Expected & Unexpected

One of the quietest and one of the most strident Republican members of the U.S. Senate announced last week that they will not run for re-election in 1958. The bowers-out, both of them lawyers who reached the Senate in 1944:

P:New Jersey's cautious, scholarly H. Alexander Smith, 77, moderate Republican and his party's second-ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (after Wisconsin's Wiley). The party and the Government need "younger people," Smith explained. His long-expected decision threatened to bring on the kind of political dogfight that gentle Alex Smith always tried to avoid. Already announced for his seat is boutonniered

Bernard M. Shanley, onetime appointments secretary to President Eisenhower (TIME, Nov. 18), but party regulars prefer veteran (19 years) U.S. Congressman Robert W. Kean.

P:Indiana's oratorically reckless (but politically shrewd) William E. Jenner, 49, ardent supporter of the late Joe McCarthy, and McCarthy's successor as the Senate's most outspoken right-winger. Jenner's curt and unexpected announcement, stating no reason for his decision, shocked Indiana Republicans, who had considered him a good bet to win in 1958 no matter whom the Democrats nominated. Groping for an explanation of Jenner's decision, Republican State Chairman Robert Matthews said the Senator was "just tired of carrying on the fight for conservatism by himself." But some observers of Indiana politics ventured that Jenner's announcement was a ploy designed t01) jolt the state Republican organization out of its lassitude, and 2) set up a draft-Jenner movement. Old Guardsman Jenner, the cynics argued, was worried about the Democratic trend, feared that he might lose his seat unless he stirred up some enthusiasm among Indiana Republicans.

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