Running Scared

"You got hot with McCarthy--now Boyle" was the slogan stitched on new political banners unfurled across Wisconsin last week. "Boyle" is Lawyer Howard H. (for Henry) Boyle Jr., 36, of Milwaukee, an Old Guard Republican who, two hours before the deadline, filed as an independent candidate for next week's special election to fill Joe McCarthy's U.S. Senate seat. Wisconsin voters seemed to be taking Boyle coolly, but the state's G.O.P. leaders were steaming. Reason: Boyle had turned what seemed a certain victory for G.O.P. Candidate Walter Jodok Kohler Jr. into a just-might chance for Democrat William Proxmire.

Kohler, Wisconsin's three-term former governor, was the narrow victor last month in a bitter, seven-man G.O.P. primary (TIME, Aug. 12). Since then, factional wounds have been healing and Kohler has found allies among the defeated six. But he could establish no such rapport with Latecomer Boyle, an old hand at going after the frontrunner. Last year Boyle jumped into a G.O.P. primary between Senator Alexander Wiley and conservative ex-Congressman Glenn Davis, helped Wiley win by picking off about 5% of Davis' conservative vote. He makes no bones about trying to trip Walter Kohler in the same fashion. "If Kohler is beaten," he explained, "the Republican Party of Wisconsin will have to nominate a conservative in 1958. If by some quirk Proxmire wins, he will be easily beaten in 1958 by a conservative Republican."

Proxmire, a chronic candidate who has yet to win statewide office, has more than Boyle's candidacy to hearten him. He has received the endorsement of the state's labor organizations in a move that was more anti-Kohler than it was pro-Proxmire. He can also count on the return to the fold of Democrats who filled out Republican primary ballots, voted for Kohler to lessen the chance of a conservative Republican's winning. Kohler forces, who had expected to win in a walk, were running scared. "Every vote for Boyle," warned a Kohler lieutenant ominously, "is a vote for Proxmire."

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