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It was a bitter medicine that Wisconsin's Republican state convention forced on aging (72) Republican Senator Alexander Wiley last May when it voted to support another candidate in the U.S. Senate primary. The G.O.P organization diagnosed Wiley's political illness as an acute case of globalitis--for Wiley, as ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, had doggedly supported President Eisenhower's internationalist policies. The prescription was a ruthless purge, and the man nominated to bring it off in the primaries was Glen R. Davis, 41, a handsome, smooth-talking fifth-term Congressman who believes in the Bricker amendment and in tapering off on foreign aid. Old Alex Wiley left the convention in tears (TIME, June 4), but he stubbornly decided to run anyway.

Wiley turned on a vigorous campaign, handing out his card to people in the streets, flattering the ladies. Once, at the Leyse Aluminum Co. plant in Kewaunee, he genially seized a labor union leader, waltzed him around the floor, singing, "Du, Du, liegst mir im herzen," as factory workers chimed in with "Ja, ja, ja, ja." Davis, meanwhile, turned on an equally dynamic but better-financed campaign, got in his share of the stop-and-shake technique.

When the ballots were counted last week, Alexander Wiley was the winner, thanks principally to a heavy 20,000-vote lead in normally Democratic Milwaukee County. Total vote: Wiley 217,402; Davis 207,693. Wiley had had a close call. Of the 445,625 G.O.P. votes, Wiley's slim margin was only 10,000. A third Republican, Howard H. Boyle Jr., 35--who ran on an anti-Eisenhower platform--got 20,000 that might otherwise have gone to Davis. Nonetheless, Wiley should have no trouble in November against Democratic Nominee Henry W. Maier, 38, a state senator, who cashed in 163,336 votes in the Democratic primary that brought out a surprising 240,213 voters.

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