Wisconsin Obstacle Race

Since he stopped pretending to be a Republican (in 1934) and began running on a straight Progressive ticket, Wisconsin's ambitious young Governor Philip Fox La Follette has (1934, 1936) squeezed through with fewer votes than the total for his Democratic and Republican opponents. This year, while Governor La Follette was trying to hatch a national third party to coalesce liberals against reactionaries, Wisconsin's two-time Democratic State Treasurer Robert K. Henry hatched a coalition of Wisconsin's conservatives against Governor La Follette. An object lesson to all hopeful coalitionists was the result of Wisconsin's muddled primary last week.

Lawyer Henry entered both Republican and Democratic primaries, announcing that if he won both he would run for whichever party gave him the higher vote. (Wisconsin law provides that candidates cannot run under two labels.) This proposal angered both regular party organizations because it meant depriving one of them of a place on the ballot. The Republican organization put up Milwaukee Manufacturer Julius Heil. Democratic chieftains and the State New Deal machine got behind young Jerome Fox, who resigned his job as an HOLC attorney to make the race as a Roosevelt man. Coalitionist Henry, no New Dealer and deeming the Republican nomination better than the Democratic, thereupon called on his Democratic supporters to vote for him in the Republican primary.

Through bewilderment, perversity, or both, Wisconsin's voters turned out last week to give Coalitionist Henry the Democratic nomination by a wide margin over New Dealer Fox, Republican Heil the Republican nomination by a still wider margin over Mr. Henry. Governor La Follette, weakly opposed by a Socialist in his own primary, won a respectable 4-to-1 victory. Although the failure of the coalition to jell gave him the advantage of another three-cornered fight in November, a new obstacle to his unprecedented fourth term appeared when the Republicans outpolled the Progressives by 60,000 votes, regained momentarily their place as Wisconsin's No. 1 party.

The primary also produced an obstacle to the Governor's greater ambitions. Older than his National Progressives of America is the Farmer-Labor Progressive Federation, a by-product of Minnesota's potent Farmer-Labor Party--a similar attempt to expand a State third-party machine beyond State borders. The burgeoning National Progressives, already a force in California politics and last fortnight unsuccessfully implored by Democratic Governor Nelson Kraschel to abandon their plans for a three-cornered race in Iowa this year, have more than once rubbed elbows with Farmer-Laborites but have preserved a state of truce. This year, in return for staying out of Wisconsin's gubernatorial primary, the Federation besought Governor La Toilette's aid for the Progressive candidacy of Representative Thomas Amlie for the Senate. Having earmarked the Senate seat for his faithful Lieutenant Governor Herman Ekern, the Governor supported Mr. Ekern against Mr. Amlie, although he tactfully refrained from making any speeches. Candidate Ekern trounced Candidate Amlie last week after a bitter Progressive primary, in which Amlie also had the support of Milwaukee's Socialist Mayor Daniel Hoan. This raised the possibility that when Progressive Ekern brings the La Follette fight on the New Deal into the open against Democratic Senator F. Ryan Duffy in November, the Federation and Governor La Follette may fight it out too.

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