Olsen's Triumph

No one in Nebraska expects the Democratic gubernatorial candidate to beat vote getting Republican Governor Dwight Griswold next November. But no one expected that Pat Heaton, an able small-town lawyer and choice of the Democratic bosses, would lose the Democratic nomination. Yet last week when the primary votes were counted, Pat Heaton was 344 votes behind George W. Olsen, a baggy-clothed 62-year-old cafeteria bus boy at Omaha's Martin bomber plant, and an absolute political unknown. Sole reason for George Olsen's triumph: his Scandinavian name.

In Nebraska a Scandinavian name has an almost superlative political charm. Of the six top state officers below Governor, three are named Johnson, two Swanson.

All were renominated last week. Yet Scandinavians make up only 6.4% of Nebraska's population. Nebraskans pondering this phenomenon long ago came up with the answer. In Nebraska, Germans will not vote for Bohemians, and vice versa. Neither will Germans or Bohemians or Czechs vote for Irish, and vice versa. But all these racial groups can, with equanimity, vote for a Scandinavian. Also, and perhaps more important, in predominantly Protestant Nebraska, one certain way not to vote for a Catholic is to vote for a Scandinavian.

Danish-born George Olsen, onetime farmer and poultry operator, beneficiary of this nomenclatural luck, used his newfound fame to popularize his hobby. To correspondents he distributed copies of his formula for squaring the circle, which he has worked on since 1931.

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