Resignation & a Race

IOWA The twang was as piercing as ever, but the words were filled with resignation. "I will be 72 next year," said Republican Senator Bourke Blakemore Hickenlooper, "and the people of Iowa are entitled to a vigorous and extensive campaign." With that, the chairman of the G.O.P. Policy Committee last week announced his impending retirement--and set up a hot election for November.

After 24 years on Capital Hill, Hickenlooper became the second veteran Republican in as many weeks to announce that he would not run in '68. Earlier, Kansas' Senator Frank Carlson, 74--who, with Hickenlooper, has been one of the Foreign Relations Committee's minority of supporters of the U.S. stand in Viet Nam--said that he would retire after his third term.

Hickenlooper's career on the Hill was one of conservative caution, attuned to what he felt was the attitude of the folks back home. He argued or voted against the 1964 civil rights bill, the Peace Corps and Medicare. He had been critical of Wisconsin's Senator Joseph McCarthy in the ideological wars of the 1950s and had maintained a moderate internationalism on the Foreign Relations Committee--even up to the neo-isolationist present. Asked recently by President Johnson what was wrong with the committee, Hickenlooper said: "There are 19 men on it and they represent 21 1/2 different opinions." The one piece of legislation that carries his name-- the Hickenlooper Amendment to the 1962 foreign aid bill--cuts off aid to any country that expropriates U.S. property. The amendment forced Ceylon to reverse an expropriation of U.S.-owned oil depots and gas stations and compelled Brazil to reconsider a threatened seizure.

Though the Senator cited age as the reason for his retirement, he was clearly aware of the challenge of Iowa's three-term Democratic Governor Harold Hughes, 45, who announced his Senate candidacy last month, Hickenlooper has yet to pronounce a preference for a successor between two Republican contenders, State Senator David Stanley, 39, and former Representative James Bromwell, 47, but he has high respect for Hughes. "A powerful vote getter, a hard man to defeat," he said. Replied Hughes, after Hickenlooper's announcement: "It'll be a tough race no matter whom I face--because of the Republican traditions of the state."

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