Primary Scrimmage

The battle for the 1960 Democratic presidential nomination may well be won in the playing fields of the state primaries--or in the scrimmages beforehand. Last week the battle for the primaries was on between the front-running candidates, Massachusetts' Jack Kennedy and the liveliest of the challengers, Minnesota's Hubert Humphrey.

Fortnight ago, Minnesota's Humphrey-allied Democrat-Farmer-Labor Party gave a big push to a bill abolishing Minnesota's "costly" ten-year-old primary. Fear of the Humphreyites: G.O.P. voters might cross over in the primary to vote for Kennedy and embarrass Humphrey in his home state. Last week the Kennedy-ites scored in Wisconsin with a surprise play that broke up the attempt of Humphrey's teammates to block Kennedy from next April's Wisconsin primary.

The strategy of the Humphrey team was to persuade Wisconsin's Governor Gaylord Nelson to run in the primary as a favorite son. Thus, come convention time, he would be in a position to deliver the Wisconsin delegation to his favorite, Adlai Stevenson, or--if Stevenson means what he says about not running--Hubert Humphrey. Key Humphrey players, who worked out smoothly at the Midwest Democratic rally in Milwaukee last fortnight: Minnesota's Governor Orville Freeman, United Auto Workers' Political Operative Harvey Kitzman ("The union's support is going to Humphrey"), and Washington Lawyer James Rowe, great and good friend of I-Am-Not-a-Candidate Lyndon Johnson of Texas.

Just as they were about to score, State Chairman Patrick J. Lucey, Stevenson-pledged but Kennedy-prone, a protege of Wisconsin's Johnson-baiting Senator William Proxmire, called a quick meeting of about a dozen of the 27 members of the party's administrative committee, got them to vote for an innocent statement in favor of allowing Wisconsin voters "to participate as fully as possible" in the Wisconsin primary. Then, before anyone knew what he was up to, Chairman Lucey mailed letters of invitation and copies of the statement to seven top Democratic hopefuls: Humphrey, Kennedy, Michigan's Soapy Williams, Missouri's Stuart Symington, Tennessee's Estes Kefauver, New Jersey's Robert Meyner, Adlai Stevenson--but not Lyndon Johnson.

With the hole in the line opened up for all to see, Hubert Humphrey, who plays second to no man in devotion to the public will, made the best of it. If he decides at midsummer to go all out for the big job, announced Humphrey, he will welcome primary contests, especially the ones in Oregon and Wisconsin. Prospect: a real Wisconsin playoff next April between Humphrey and Kennedy.

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