should be added: "Bull-throwin'."

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