Upset Time

In Democratic primary elections last week, two disparately celebrated personalities suffered surprising defeats.

John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth, splashed down second to a millionaire who was a political unknown when the campaign for the Ohio Democratic Senate nomination began. In Alabama, George Wallace earned a place in a runoff for Governor -- but trailed the incumbent, his onetime protege, Albert Brewer.

OHIO "It's a bitter pill," Astronaut Glenn confessed. He had to withdraw from the Democratic primary for Senator six years back after a household injury.

This year the smalltown, all-American hero found himself outhustled and drastically outspent (by an estimated $1.25 million to $300,000) by Cleveland Lawyer Howard Metzenbaum, 52, who sold out a prosperous airport-parking business for some $20 million.

Said Metzenbaum: "It was impossible to run against John Glenn the man, be cause he is rightly held in such high esteem by everybody, including myself."

So Metzenbaum ran around him. Glenn could not escape marginally valuable autograph sessions with schoolchildren well below voting age; Metzenbaum had no such time-wasting troubles. Glenn had opposed the state Democratic organization six years ago. "John doesn't even bother to see the county chairman when he is in town," a Metzenbaum aide ob served. Glenn's opponent had managed two tough, victorious campaigns for Senator Stephen Young and made good use of the party pros.

Metzenbaum challenged Glenn on his own ground: Glenn favored continuation of massive spending on space exploration, while Metzenbaum argued that the money would be better used for the mundane. Metzenbaum attracted labor backing, heavy Jewish support and the endorsement of Cleveland's black mayor, Carl Stokes. Most of all, how ever, what put Metzenbaum across was harder work and a costly, deftly executed television campaign.

Two-Way Loss. Whether Metzenbaum can come from behind again in No vember to win the Senate seat that Young is relinquishing is problematical.

His training in taking on the famous, however, will hardly be wasted. His op ponent is Robert Taft Jr., still "Young Bob" at 53, scion of the state's most honored political family. Taft squeezed past Ohio's popular Governor James Rhodes to win the Republican senatorial nomination by only 3,165 votes out of more than 900,000 cast. Ohio experts agree that what made the difference was al legations in LIFE that the Governor had been unduly kind to a jailed Mafioso, and that he had run into trouble with the Internal Revenue Service over alleged misuse of campaign funds.

Rhodes also may have been hurt by the killing of four Kent State students the day before the primary. He had successfully opposed hard-line state legislation against student protesters, and Taft headquarters criticized Rhodes for that opposition only hours after Na tional Guardsmen -- ordered to Kent State by Rhodes -- shot the students.

On the issue of campus violence, Rhodes had no way he could possibly win. He was damned because he did and damned because he didn't.

Rhodes has been forced to give up the Governor's chair because the state constitution forbids a man to hold the of fice for more than two terms in succession. To replace him, the Republicans nominated State Auditor Roger Cloud, a moderate who won 50% of the vote in a field of three that included U.S. Representative Donald ("Buz") Lukens, a Goldwaterite who once led a conse vative takeover of the national Young Republicans. Cloud's opponent will be John Gilligan of Cincinnati, a former Congressman (Taft defeated him in 1966) who swept the nomination with 60% of the Democratic ballots cast.

ALABAMA What slipped George Wallace into second place was the new and fragile coalition that has begun to appear in scattered parts of the Deep South. It is made up of increasingly powerful blacks, the young and the upper middle class, which finds itself embarrassed by the red neck, racist style of old-guard Southern politicians. Governor Albert Brewer, who succeeded Lurleen Wallace when she died of cancer two years ago, possesses a fresh, relatively polished approach that earned him 420,524 votes at the latest tallies, to 409,029 for Wal lace (five other candidates shared the bal ance). Wallace was hanged in effigy at Auburn University. In the Birmingham suburbs of Mountain Brook and Vestavia Hills, wealthy housewives told their maids and garden boys to come to work late or take off early in order to vote for Brewer. It worked. In one Vestavia Hills precinct, for instance, Brewer led Wallace by 1,445 to 397. Alabama is one of the few states where voters can switch parties in a primary, and Republicans openly crossed over to vote against Wallace.

New Day's Dawn. The two men meet in a June 2 runoff that will decide the governorship; no Republican is running.

Brewer, who called his lead "the mir acle Oi the century," has an important psychological edge; only once in the last 50 years has the leader in the opening heat lost an Alabama runoff. Wal lace complained of a "bloc black vote" against him. Indeed, blacks turned out in record numbers, splitting their votes between Brewer and Charles Woods, a wealthy businessman who ran a surprisingly solid third.

Alabama's blacks hold the key to the June 2 result. They will go strongly for Brewer, and there is a possibility that a backlash for Wallace will build among white Alabamians who feel that Brewer is the blacks' candidate. Blacks are well aware of this possibility, and they intend to keep their support of Brewer as quiet as they can.

If Brewer does defeat him in the run off, Wallace will be seriously hurt nationally -- but he will not necessarily be eliminated as a factor in the 1972 presidential elections. If Richard Nixon's "go slow" school desegregation policies have not completely mollified the South, and if there is still deep national mal aise over crime, the war and dissent on the campuses, there will be nothing to keep him from declaring "I told you so" and mounting the same kind of di versionary campaign he did in 1968.

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