In the Ring with Dempsey

Once a swing state that as often as not swung Republican, Connecticut has lodged so firmly in the Democratic column over the past eight years that the G.O.P. no longer controls a single congressional or statewide administrative office. This year for a change, with an out-of-the-blue candidate who can seriously challenge Governor John Dempsey, Republicans are confident that the pendulum will come back their way.

"No Footsie." The G.O.P.'s fresh face belongs to Dempsey's good friend and neighbor E. (for Edmund) Clayton Gengras, 57, chairman of the Security-Connecticut Group and of the Connecticut Co., which runs urban bus lines. A high school dropout, Gengras is a self-made millionaire and self-starting candidate whose first bid for public office took both rank-and-file Republicans and Democrats by surprise. Also surprising was the unanimity mustered at the party convention, which nominated him by acclamation. Though Nutmeg State Republicans have been notorious for factional feuding in recent years, State Republican Chairman A. Searle Pinney was quick to spot Gengras' potential and, with other party leaders, quietly started lining up the dissidents weeks before the convention.

No figurehead proffered in the name of unity, Gengras is an outspoken progressive who wants to reform party and state. He accuses the G.O.P. of being "boring, dull, unimaginative," demands "vitality, energy, creativity and spunk." He wanted--and got--a liberal platform that promises everything from more schools, parks and roads to an increased minimum wage and tougher enforcement of antidiscrimination laws. He also nailed down a plank denouncing the John Birch Society. "A Republican Party that plays footsie with the Birch Society and the radical right," said Gengras, "cannot win and does not deserve to win." The vociferous minority who supported Barry Goldwater in 1964 went along without a murmur of dissent.

"Social Governor." Though the state has a heavily Roman Catholic electorate (50%), the Republican ticket was artfully assembled to appeal to just about every religious and ethnic group. Gen gras, like Dempsey, is a Catholic, and so are the Republican candidates for lieutenant governor and comptroller, John Gerardo and Tom Mayers. The nominee for attorney general is a Negro, William Graham, and the secretary of state's slot is filled by Mrs. Phyllis Shulman, a Jew. J. Tyler Patterson Jr., running for treasurer, is the only old-line Yankee. Though he contributed $5,000 to Dempsey's 1962 campaign, Gengras plans a vigorous attack depicting Dempsey as a lightweight "social Governor" and his regime as plodding, piecemeal and pinchpenny in welfare, education and other programs.

No one has ever called Gengras a plodder. He became a whiz salesman of bottled cooking gas in his teens, graduated to cars, and rapidly built a chain of automobile dealerships stretching from Rhode Island to Long Island. Then he expanded into public transit in his home state and insurance on an international scale. Along the way, Gengras presciently fathered eleven children, five of whom will be eligible to vote the G.O.P. ticket in November.

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