The Tide in Colorado

The Democrats had all the glamor: a young, medal-bedecked war hero on crutches. The Republicans had 1) an unexciting, well-to-do, bulky and balding businessman candidate, 2) a tide of opinion running their way. Last week in Denver, the tide and the Republican won.

Dean M. Gillespie, 59, victor by a narrow 3,000 votes, was the first Republican elected from Colorado's First Congressional District since 1932. He campaigned with a splash: big billboards, solid newspaper support, and batteries of girls telephoning the citizenry. He hammered at one issue--New Deal bureaucracy. Democrats got a slow start, waiting for their wounded hero, 30-year-old Major Carl E. Wuertele (pronounced Wert-a-lee), to get his Army discharge (TIME, Feb. 7). They never did get rolling. War workers with good wages were apathetic; the party "ins" were soft. Groused one Democratic campaigner: "The only good Democrat is a hungry Democrat."

The only Colorado Democrat left in Congress is Senator Edwin C. Johnson, no lover of the New Deal. He tried vainly to come to the aid of the party and its war hero arguing lamely: "On Nov. 7, not March 7, will be the time to call President Roosevelt to task. . . . The New Deal has been the worst fraud ever perpetrated on the American people. But don't blame Wuertele who was away fighting . . . and had less to do with these things than you yourself."

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