Seven Up

The Oregon trail for Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy was really the end of a long, grinding, cross-country reconnaissance in force. In the Oregon primary last week, the youthful Bostonian gave U.S. Senator Wayne Lyman Morse the drubbing of his political life and registered his seventh straight primary victory--the final one on his schedule. In the seven triumphs (New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Indiana, West Virginia, Nebraska, Maryland and Oregon), Jack Kennedy was the favorite of 1,500,000 voters, added some 330 committed delegate votes* to his convention strength. More important, by campaigning the hard, primary way, he had buried a number of bugaboos, had established himself, as he said he would, as the undisputed leading Democratic candidate :

P: In New Hampshire, where he was unopposed, Kennedy merely underlined his fiefdom over his native New England.

P: In Wisconsin he defeated Minnesota's Hubert Humphrey on his home ground, established the fact that a forceful, attractive Roman Catholic can count on impressive numbers of his Republican and independent coreligionists.

P: In West Virginia, the toughest test of all, he knocked Humphrey out of the race, proved that a Catholic can win handily in a heavily Protestant state.

P: In Maryland last week, Kennedy emphasized his ability as a vote getter, rolling up 73% of the votes and avalanching Wayne Morse, 200,252 to 49,225.

Oregon provided the fringe on top of his rolling bandwagon. Pitted for the first time against a field of four, Kennedy registered a knockout. Favorite Son Morse waged a campaign of savage personal attack, which Kennedy ignored. The names of Hubert Humphrey, Stuart Symington and Lyndon Johnson were all listed on the ballot, though the three refused to campaign. Adlai Stevenson was an unwilling ghost candidate./- When the returns were in, Kennedy had outpointed all Democratic opponents put together: Kennedy, 135,000; Morse, 85,000; the others, a total of 44,000 votes. Unopposed in the Republican primary, Dick Nixon won 193,000 votes of confidence.

The defeat on home soil was especially galling for Morse, because not a single major Oregon Democrat supported him. All the big party wheels--Representatives Edith Green and Charles Porter, State Senator Monroe Sweetland, even Maurine Neuberger (who won the nomination to succeed her late husband, Richard E. Neuberger, in the Senate)--were in Kennedy's camp. And this, in the Morse code, was nothing less than high treason. In bitter terms ("a stab in the back," "betrayal of party trust"), he denounced his fellow Democrats, vowed to seek revenge. The wounds will not heal quickly, and Wayne Morse is likely to find himself without political support when he runs for re-election to the Senate in 1962--an inviting prospect for Republican Governor Mark Hatfield, who is seriously thinking of running against him.

Toward the end of the campaign, Morse seemed to recognize the handwriting on the wall. "I'll hold my nose and vote for him, even campaign for him," he told an audience of longshoremen in Portland, "because even he's better than Nixon, and that's the best I can say for him." Morse was similarly gracious in his telegram of concession: "Mrs. Morse and I extend to you and Mrs. Kennedy congratulations on your victory in Oregon."

But by that time, Jack Kennedy's thoughts were far from Wayne Morse. His bandwagon was rolling pell-mell for Los Angeles, and Kennedy himself was winging toward his family's summer home in Hyannisport, on Cape Cod, for a big family celebration with the multitudinous Clan Kennedy. The occasion: Jack's 43rd birthday, this week. It would be a milestone for a candidate who had beaten down almost every other charge against him except the unavoidable one that to some of the party's elders, he seemed too young to be a winner at the polls, even against a Richard Nixon, 47.

*Although he took West Virginia with 61% of the vote, the delegation is not obligated to vote for Kennedy at the convention. He can confidently count only six out of West Virginia's 25 delegate votes.

/-Stevenson was under heavy pressure last week to endorse Kennedy, and one persistent Washington story had it that much of the pressure came from the Kennedy camp itself. According to one version, Stevenson has been served with a polite ultimatum by a Kennedy lieutenant: Come out for Kennedy before June 1, when an endorsement will do the most good, if you want to be Secretary of State.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.