How It Is Out There

When Millionaire Mormon Ernest L.

(for Leroy) Wilkinson, 65, resigned as president of Utah's Brigham Young University earlier this year, he gave as his reason "new challenges." That seemed odd. Wilkinson, a Napoleon-size (5 ft. 5 in.) ultraconservative, had already met enough challenges for ten men. A Utah-born Washington lobbyist-lawyer, he spent 15 years making a name--and a reported $1,500,000--in winning a $31.7 million land-compensation judgment for the Ute Indian Tribe in 1950. He returned home that same year to become the $1-a-year president of faltering Brigham Young University, where students soon began calling him Ernie the Attorney (but not to his face). In the years since then, Wilkinson had increased enrollment fourfold, beefed up the dwindling faculty, raised and spent $30 million on new buildings. What sort of new challenge could such a man want?

Getting the Shaft. The answer was not long in coming. Wilkinson announced for the Republican senatorial nomination. Also running was Utah's Republican Congressman Sherman Lloyd, 50, a handsome, suave political comer with a distinguished eight-year record in the state senate. Lloyd, who had shown himself to be an able Representative in his one term in Congress, seemed to be a natural for the G.O.P. nomination to the Senate--but that was before Ernie the Attorney got into the fight.

Lloyd, charged Wilkinson, had missed 38% of the House's roll-call votes this year, was not even present when the House slashed $2,000,000 from an appropriation for Utah's Hill Air Force Base or when it voted on Utah reclamation projects. But in conservative-minded Utah, the most damaging of all Wilkinson's charges was that Moderate Lloyd was just that--a moderate.

For evidence, Wilkinson pointed out that the Americans for Constitutional Action, which rates legislators according to their conservative stands, pegged Lloyd as voting conservative "only 64% of the time." Not only that, said Wilkinson, Lloyd had voted for the civil rights bill. So when Wilkinson bought newspaper ads headlined IS LLOYD BECOMING A LIBERAL? Utahans got the drift, and Lloyd got the shaft.

Record Primary. Lloyd hotly denied the charges of chronic absenteeism and particularly protested that he was not either a liberal. His A.C.A. rating, he explained, was the most conservative of the four-man Utah congressional delegation. To bolster his defense, Lloyd last week bought Election Eve ads of his own in the papers, ran a picture showing himself with the G.O.P. presidential ticket. But Ernie Wilkinson was ready for that challenge too. He called Barry Goldwater, got a statement of support, and took space of his own in final editions to boast that he, and not Lloyd, had Barry's blessing.

That swung it for Ernie. Next day, a record primary turnout of Utah Republicans gave Wilkinson the nomination, 61,113 to 59,454. In November he will face Incumbent Democratic Senator Frank Moss. The way things stand now, Wilkinson can start packing to move back to Washington.

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