Eighteenth Year

For the first time in 18 years, North Dakota's slick Gerald Prentice Nye faced a real threat to his well-warmed seat in the U.S. Senate. On June 27, Congress' foremost isolationist goes into the hardest primary fight of his career.

Gerald Nye was the sponsor of the Senate's famed munitions investigation, which drove many U.S. "merchants of death" (1934 language for arms makers) into other pursuits. No man worked harder than he to foster a national U.S. psychology of neutrality, pacifism, disarmament --the spirit which was responsible for the 1940-41 Army maneuvers in which U.S. soldiers pretended that stovepipes were cannon, and labeled old trucks "tanks."

If Nye is defeated, his Senate seniority will go to his bitter foe, slippery William Langer, another kind of North Dakota statesman. In 1942, "Slippery Bill" triumphed over ten fat volumes of charges of moral turpitude: his Senate colleagues voted (52-10-30) to ignore the whole thing. Last week, having maneuvered Senator Nye into a three-cornered primary fight, Slippery Bill stumped the state with his own hand-picked candidate. He hoped to inherit: 1) control of two seats in the U.S. Senate; 2) all of North Dakota's Federal patronage; 3) overlordship of Bismarck's 19-story State Capitol.

Bill Langer's choice to beat Nye is Usher Lloyd Burdick, 65, for the last ten years a plodding, mild-mannered U.S. Representative whose hobby is collecting and rebinding old volumes of Wild West Americana. Usher Burdick is a pre-Pearl Harbor isolationist who changed his mind. A colorless radio speaker, lacking the verve and rabble-rousing fire of either Opponent Nye or Boss Langer, Candidate Burdick goes poorly in the cities. He is a great success with small groups of farmers when he rips off his coat and speaks in unvarnished and unrehearsed language. But some of Burdick's supporters will be more hindrance than help: such "Eastern interests" as the C.I.O. and the Communist Daily Worker.

Many North Dakota Republicans see a dismal choice of evils between Gerald Nye's rabid, unrepentant isolationism and the Langer machine's shady political reputation. With evangelical zeal, the state's businessmen, mostly political amateurs, are backing a third candidate: able Lynn U. Stambaugh, 53, onetime (1941-42) National Commander of the American Legion. Trim, hearty Legionnaire Stambaugh, a successful Fargo lawyer and long-time advocate of U.S. participation in world affairs, has invested in 53 red-white-& -blue billboards for a high-pressure campaign. But the grain growers and stockmen who cast most of North Dakota's votes listen to his tireless speechmaking with stony faces. They regard him as a city slicker backed by city slickers.

Political reporters who watched Candidate Burdick stumping the rural districts, whipping off his coat under the expert Langer management, bluntly predicted that Nye was through. But Washington observers--especially those who watched Gerald Nye's shrewd progress from a young bumpkin in bulbous yellow shoes to a sleekly tailored politician who drew down handsome lecture fees for anti-British, anti-Russian tirades--still believed strongly in the Nye talent for self-preservation.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.