Veterans' Defeat

"Aurora! March forward with Lieut. Holmstrom for mayor. He fought for his country. He'll fight for the future of 'Aurora! . . ."

"Holmstrom is home! A fighting man in a fighting mood! The time to prepare for the return of your servicemen is now! . . ."

With such slogans as these, a hastily organized Servicemen's Party entered a city election campaign in industrial Aurora, Ill. (pop. 47,170), with high hopes of setting a new kind of standard in modern U.S. politics. The party's candi dates were three wounded veterans of World War II.

Last week the campaign ended without giving a spark of encouragement to such tickets. The servicemen, headed by Lieut. Richard Knute Holmstrom for mayor, got a walloping. The winner: pipe-puffing, 74-year-old Mayor Andy Carter, for 32 years an Auroran, who was unexcitedly running for a second term.

Mayor Carter's opponent, 34-year-old Lieut. Holmstrom, had been a platoon leader in Italy, had won the Purple Heart and the Silver Star. His running mates : for city clerk -- Richard Edward Gieser, 26, who had been a Marine parachutist, nad three fingers on his right hand blown off at Guadalcanal; for city treasurer--Eldon Darrell Roadruck, 27, who had been 23 months overseas in the infantry, had been shot through both legs at Munda.

Because the wounded Holmstrom was still in a hospital, the servicemen's campaign did not get under way until ten days before election. Then it was dull--no mass meetings, no speeches by the candidates; there was a telephone campaign and advertisements in the Aurora Beacon-News. Voters, at the end, were too busy with war work, or too sure Andy Carter was in. Of about 27,000 eligible to go to the polls, only 11,930 voted.

Said Aurora's Beacon-News: "Our people didn't want to exchange a mayor of proved integrity and business and administrative ability for one of inexperience. . . ." The servicemen, a sad political lesson learned, thought they might try again in four more years.

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