63 to 23 to 0

P: The voters of North Dakota decided emphatically last week against moving their capital to Jamestown from Bismarck where the capitol burned last year.

Of greater importance, Democratic North Dakotans expressed a 2-to-1 preference for Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt of New York over Governor William Henry ("Alfalfa Bill") Murray for the presidential nomination. Of perhaps yet greater importance, voters deserted the Republican fold in such droves as to indicate probable defeat for Herbert Hoover in North Dakota next November.

The North Dakota primary usually lacks political meaning. The voters are free to ballot in either party and their presidential preferences in no wise bind convention delegates elected separately but simultaneously. Governor Murray, campaigning excitedly as an apostle of discontent, had purposely picked North Dakota for the first test of his political strength outside Oklahoma. He confidently expected to turn agrarian radicalism to his own benefit. Yet Governor Roosevelt not only swept the preference voting but won nine of the State's ten Democratic convention delegates. The only delegate Governor Murray got to add to his 22 from Oklahoma was his brother George, who farms at Berthold.

Roosevelt boosters declared that the "Murray menace" had now once & for all been eliminated. They claimed that their candidate had proved his popular power to carry the Northwest before him. Governor Murray, grim and unforgiving, declared he had been beaten by "postoffice politics."

The largest Democratic primary vote in North Dakota was 13,000 in 1924. Last week some 80,000 North Dakotans participated in the Roosevelt-Murray voting. Observers estimated that some 50,000 Republicans had deserted their party.

P: With 63 votes* toward the magic number of 770 needed to nominate at the Chicago convention, Governor Roosevelt turned to Georgia's primary this week. Fortnight ago he had knocked out Alfred Emanuel Smith in New Hampshire. Last week he knocked out Governor Murray in North Dakota. This week he confidently expected to knock out Speaker John Nance Garner (for whom a Judge Gus Hill Howard was running by proxy) in Georgia, his "second home," and add 28 more delegates to his growing string.

P: Other dates important to the Roosevelt candidacy: March 29 when Iowa (26 votes) and Maine (12 votes) hold Democratic State conventions; April 5 when New York (94 votes) holds its primary; April 12 when Nebraska (16 votes) ballots on Roosevelt v. Garner v. Murray without pledging its delegates.

P: A full Roosevelt slate of delegates-at-large was put into the Massachusetts primary (36 votes) by Boston's Mayor Curley. One candidate was James, 25-year-old son of the New York Governor, who lives in Cambridge, sells insurance.

P: Candidate Roosevelt last week filed for the preferential primaries in California (May 3), West Virginia (May 10), Florida (June 7).

P: Before a W. C. T. U. audience Democratic Governor George White of Ohio, longtime Dry and his State's "favorite son" for the presidential nomination, last week declared for a referendum on Prohibition, stirred loud "nays" with the declaration that the public was entitled to such a vote.

*Alaska, 6; Washington, 16; New Hampshire. 8; Minnesota, 24; North Dakota, 9.

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