Victory for Morse

Oregon Republicans rejected Senator Rufus Holman last week, and as a result the Republican Party looked a bit brighter all over the U.S. For bumbling Rufus Holman, 66, was an isolationist, a party hack, a reactionary, a labor baiter. His conqueror, making his first try for political office, was Wayne Lyman Morse, young (43), an internationalist, for two years the most effective member of Franklin Roosevelt's War Labor Board.

In rejecting Holman and electing Morse, many Oregonians were convinced that they had rendered a double public service. Holman, big of girth, white of hair, loose of lip, distinguished himself in Congress mainly by his absence from roll-calls (he was absent when Congress declared war, and missed 148 out of 239 roll-calls in seven months of 1942). But he managed to be present enough to distinguish himself in the making of intemperate attacks. These he delivered in a gravely falsetto voice which the Oregon Journal likes to call "a high tenor of protest. " High spot of the campaign came when Holman answered accusations of antiSemitism. Said he: "Now why would I be antiSemitic? My own father was an Englishman. I have relatives in England." No New Dealer. Wayne Morse, a progressive Republican, had to convince skeptical GOPsters that his years on WLB had not tarred him with New Dealism. This he did, decisively. Morse, ex-Dean of the University of Oregon Law School, wrote nearly 100 major WLB decisions and helped frame the Little Steel Formula.

But he has been on record since 1938 that the Wagner Act is a "one-sided piece of legislation." He forthrightly accused his old WLBoard fellows of "cheap legal side stepping" in the Montgomery Ward case, and said "palace guarders that surround the President have their hearts set on taking over heavy industry in this country." Morse's Democratic opposition in the November finals will be Edgar W. Smith, a Portland insurance man and political unknown. Oregon in November will also choose a Senator to fill four years of the late Charles McNary's term. Guy Cordon, interim Senator since McNary's death, got through a tough GOPrimary last week, seems likely to give twice-beaten Democratic Willis Mahoney a third defeat.

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