Hyphen Primary

Minnesota is a strong Farmer-Labor State, but of late the Farmer-Labor Party has been straining at its internal hyphen. Earnest, hard-boiled Governor Elmer A. Benson is a favorite in the Twin Cities and with the miners of the northern iron ranges. He is less popular with many a farmer suspicious of the Governor's city ways, his enthusiasm for organized labor even when it takes money out of farm pockets. Hero of such conservative Farmer-Laborites is bespectacled Hjalmar Petersen, onetime lieutenant governor who served four months as Governor after the death of Boss Floyd Olson in 1936, once quit the party for a time because he thought it was going Communist. Last week, the party went to the polls to choose between Governor Benson and onetime Governor Petersen in its gubernatorial primary, to settle which was the stronger side of Farmer-Labor's hyphen.

Notable for bitterness--Candidate Petersen called Candidate Benson and his friends "racketeers"--the primary was notable also for the intervention of Franklin Roosevelt, who last month removed State WPAdministrator Victor Christgau at the insistence of Governor Benson, a New Deal ally in 1936 and potentially an even more valuable ally in 1940.

As expected, Candidate Benson ran far ahead in city precincts, Candidate Petersen led in the schoolhouse vote. After two days of seesaw ballot-counting, Benson finally overtook Petersen for good, squeaked through, 215,000 to 202,000. The total Farmer-Labor primary vote was by far the highest in its history, more than the 253,000 Republican and 81,000 Democratic votes put together. So Laborite Benson's forces inferred that Farmerite Petersen had recruited much of his support from Republican and Democratic conservatives. This claim was supported by the fact that conservative Republican Martin Nelson, twice his party's gubernatorial nominee, was squeezed out by 32-year-old progressive Harold Stassen. Net result of the hyphen primary was to leave Minnesota's conservatives thoroughly dissatisfied, make it doubly necessary for the New Deal to support Governor Benson lest Republicans get an inner track on Minnesota's eleven 1940 electoral votes. Jubilated Elmer A. Benson: "It shows very clearly that those who believe in liberal government constitute the great majority of our citizens."

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