A Toss-'Em-Out Temper

From Ohio to Nebraska, voters were grumpy over high taxes and governmental waste. They cast their ballots against the status quo and turned out of office three Senators and three Governors. As a result, Republicans made some significant gains, and where Democrats managed to prevail, they tended to be conservatives.

The most stunning shift occurred in Minnesota, usually one of the most liberal states in the nation, where Republican victories jolted the long dominant Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (see box). Of significance elsewhere for the political future were the solid gains made by Republicans in a number of state legislatures. The G.O.P. went into the election controlling both houses of legislature in only two Midwestern states (South Dakota and Nebraska) but won enough victories to take over both chambers in four additional states: Iowa, Kansas, Indiana and North Dakota. In influential Illinois, Republicans made strong gains in both houses of the legislature, only narrowly missing control.

One of the most impressive Republican winners was Illinois Governor James ("Big Jim") Thompson, who defied the region's anti-incumbency trend to win reelection by some 600,000 votes. His feisty Democratic opponent, State Comptroller Michael Bakalis, failed to find any effective way of attacking Thompson, who had kept his 1976 election promises to cut spending, balance the state budget and hold down taxes.

Running hard to pile up a big vote, Thompson stumbled badly on just one issue. He was so eager to capitalize on the tax revolt that he sponsored a non-binding "Thompson proposition," asking voters whether they wanted to put a limit on both spending and taxes in the state. Underestimating the difficulty of rounding up the necessary 589,000 petition signatures in a hurry, Thompson put the pressure on political aides to deliver--and they wound up compiling names of some voters who had never seen a petition. Bakalis responded by crying fraud, but to no avail.

After his win, the easygoing Thompson promised more of the same solid, if unspectacular, leadership during his second term that he provided during his first two years in office. He brushed aside inevitable speculation about a possible presidential candidacy in 1980. Said he: "Before anybody runs for President, he'd better have the makings of a President. He must demonstrate the qualities and abilities to be President." Thompson clearly hopes to do just that in his next two years as Governor.

Kansas Republicans achieved the historic feat of sending the first woman to a full term in the Senate without any help from a husband's previous political career.* To be sure, Nancy Landon Kassebaum, 46, did not hide the fact that she was 1936 Presidential Candidate Alf Landon's daughter, no handicap in Kansas despite Landon's humiliating loss to F.D.R. But she proved a candid and outgoing campaigner, and her fresh personality meshed neatly with the voters' yearnings for change. Her opponent, Democrat Bill Roy, a physician and lawyer, had run unsuccessfully for the Senate before and had been prominent long enough in Kansas politics to take on the aura of an oldtimer.

But distant and aloof Kansas Republican Governor Robert Bennett, never really popular in his state, fell victim to the widespread voter unrest. He was upset by Democrat John Carlin, 38, speaker of the state's house of representatives. Wisconsin's image as one of the more liberal states was transformed by Republican Lee Sherman Dreyfus, 52, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point, who was seeking office for the first time. He unseated Acting Governor Martin Schreiber, 39, a career politician. Yet Dreyfus, who describes himself as a maverick in a populist mold, saw no ideological portent in his victory. He was elected, he said, "not because of what I was, but because of what I was not. I was beholden to no one, backed by no special interests and had no debts." In Iowa, the voters' toss-'em-out mood benefited Conservative Republican Roger Jepsen, who upset Liberal Democrat Dick Clark.

Despite the clear conservative tilt in the Midwest, voters sometimes went the other way in their desire to shake things up. In Michigan they chose Democrat Carl Levin, 44, former president of the Detroit city council and a party regular, over Republican Senator Robert Griffin, a skillful parliamentarian and his party's Senate whip. At the same time, Michigan's voters stuck with an able Republican Governor, William Milliken, 56, despite a harsh campaign against him by Democrat William Fitzgerald, who even blamed Milliken for a public scare over Michigan farmers' use of the controversial pesticide PBB. Replied Milliken during the campaign: "It's a terrible thing to pander to people's fears." He finally won with 57% of the vote-his largest win in three elections.

Many of the other incumbents who survived the turn-out tide did so only after sobering close calls. In one of the Mid west's most expensive Senate races, Illinois' Moderate Republican Charles Percy had to use some $450,000 of his own money to fend off the challenge of Democrat Alex Seith, a lawyer who spent $750,000 of his and his wife's funds on his campaign. Running behind in the polls, the frightened Percy made a novel last-minute plea with TV ads saying that he had gotten the message all right. But he added: "If you don't vote for me, I won't be around to act on it." Enough voters rallied behind Percy to give him a 245,000-vote edge, but the margin did little to enhance his standing among colleagues in the Senate or his presidential ambitions.

Another shaky Republican winner was Ohio's James Rhodes, 69, who has served nonconsecutively as Governor for a total of twelve years. Articulate, handsome Democratic Nominee Richard Celeste, 41, Ohio's Lieutenant Governor since 1974, threw Rhodes on the defensive by charging that the Governor had allowed the state's public schools to slip into near bankruptcy. Rhodes campaigned so hard that he had to rest during the closing days. In the end he won by only 49,109 votes out of 2,839,000 cast. He called this "a landslide," and in a sense it was. Four years ago Rhodes had mistakenly conceded defeat on election night, and then, next morning, discovered that he had won by 11,414 votes. --

* Kassebaum is the 14th woman Senator Seven were appointed to office. Three were elected to succeed their husbands. Two others, Gladys Pyle and Hazel Able, served only to fill short-term vacancies. Margaret Chase Smith had previously been elected to succeed her late husband in the House.

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