Hall's Fall

"Never before in our state," said Kansas' Republican Governor Fred Hall, after his election in 1954, "has a governor owed so little to so few and so much to so many." His meaning was clear: the people of Kansas had elected a spellbinding, brilliant politician on his own merits, and the governor owed nothing to the Old Guard Republican organization. Owing nothing, he would give nothing.

Last week the sharpshooting young (40) governor found he had fallen wide of the mark. In a hotly contested primary election, the "many" dumped Fred Hall from the copper-domed State Capitol, sidetracked his frank hopes to parlay Kansas popularity into an eventual trip to Washington.

Fast-Blooming Sunflower. To reddish-blond Boy Wonder Hall, his defeat by State Representative Warren Shaw came as a sharp sting. Only a year ago, national columnists were extolling Hall's brand of "Eisenhower Republicanism," his pro-labor veto of a hotly disputed right-to-work bill, his militant demands on behalf of the farmer, his prunings of deadwood in the State House. Fast-blooming Sunflower Fred Hall was a man on the rise.

But regular Kansas Republicans make their moves slowly; they abhor violent change. Stunned by Hall's ax-wielding and pro-labor actions, they assessed the situation silently, then began moving Kansas and earth to throw the upstart out. Hall's right-to-work veto drew the wrath of the powerful Kansas City Star; his purge of old friends in the State Civil Service Board brought suspicious frowns; his meddling and muddling in legislative affairs ("I am the governor") stirred deep resentment. When Hall called recalcitrant legislators "s.o.b.s" to their faces during a bitter legislative rhubarb early this year, the insulted lawmakers formed an "S.O.B. Club" to campaign against him. Kansas did a belly laugh, and thin-skinned Fred Hall was the victim.

Homespun Web. Against this grimly mirthful background, plodding, modest Warren Shaw ("Nobody's a worse speaker than I am") announced against Hall, despite the tradition that Kansas nominates its Republican governors for a second term. With tradition and the labor vote behind him, Fred Hall was far from worried. But labor had its mind mostly on the Democratic primary (see below), hardly at all on Hall: industrial Sedgwick County (Wichita) gave Shaw 3,500 more votes than Hall, Shawnee County (Topeka) went to Shaw by 3,200. The final unofficial vote: Shaw 156,300, Hall 123,000.

One of Hall's annoyed early backers summed up the why of the defeat: "He wanted to play every instrument in the band and lead it too." Countered Fred Hall: "I am the perfect example of the Republican who followed the Eisenhower orthodoxy right down the line, against the Old Guard, and got caught in the web." Like many another Hall pronouncement, this smacked of oversimplification. Most Kansans agreed that the web was made largely of arrogance, and Fred Hall had spun it himself.

While most eyes were on the brisk Hall-Shaw fight in the G.O.P., the Democratic gubernatorial primary candidates in Kansas were tooth-and-nailing furiously. The winner: Lawrence Banker George Docking, 52. By a narrow margin of fewer than 900 votes, he defeated Harry Hines Woodring, 66, who had served as Kansas' fourth Democratic governor (1931-33) and as khaki-drab Secretary of War under Franklin D. Roosevelt (1936-40). Despite the record Democratic vote (151,000), few Kansans reckoned that the G.O.P. was in any trouble. Shaw's 156,300 votes were more than Docking's and Woodring's combined.

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