Hot Seats

"Each House," says the U.S. Constitution, "shall be the judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members." Exercising its constitutional prerogative, the House of Representatives--in the persons of a five-member Select Committee on Elections--last week scrutinized three House elections out of 436 this fall in which the outcome was contested. The three:

P: Kansas' Sixth District, where the margin of Incumbent Republican Wint Smith over Democrat Elmo J. Mahoney was so narrow (233 votes) that the committee recommended an investigation of Mahoney's charge of irregularities.

P: Minnesota's Ninth District, where Odin Langen chalked up the nation's only G.O.P. conquest of a Democratic seat by defeating two-termer Coya Knutson. Her prestige damaged at campaign time by a "Coya Come Home" letter from innkeeping Husband Andy Knutson (TIME, May 19 et seq.), Coya last week got Andy to the Capitol to admit he had written the letter at the instigation of his wife's political opponents and to add that he would like to see Coya back in Congress. The House committee found that Republican Langen had taken no part in the letter writing, tactfully suggested that Coya Knutson's marital problems were a matter for Minnesota voters to pass on.

P: Arkansas Fifth (Little Rock) District, where Segregationist Independent Dale Alford defeated respected eight-term Democrat Brooks Hays after a write-in campaign attacking Southern Baptist Convention President Hays's moderate stand on integration (TIME, Nov. 17). Protesting the outcome last week was not Hays but John F. Wells, publisher of the Arkansas Recorder, a Little Rock weekly and Hays's longtime friend--and longtime political critic. Charged Wells* in a well-documented complaint: 1) Alford write-in stickers were delivered to election officials along with ballots and ballot boxes; 2) contrary to law, the stickers had an "X" marked on them already; 3) in some hotly segregationist precincts more votes were cast than there were voters; e.g., in one ward in the little town of Jacksonville on the outskirts of Little Rock (362 registrants), Alford received 325 votes, Hays 109.

Splitting along regional lines, the committee's two Republicans and Massachusetts Democrat Thomas O'Neill recommended that Alford's seat be denied him until the charges were investigated, and two Southern Democrats wrote a minority report protesting the seat denial but agreeing that "further investigation is warranted." The vote presaged a bitter fight between Southerners and Northern liberals over the Fifth District's seat when the House convenes next month.

* In Little Rock, Publisher Wells was speedily disciplined for standing up for Brooks Hays. Arkansas' house of representatives, which does Orval Faubus' bidding, notified Wells that it was canceling his $10,200 contract for publishing a daily digest of legislative sessions. Professed reason for the sudden cut: economy.

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