Some Fresh Faces for '76

In the five state races described in the preceding pages, the outcome is largely in suspense. But there are important contests in at least five other states, where the results no longer seem in much doubt. These elections will thrust some more or less new political faces on the national scene:

ROCKEFELLER'S RETURN. Some members of the Rockefeller clan like to be Governors, and when a state is not readily at hand, they move in on one. Nelson took his native New York, but Brother Winthrop chose Arkansas, and now Nephew John D. IV is hoping to win West Virginia. A Harvard graduate who later specialized in Far Eastern studies, Jay moved to the state twelve years ago, spent two years as an antipoverty worker, served a stint as secretary of state, then became president of West Virginia Wesleyan College (enrollment: 1,700). Four years ago, he stumbled badly when he ran for Governor as a strong liberal Democrat. Today, Rockefeller, 39 and more conservative, appears to be on the verge of a landslide victory over his opponent, ex-Governor Cecil Underwood, 53, who has little money or organization. Rockefeller has pragmatically switched on a number of issues: he now opposes gun-control laws and unionization of public employees.

Rockefeller spent some $1.7 million in the spring primary, much of it his own, and is once again spending freely in the fall election. But he has defused the wealth issue by suggesting successfully that he is too rich to steal in office. Nonetheless, for appearances' sake, last year he and his wife Sharon (Illinois Senator Charles Percy's daughter) sold their "his" and "hers" Mercedes, though they are now driving a Lincoln Continental and a Cadillac Seville; their two school-age children go to local integrated schools; and Rockefeller has put his assets in a blind trust. No longer thought of as a carpetbagger, he has embraced the state Democratic Party, which four years ago he rejected. Tall (6 ft. 6 in.) and affable, he is an easygoing campaigner, and assisted by some 5,000 volunteers, has apparently turned the theme of honesty in government into a winning issue.

LUGAR'S TRIUMPH. Richard Lugar, 44, has had to live down his reputation as "Richard Nixon's favorite mayor." But today the former two-term mayor of Indianapolis, who just two years ago lost a tight race for the Senate to Birch Bayh, seems well on his way to erasing the Nixon association. Statewide polls now show him comfortably ahead of the scrappy Democratic incumbent, Vance Hartke, whom Capitol Hill aides twice voted "the Senator with the least integrity." Lugar, a Rhodes scholar, has built a strong image as a proponent of free enterprise, strong national defense and fiscal conservatism.

He points out that he reduced property taxes five times during his eight years as mayor of Indianapolis and left office this year with a surplus of $4.5 million. Lately, Lugar, who has a stiff campaign manner, has loosened up his style, shedding his conservative business suits for bright blazers and white loafers. He has run into some flak from Common Cause for his acceptance of $10,000 in contributions from the A.M.A., twice the amount allowed one contributor by law. He claims it was legal. However, with a $500,000 budget, thousands of precinct workers, and an aura of the Eagle Scout (he actually was one), Lugar looks like a winner over Hartke.

SARBANES' ROMP. A cool, low-keyed Rhodes scholar with an English wife, Congressman Paul Sarbanes appears to be riding to victory in a contentious Senate race in Maryland. Sarbanes, 43, a three-term Representative from a blue-collar district in Baltimore, leads in the latest Sunpapers poll by 17 percentage points over incumbent U.S. Senator J. Glenn Beall Jr., 49, who has been hurt by his acknowledged acceptance of unreported campaign funds from the Nixon Administration in 1970. Sarbanes, who attended Princeton on scholarship, later Oxford University and Harvard Law School, comes from a Greek working-class background--he used to wash dishes in his family's restaurant. He drew national attention when he drafted the so-called "Sarbanes substitute," which became the first article of Impeachment passed by the House Judiciary Committee in 1974. A liberal, Sarbanes nonetheless has opposed busing and unconditional amnesty for draft evaders. With the Democrats' 3-to-l registration margin in Maryland and Sarbanes' strong ethnic ties, he appears to be a sure winner.

DANFORTH'S SURGE. Going into the closing weeks of Missouri's Senate contest, moderate Republican John Danforth, 40, Missouri's attorney general for the past eight years, appears to be pulling away. A gangly (6 ft. 3 in.), ambitious politician who attended Princeton, Yale Law School and Yale Divinity School, Danforth has since 1968 helped to spur a brilliant Republican resurgence in the state which put into office in 1973 the current Governor, Kit Bond, the first Republican to hold that office in Missouri in 30 years. Attorney General Danforth has a deserved "Mr. Clean" image (TIME selected him in 1974 as one of the country's 200 rising young leaders). He twice took to court his own family business, Ralston Purina, in which he holds 100,000 shares worth about $5 million.

Though normally a wooden campaigner who looks somewhat like an Episcopal rector (which he is), Danforth now crisscrosses the state in a van and tells voters that he wants to be a "pain in the neck" in Washington. He lost a narrow Senate race in 1970, but he is spending heavily against his opponent, ex-Governor Warren E. Hearnes, who is severely tarnished by allegations of scandal in his past administration.

RAY'S SPRINT. With her outspoken views and eccentric life-style (she lived in an $18,000 mobile home with two dogs while in Washington, D.C.), Dixy Lee Ray blazed onto the national scene in 1973 when she became the first woman to head the Atomic Energy Commission. Now, in the year since she returned to her home in Washington State, the once apolitical marine biologist, who didn't disclose until this year what party she belonged to, appears to be the surprise favorite in the race for the state's governorship. Casting herself last spring as a conservative Democrat, Ray grabbed off the party's gubernatorial primary in September by her folksy, direct campaigning, and spent less than a third of the amount shelled out by her chief opponent. Today, at 62, she is racing around the state in 15-hour days, showing herself to be an adept speaker and warm, arm-squeezing vote getter.

She has generally stuck to conservative positions, favoring nuclear energy and large oil tankers in Puget Sound. Her colorless Republican opponent, John Spellman, the King County executive, has not visibly matched her in style. Ray's growing strength among Democratic regulars, who once shunned her, and the Washington State AFL-CIO make her formidable.

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