Closing the Gap

From seacoast to mountain, New Jersey's 21 counties reverberated with the noise of political engines last week as the state's 1957 gubernatorial campaign went into high gear. Touring for the Democrats (on occasion in a borrowed green station wagon with Pennsylvania tags): handsome, hard-working Governor Robert Baumle Meyner, 49, consistently favored for a second term despite New Jersey's heavy Republican registration. Touring for the G.O.P. (in a red, white and blue milk truck): hornrimmed, wealthy State Senator Malcolm Stevenson Forbes. 38, who bucked the Republican organization to win the primary, is working even harder to beat Bob Meyner. Listening to the engines roar last week, New Jersey sensed that the red, white and blue milk truck was rapidly closing the gap.

For both candidates, victory means more than the governor's job. Candidate Meyner, mentioned in passing as a presidential possibility in 1956, will be mentioned even more strongly in 1960 if he can keep his hold on New Jersey. Candidate Forbes has a double goal: long-range, the Princeton graduate ('41) and publisher (Forbes business magazine) would like to be President too. But shortrange, his victory would go a long way toward offsetting recent losses of G.O.P. governorships in Maine, Kansas, Iowa and Pennsylvania and the resounding Republican setback in Wisconsin's Senate election.

Taxes, Taxes, Taxes. To reverse the trend in New Jersey, Forbes quickly discovered he needed both friends and an issue. To gain friends, he revved himself up into an Estes Kefauver of suburbia. He has climbed aboard Manhattan-bound ferryboats to shake hands, waded into lakes, scoured supermarkets, logged 6,000 miles on the converted milk truck. Along with this "Operation Doorbell" went "Operation Coffee Cup." By the hundreds, New Jersey women are sitting down to sip coffee from Forbes-decorated cups, dab at their lips with paper napkins imprinted with a Forbes family cooky recipe, listen to a tape-recorded message from the candidate.

"When I started this campaign," says Forbes, "I had a dozen things I wanted to indict the Meyner administration for. But I found out that people were only interested in spending and what we were going to do about taxes, taxes, taxes." To New Jersey audiences burdened with neither income nor sales taxes (and worrying constantly about both), Forbes has so far not said what he is going to do. But he is achieving results by scoring the rising budget, blasting Meyner as the biggest-spending governor in state history.

On the Beach. In addition to these frontal attacks, Meyner has been wounded by a shot in the back from his own party. The key to a Democratic victory rests in Hudson County, where last election Meyner won almost half his 154,000-vote plurality over Republican Candidate Paul Troast. Now Hudson is racked by internecine warfare; "Victory Ticket" Democrats, who last spring wrested control of Jersey City away from Boss John V. Kenny, this election are trying to take the whole county. The conflict and confusion may rob Meyner of many of the votes he needs to roll up in Hudson in order to overcome a Forbes edge in such heavily Republican counties as Essex and Bergen.

Meyner hopes that he can tranquilize Hudson County. He also hopes to prove that he can whip Malcolm Forbes singlehanded. Already he has turned down proffers of speechmaking aid from Democratic bigwigs--Harry Truman, Adlai Stevenson, Jack Kennedy et al. Forbes, on the other hand, is playing no such solo role. He has eagerly accepted offers of speech-making and advice from Vice President Nixon, Interior Secretary Fred Seaton and Labor Secretary James P. Mitchell, hopes that even President Eisenhower himself will swing through. The prospects had Forbes already counting his victory vote last week. "All the Democrats had," said he jubilantly, "was a long, shallow beach. When the tide ran out, it ran awful fast." If Malcolm Forbes was right, he would surely be riding the crest of the Republican wave come next November; if he turned out to be wrong, he would be gone with the undertow and with the Republican hopefuls of Maine, Kansas. Iowa, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

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