Starting at the Top

"The trouble with Milton Shapp," Pennsylvania's Democratic Chief David Lawrence was once heard to grumble, "is that he wants to start at the top." What Milton wants, Democratic panjandrums learned to their dismay last week, Milton gets. With the money, smooth organization and stubborn resolve to achieve his aim, Democrat Shapp shellacked his party's machine-backed gubernatorial nominee by al most 50,000 votes.

A slight, stooped electrical engineer, Shapp, 53, parlayed an investment of $500 into the Jerrold Corp., a multi-million-dollar electronics firm. He had hankered for political office for years, only to be given the polite brushoff by politicians more interested in his cash than his candidacy. Denied the senatorial nomination in 1964, Shapp decided that 1966 was the year to go it alone.

Playing David. He could not have picked a better year to play David. The late Representative William Green's once-smooth Philadelphia organization had turned increasingly fractious under Democratic City Chairman Francis Smith. It broke down when it backed State Senator Robert Casey, 34, a Scranton attorney, for the gubernatorial nomination. Shapp, guided by Joseph Napolitan, a J.F.K. pollster in 1960, mercilessly-derided Casey and exalted his own independence by calling himself "the man against the machine."

With a seemingly bottomless campaign treasury--estimated as high as $2,000,000--Shapp saturated the air waves with more than 7,000 radio spots, 34 half-hour TV shows in prime time, and so many TV shorts that aides lost count. Mailboxes were filled with provocative, well-prepared pamphlets setting out Shapp's views on expanding the state's economy and improving education: "I've been accused of buying the election," the candidate acknowledged at one point. "I'm not buying. I'm selling myself. It does cost money."

On to the Series. Shapp's reformist zeal led to the derisive nickname of "Batman"--but many voters thought a crusader, caped or not, was just what Pennsylvania's tired Democratic Party needed. With the returns in, Democratic Senator Joseph Clark, who had backed Casey, admitted that the machine was "obsolescent, if not obsolete." Shapp, the first Jew to be nominated for Governor of Pennsylvania, was already gearing up for November. "We've won the pennant," he told supporters. "Now we go after the World Series."

The odds are all against him. Lieutenant Governor Ray Shafer, 48, hand-picked successor of outgoing Governor William Scranton, won the Republican nomination with only a token (17%) challenge from Perennial Candidate Harold Stassen, can expect a united party behind him in November. Just to show how united and strong that party was--and to prevent a nonorganization man from sneaking in--Republican leaders asked and received a winning vote for Walter Alessandroni, the party's candidate for Lieutenant Governor who was killed in a plane crash ten days before the election.

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